Bo Nix didn’t get to experience the highs that come with being the starting quarterback for the Auburn football program, but he has been able to experience joy at Oregon as he told reporters ahead of his Ducks’ tussle with Texas Tech in Lubbock.
“This school has changed my life,” Nix said of Oregon (h/t AL.com). “This school just gave me an opportunity to be myself again and get out of the spotlight of, ‘You’re playing because your dad played here,’ or ‘You are only doing it because you are an Auburn fan’ or this and that. But now I can just go do it because I love playing quarterback.
“I love being around a group of guys, and love leading a group out there with a common mission to win. We were fortunate enough to do a lot of that last season but we came up short in some other times, so now, another reason you came back to have another try at it, and learn from what you did right, learn from what you did wrong and go out and fix it.”
Bo Nix was ‘miserable’ under former Auburn football head coach Bryan Harsin
Maybe things were better before the COVID-19 pandemic for Nix with Auburn football — when the freshman was able to knock off Alabama at Jordan-Hare Stadium in his first-ever Iron Bowl — but the 2021 season under Bryan Harsin was described by the Pinson product as “miserable.”
“Last year, I was just kind of over it,” Nix said in October 2022 (h/t CBS Sports’ Dennis Dodd). “Each week it was something else. There was, quite frankly, nothing I could do about it. I just remember kind of being miserable. It wasn’t fun anymore.”
Nix’s description of his time at Auburn certainly doesn’t read like an endorsement for the program. Odds are it’ll be Oregon that gets his post-collegiate career visits after he is drafted to the NFL.