The Auburn Tigers are rebuilding, again, in 2026, introducing Alex Golesh, Joel Gordon, and a new offensive system, not to mention 39 total incoming transfers and 17 incoming high school signees/junior college prospects on both sides of the ball.
Based on the success Golesh and Co. had with the USF Bulls, mainly the fact that the engine that drove the offense, quarterback Byrum Brown, and several of his deep threats are coming with him, Auburn shouldn't take much time to be built. DJ Durkin has ran a tight ship as defensive coordinator for two years running, with a varied cast each season.
That didn't earn the respect of Tennessee Volunteers On SI's Christian Kirby, who didn't include AU as one of the programs listed in his piece, "The Five Games That Will Define the Tennessee Volunteers' 2026 Football Season."
Kirby listed the Texas Longhorns, Alabama Crimson Tide, the Texas A&M Aggies, the LSU Tigers, and the Vanderbilt Commodores as the teams to beat next season. Quite frankly, the omission is understandable.
But these won't be Hugh Freeze's Tigers taking the field this fall. There's a chance Golesh's team stuns several programs that will be overlooking an Auburn program that's not defended its home field or won big road matchups in recent years.
Alex Golesh is a culture-changer, and he's been part of change at Tennessee before
Golesh is doing things differently than Freeze and Bryan Harsin, who were Cult of Personality figureheads who were opinionated and "old school."
How can change not be a good thing when that's what you're changing from?
As the sport shifted to NIL and eventually, rev-share, Freeze in particular let the players run the show. Harsin was simply unpopular with his players. Luckily, the shift to Golesh will be drastic. On3's Jake Crain told me that Golesh is the most Auburn Creed-based coach the team has hired in a while.
"I think you're going to get the opposite of what we just had at Auburn. Golesh wants to mold great people, but he molds great people a different way, not through appeasement. He is going to mold them through putting them through the rigor together, having a super high standard, understanding that you're not going to reach your goals by just being talented," Crain said.
If nothing else, Golesh's process has worked at USF and, coincidentally, Tennessee. He'll have a little bit extra motivation when he returns to Rocky Top for the first time as an SEC head coach, opposite his former boss, Josh Heupel, this October.