Through a somewhat convoluted series of events, I spent this fall as a volunteer assistant coach for my son’s flag football team. My qualifications for this job were few; principally, I was willing. I was more experienced with the coaching side of things than the actual football part. I’ve played sports my entire life, so I’ve been coached for years. As I’ve experienced with Grizz Gaming, coaching is mostly leadership, with occasional dashes of strategy and common sense tossed in.
When it comes to football, I may not know much about three down technique or how to swivel your hips when playing cornerback, but I can make a bunch of 8- and 9-year-old run laps and encourage them to listen to other coaches who know more than I do. My actual football knowledge is almost entirely accumulated from popular culture. I’ve watched football on TV forever, so I’ve listened to some of the greatest football players and coaches of all-time share their experiences. Surely that counts for something? I also felt as though I could help with calling plays on offense, since I’ve played literally a lifetime of Madden and the NCAA series of video games.
And so it was that in the last quarter of our final game of the season, our head coach came to the bench and announced, “Well, I think they’ve finally tuned me out. Anyone else want to call plays?”
An alarm went off in my mind. This, I thought, was my chance. Sure, we were losing 35-0, embarking upon perhaps our final possession of the season, but I figured it was now or never.
I grabbed our playbook, both pages of it, and hustled out to the field. My plan was to methodically work our way down the field, prioritizing possession, while possibly setting up the defense to eventually hit a big play. How hard could it be? On first down, I called for short comeback routes, which our quarterback ignored in favor of a deep out pass to the tight end, which sailed out of bounds. On second down, I suggested a delayed pass to the running back running a v-cut out of the backfield. This always works in Madden, but it didn’t work here. On third down, I told them to just do whatever they wanted, and we completed a three-yard pass that left us far short of a first down. The referee mercifully ended the game.
I bring all of this up because the futility of my situation made me think about Bryan Harsin, the Auburn coach who was fired this week, just 21 games after he was hired. He wasn’t abjectly awful at Auburn—he finished 9-12, although that includes 4-9 in the SEC—but anything even around .500 just isn’t acceptable on the Plains.He didn’t even make it through two seasons, which is the shortest of leashes for anyone, let alone someone trying to reboot a program at an SEC school. And especially at Auburn.
Coaching at Auburn seems like trying to finish a jigsaw puzzle, except all the pieces have been taken from different boxes. This is largely thanks to the infighting and territorial backbiting that seems inherent at Auburn, to a level unlike any other school in the SEC. (Even Harsin alluded to the lack of institutional alignment in his farewell note.)There are factions and groups and all sorts of misaligned pieces, and everyone wants control and wants to be heard. Heck, Tommy Tuberville had to become a Senator to find a gig with more stability than coaching at Auburn.
Considering Auburn is still paying off the last coach they fired before Harsin, it seems like someone at Auburn could stand to take some business classes on the side? Then again, the Athletic Director who hired Harsin to begin with, is already gone as well. And anyway, the incoming AD, John Cohen, certainly deserves his own chance at screwing up a college football coaching hire.
From what I can tell, the higher you climb in the coaching ranks, the less actual coaching there is to do. Unless you’re an offensive specialist and a play-caller, like Tennessee’s Josh Heupel or Texas A&M’s Jimbo Fisher, most of the work is about delegating, and allowing your staff to do the jobs they were hired to do. You lay out the vision, try to inspire and help the staff bring the best out of your players. That staff also provides distance, so when things inevitably get wobbly, you can change your assistant coaches and promise that the new blood will reinvigorate things, soon enough.Just give us more time!
Bryan Harsin attempted this tactic, but unfortunately instead of throwing his assistants to the wolves a few seasons in, he had to do this after his first year, when he fired his offensive coordinator and watched his defensive coordinator take a $400,000 pay cut to leave. (And let’s just skip over the school’s internal “inquiry” into social media rumors about Harsin, which were proven to be unfounded.) When things with the program didn’t seem any better halfway through year two, the writing was on the wall.Because it was Auburn, they didn’t even mention Harsin’s name in the press release announcing his firing, like he was Voldemort or something.
Almost exactly a year ago, I wrote a column about how being a college football coach could be a pretty lonely job. (Weirdly, after that column was published one of the coaches I mentioned reached out to let me know that I couldn’t have been more correct in my assessment.)
I’m sure Auburn will find someone else, someone with a glittering enough resume who is willing to deal with all the foolishness, who will excite the base and sign a few five-star recruits and make everyone think Auburn is back on the right track. Until they lose a few games and some of the boosters get their feelings hurt and all of a sudden everything will be a mess all over again.
I couldn’t get my football players to trust me, and I was only calling three plays. Coaching at Auburn is a horse of a different color, but in the end it’s the same thing: Can you get people to trust you? Enough to leave you alone and let you do your job?
Then again, maybe it’s not even worth it. I think I’d rather try and teach 9-year-olds how to run a slant route than deal with boosters and ADs and recruiting and NILs and everything else that comes along with it these days. Maybe Bryan Harsin just wants to put his cleats on, go to the empty field at the park and call some plays.
And if that’s the case, have I got an opportunity for him.