The Auburn Tigers football program's boosters didn't buy into Bryan Harsin, as CBS Sports' Will Backus relayed. Backus listed the Boise native as the No. 10 worst coaching hire in the last 15 years.
As Backus notes, Harsin's failures, combined with the boosters' lack of investment, has led to Hugh Freeze coaching from a recruiting hole.
"Harsin was never a good fit at Auburn, even if he came to The Plains with a solid résumé from his time at Boise State. He didn't have the backing of the boosters, and his pairing with the Tigers was the result of a hectic coaching search run by an athletic director without much big-time experience. Harsin wasn't ready for the grind of SEC recruiting and put Auburn in a talent hole that it's still trying to dig out of under coach Hugh Freeze. It's no wonder that Harsin only got 21 games," Backus wrote.
Harsin got a $15.3 million buyout from AU upon his October 31, 2022, firing, good for 70% of the remaining value on his six-year, $31.5 million contract. While the program didn't spend much on recruits during his two cycles on the Plains, it did fork over millions to get rid of him.
Now, Harsin is the offensive coordinator at Cal. The results, perhaps unsurprisingly, have been similar to his Tigers coaching tenure: a mass recruit exodus into the transfer portal.
Buyers remorse in Berkeley? At least a little bit.
Regardless of how things go from here in Cal, though, Harsin's legacy as a head coach is sealed after great years in his homestate of Idaho, and two of the most counterproductive years an SEC coach has had since the dawn of NIL.