McCready article

[RunInRed 16,567]

McCready: Auburn is next, and we all know what that means

 

Neal McCready • RebelGrove

Publisher

NASHVILLE — You can’t say you haven’t been warned. 

It’s coming. Hell, to some degree, it’s already started. But make no mistake whatsoever. It is coming. 

It, in case you’re wondering, is speculation that Lane Kiffin will be Auburn’s primary target sometime late next month. No. 8 Ole Miss, which improved to 6-0 overall and 2-0 in the Southeastern Conference here Saturday with a 52-28 win over Vanderbilt here at FirstBank Stadium, begins the second half of the season next Saturday in Oxford against Auburn, which spent its Saturday afternoon in Athens getting walloped by No. 2 Georgia, 42-10.

Auburn coach Bryan Harsin is, from a coaching perspective, a dead man walking. No matter what you think of Harsin, he never had a chance on the Plains. The powerful boosters who run Auburn had endured all of Gus Malzahn that they could at the end of the 2020 season, so they conspired to get rid of him. The goal was to fire Malzahn, give him his double-digit millions in buyout money and replace him with defensive coordinator Kevin Steele. 

The problem, of course, was the athletic director at the time, Allen Greene, wasn’t on board with the second half of the coup. So after Malzahn was let go and awarded his golden parachute, Greene pushed back on the “just hire Steele” portion of the plan. Greene conducted a coaching search, one that eventually ended with the hiring of Harsin, who was Boise State’s coach at the time. 

I’ve never been to Boise — if you’re a McCready & Siskey, powered by Reign Total Body Fuel fan, insert joke here — but I’ve been to Auburn, and I suspect the two places couldn’t be more different. Auburn can be a phenomenal job. Gene Chizik, for God’s sake, won a national championship there. Malzahn played in the title game. Terry Bowden went undefeated at Auburn. So did Tommy Tuberville. However, Auburn can make “Days Of Our Lives” blush. The drama! The scandal! When the Tigers are pulling in one direction, they’re dangerous. But when they’re not, the implosion is spectacular. 

So here we are. Ole Miss has now won 17 of its last 20 games under Kiffin, dating back to a Jan. 2, 2021, Outback Bowl win over Indiana. Auburn is 9-11 in its last 20 games. So, yeah, Kiffin’s name is going to come up a lot this week when conversations shift to what comes next on the Plains. 

Kiffin won’t mind. He subscribes to the “all publicity is good publicity” theory, and it’s served him well over the years. He’s a click magnet as well. If you want your story to get attention and aggregation, put Kiffin’s name in the headline and run his photo with the story. Kiffin moves the needle. 

So, is it real? There’s the rub. There’s probably a morsel of truth to the idea that Auburn will kick the proverbial tires on Kiffin to justify the speculation, at least to an extent. Kiffin would not be doing himself any negotiating favors if he just shot it all down, either. But is it real? I highly, highly doubt it. And there are a number of reasons for that skepticism. 

First, if Auburn boosters want to regain control over the program — and they do — Kiffin is not a good fit. Greene is gone now and Auburn is searching for a new athletics director, preferably one, I assume, who will do what the boosters want him to do. That AD, one would assume, will also hire someone who will do things more the Auburn way than Harsin did. That’s not Kiffin. 

Kiffin is one hell of a football coach. He’s a brilliant offensive mind. He’s innovative and resourceful, as evidenced by how he used the transfer portal to turn what should have been a rebuilding year into a fall where Ole Miss just might be in the College Football Playoff discussion early next month. 

Kiffin is not, however, the hobnob-with-the-boosters kind of coach. He’s a bit aloof. He likes to get out of town and head closer to an ocean, whether it be to fish in Florida or see his family in California. I’ve never asked him this directly, but I’d bet a decent amount of money that he despises the glad-handing fan events with a blazing passion. Honestly, if Auburn is looking at Ole Miss coaches, they should head to Liberty. There’s a guy there who, assuming he can avoid the pitfalls of Twitter, makes a ton of sense. 

Secondly, Kiffin is the brand at Ole Miss. Let me clarify that statement. Kiffin is THE brand at Ole Miss. He arrived in Oxford, changed the uniforms, shut out the good ole boys and just started winning his way. He’s adored in Oxford. His daughter, now a senior at Oxford High School, moved to Mississippi in the summer. She wanted a dog. Kiffin bought a yellow Labrador retriever. They named the dog Juice. With apologies to Jaxson Dart, Juice is now the second biggest celebrity in Oxford. He’s essentially Ole Miss’ new mascot. Just a week ago, he was hanging with Laura Rutledge and assaulting Tim Tebow’s microphone. Auburn isn’t the kind of place to make Kiffin the brand. Juice can displace Ole Miss’ ill-designed tin can of a mascot, Tony the Landshark, but he’s not going to push Aubie out of the way. 

Finally, in the new era of college football, Ole Miss just might be a better job. Historically, there’s no question Auburn is head, shoulders, knees and toes a better job than Ole Miss. It’s not debatable. But today? I wonder. 

Ole Miss is paying Kiffin $7.5 million a year and it will almost certainly pay him more — likely much more — in 2023. The school is refurbishing the Manning Center. It has relaunched The Grove Collective, the NIL effort necessary to remain competitive. 

I have no doubt Kiffin is occasionally frustrated with some things at Ole Miss — the slowness with which things happen drives him crazy, I’m told — but I think he knows he has a good gig. Are there jobs he’d leave for? Sure. However, if you draw a Venn diagram of jobs that would pay Kiffin $9-plus million per year, make him the brand and have the resources to load up on five-star prospects and openings at those schools and it’s a really small overlap. Tiny. 

If I were an Ole Miss fan, I’d be worried about the Cowboys, Panthers or Jets than I would Auburn, but that’s just me. 

Regardless, it’s coming this week. If you choose to let it drive you crazy and ruin the build-up to another Saturday in The Grove, that, frankly, is on you. If you let it consume you, your stress is your fault. 

Maybe I’m wrong. Maybe this is Tuberville redux. I just highly doubt it. It’s illogical and I strongly suspect Kiffin feels the same way. 

Yes, he was interested in the job two years ago. Things have changed. In today’s college football, two years might as well be two centuries. Kiffin now has a great thing at Ole Miss. I suspect it’ll take more than Auburn to seduce him away from it.

 

 

[cbo 8,024]

I didn't realize he's won 17 of his last 20. Very impressive. 

Deion is way above everyone else for me. Lane is second on my completely worthless, ever changing list. 

Also ...

"He’s a click magnet as well."

Did anyone else initially read this as "chick magnet?"

[aubiefifty 17,195]

i know it is said auburn has a lot of money. how much a year do you think those involved would pony up a year for a good coach? sometimes you get lucky and sometimes you get what you pay for. so why not go big? i know it is not my money but with all these buyouts are throwing a hell of a lot of money out there anyway. so why not go big up front and get someone to unite Auburn? it has been a long run of wearying years. we thought harsin was the answer and then things got super crazy. so we make peace and get behind him again only to be let down somehow. the more i watch bo the madder i get. he should never have left and they should have schemed him for better to avoid him taking a beating which he was some anyway. he looks so much better at oregon and i have not yet bothered to watch his footwork. he was throwing the nicest passes saturday that he did not do much of here. coaching i guess. i guess ol kenny is the man but someone has bo rolling. my long winded point is we screwed up with him as well. i have no idea why harsin did not get it done but this is a shitshow. we need to better than we have done. they say money is not a problem? well lets get the right guy and do it right. hell i am 67 and i have no idea how much longer i am going to be around and i would love to see some fun times again down on the plains.

[AUwent 3,778]

5 minutes ago, aubiefifty said:

i know it is said auburn has a lot of money. how much a year do you think those involved would pony up a year for a good coach? sometimes you get lucky and sometimes you get what you pay for. so why not go big? i know it is not my money but with all these buyouts are throwing a hell of a lot of money out there anyway. so why not go big up front and get someone to unite Auburn? it has been a long run of wearying years. we thought harsin was the answer and then things got super crazy. so we make peace and get behind him again only to be let down somehow. the more i watch bo the madder i get. he should never have left and they should have schemed him for better to avoid him taking a beating which he was some anyway. he looks so much better at oregon and i have not yet bothered to watch his footwork. he was throwing the nicest passes saturday that he did not do much of here. coaching i guess. i guess ol kenny is the man but someone has bo rolling. my long winded point is we screwed up with him as well. i have no idea why harsin did not get it done but this is a shitshow. we need to better than we have done. they say money is not a problem? well lets get the right guy and do it right. hell i am 67 and i have no idea how much longer i am going to be around and i would love to see some fun times again down on the plains.

Yeah I can't shake the concern that they're just going to promote within, given that the whole point of Steele was to recover from Malzahn's buyout. Someone please debunk this lol!

Edited October 10, 2022 by AUwent

[AuCivilEng1 11,046]

Hilarious that we still have people s****** on the boosters after watching Harsin wreck the program the beginning of this season. They tried to get rid of him last year. If anything, Auburn fans and the media should be blaming Allen Green and the Gouge for this season. Harsin showed everyone who he was at the end of last season and all off season.

[tsande07 271]

Unconnected to the content of the article, the text does not show up well in dark mode.

[eaglenest 332]

Some people will never understand, sad just sad, Neal laid out Auburn problems from top to bottom and yet it is still Green and Harsin fault unbelievable.

[cbo 8,024]

4 minutes ago, eaglenest said:

Some people will never understand, sad just sad, Neal laid out Auburn problems from top to bottom and yet it is still Green and Harsin fault unbelievable.

Did Neal lay out Auburn's problems, though? Or did he just say that the boosters wanted Steele and didn't get him. And that Boise, a place the author has never even visited, must be very different than Auburn. Which I guess made Harsin's job impossible somehow. 

Don't get me wrong. There are obviously problems with the good old boys at Auburn. I'm sure they want as much control as possible, just like most rich, powerful people do everywhere. And I'm sure they are often wrong. 

But so many people in the media and on this board seem to understand all the innerworkings and intricacies of the AU athletic department. And exactly how Harsin was undermined and never given a chance to succeed. 

So please, someone, anyone, tell me exactly what the "PTB" did to make Harsin fail. Give me a name, preferably. And specific actions that made it so hard for Harsin to succeed. I am seriously asking. 

[sevenlee36 1,654]

Tell Mcready we’ll take what we want and we don’t want his ugly girlfriend kiffin, if we did we’d take her, nor does anyone want to read that long arse article. He could have kept it short and just said that he was scared.

[eaglenest 332]

22 minutes ago, cbo said:

Did Neal lay out Auburn's problems, though? Or did he just say that the boosters wanted Steele and didn't get him. And that Boise, a place the author has never even visited, must be very different than Auburn. Which I guess made Harsin's job impossible somehow. 

Don't get me wrong. There are obviously problems with the good old boys at Auburn. I'm sure they want as much control as possible, just like most rich, powerful people do everywhere. And I'm sure they are often wrong. 

But so many people in the media and on this board seem to understand all the innerworkings and intricacies of the AU athletic department. And exactly how Harsin was undermined and never given a chance to succeed. 

So please, someone, anyone, tell me exactly what the "PTB" did to make Harsin fail. Give me a name, preferably. And specific actions that made it so hard for Harsin to succeed. I am seriously asking. 

You're kidding right? your lack of vision or I could say your lying eyes have prevented you from seeing who runs Auburn football. A good friend of mine once told me about how communism work, here goes, the people of Cuba or dying of thirst, and the Cuba government would say, what do you mean there is water everywhere. 

[cbo 8,024]

4 minutes ago, eaglenest said:

You're kidding right? your lack of vision or I could say your lying eyes have prevented you from seeing who runs Auburn football. A good friend of mine once told me about how communism work, here goes, the people of Cuba or dying of thirst, and the Cuba government would say, what do you mean there is water everywhere. 

My bad for trying to communicate with you. 

Can anyone else answer my above question?

[ShocksMyBrain 9,391]

39 minutes ago, sevenlee36 said:

Tell Mcready we’ll take what we want and we don’t want his ugly girlfriend kiffin, if we did we’d take her, nor does anyone want to read that long arse article. He could have kept it short and just said that he was scared.

Your shtick is old. 

[TexasTiger 13,215]

8 hours ago, AuCivilEng1 said:

Hilarious that we still have people s******* on the boosters after watching Harsin wreck the program the beginning of this season. They tried to get rid of him last year. If anything, Auburn fans and the media should be blaming Allen Green and the Gouge for this season. Harsin showed everyone who he was at the end of last season and all off season.

Same boosters wanted Steele. 

[Dual-Threat Rigby 8,822]

1 hour ago, sevenlee36 said:

Tell Mcready we’ll take what we want and we don’t want his ugly girlfriend kiffin, if we did we’d take her, nor does anyone want to read that long arse article. He could have kept it short and just said that he was scared.

I wish Auburn has actually showed the capacity to just take away any head coach of merit over the last….

[Randman5000 4,235]

24 minutes ago, TexasTiger said:

Same boosters wanted Steele. 

Exactly with Bobo.. They got half of that

 

[AU-24 3,121]

8 hours ago, AuCivilEng1 said:

Hilarious that we still have people s******* on the boosters after watching Harsin wreck the program the beginning of this season. They tried to get rid of him last year. If anything, Auburn fans and the media should be blaming Allen Green and the Gouge for this season. Harsin showed everyone who he was at the end of last season and all off season.

Thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you!!

[aucom96 1,641]

The media has its cookie cutter narrative about Auburn. We're apparently the only school in the nation that has boosters that want a say in the programs they finance. How did we get so unlucky?

From what I gather, where the entire Malzahn situation went wrong could partly be explained by a scuffle between two particular booster factions and a weak, not very bright President with a new AD doing a lot of learning on the job. As for the rest of his article, yeah, I don't see Kiffen coming to Auburn. Ole Miss is a good enough launching point to a large number of jobs that are and will be coming open soon. I think Kiffen is a very innovative offensive mind, but I'm not sure he's what we need anyway. Auburn is a pretty big rebuild job right now. And yeah, I don't see Deion either. I fear, as McCready implies, we'll wind up with something like Hugh Freeze which just strikes me as a placeholder for three or four years. But that's not the fault of Auburn, that's the fault of a sport that is increasingly demanding more and more money from outside sources and we won't be the only ones who have those sources wanting more input in their investments. 

[W.E.D 11,070]

Does no one know what a coup is?? Is it the most in fade, miss used word when related to Auburn??

Lmao at calling Gus's firing a coup.

We apparently have the most powerful boosters in the world, run Auburn with zero oversight, and somehow they never ever get what they want.

Such lazy articles and posting 

[AuCivilEng1 11,046]

7 hours ago, eaglenest said:

You're kidding right? your lack of vision or I could say your lying eyes have prevented you from seeing who runs Auburn football. A good friend of mine once told me about how communism work, here goes, the people of Cuba or dying of thirst, and the Cuba government would say, what do you mean there is water everywhere. 

Is Steele the coach? No

Was Harsin fired last year? No

How much “control” do a bunch of guys who “want” things actually have? 

Nobody prevented Harsin from going to high schools around the state and meeting coaches and players. Nobody prevented Harsin from bringing in offensive linemen in the portal. Nobody controlled the QB situation where we let our 3 year starter bolt out the door only to replace him with a guy who may never even take a game snap for Auburn and a freshman with no business playing the QB position in this offense. No booster made Harsin go on live TV and trash Auburn University, who was conducting a rightful investigation on him. 
 

The boosters have wanted things and poured millions of dollars into the football program. And once again, we as fans are calling on them to bail us out again, even though they didn’t even want Harsin. So tell me, how tf are they the problem in this situation?

Edited October 10, 2022 by AuCivilEng1

[AU-24 3,121]

Non-scientific number but it seems like he’s about 50% correct in the article. It also seems like he’s scared to death they are going to lose Kiffin. Can’t blame him there.

[AU-24 3,121]

1 minute ago, AuCivilEng1 said:

Is Steele the coach? No

Was Harsin fired last year? No

How much “control” do a bunch of guys who “want” things actually have? 

Nobody prevented Harsin from going to high schools around the state and meeting coaches and players. Nobody prevented Harsin from bringing in offensive linemen in the portal. Nobody controlled the QB situation where we let our 3 year starter bolt out the door only to replace him with a guy who may never even take a game snap for Auburn and a freshman with no business playing the QB position in this offense. No booster made Harsin go on live TV and trash Auburn University, who was conducting a rightful investigation on him. 
 

The boosters have wanted things and poorer millions of dollars into the football program. And once again, we as fans are calling on them to bail us out again, even though they didn’t even want Harsin. So tell me, how tf are they the problem in this situation?

Exactly! Greene was a bad hire, Harsin was worse.

These boosters have all the money and power to get Gus fired, but then they lost all power and couldn’t get Kevin Steele hired?
 

Excellent point on now they’re having to pony up millions of dollars to get rid of the coach, no one wanted but Allen Greene.
 

You are doing well, keep it up!
 

[AuCivilEng1 11,046]

22 minutes ago, AU-24 said:

Exactly! Greene was a bad hire, Harsin was worse.

These boosters have all the money and power to get Gus fired, but then they lost all power and couldn’t get Kevin Steele hired?
 

Excellent point on now they’re having to pony up millions of dollars to get rid of the coach, no one wanted but Allen Greene.
 

You are doing well, keep it up!
 

I been spitting the truth since 2012, brother! Welcome to the show! 😂

[Gowebb11 9,462]

Some are missing a key point in McCready’s article. The reputation of AU  athletics for everyone who is not an AU fan, is that we’re a dysfunctional mess at the booster/admin level. If that was our reputation with media types only, who cares? But that reputation carries over to coaching candidates and high school coaches. It has an effect on our recruiting: both for recruits and coaching candidates. We have to use the firing of Harsin and hiring of a new President and AD to change that narrative and enhance the reputation of our brand. 

[AU-24 3,121]

6 minutes ago, Gowebb11 said:

Some are missing a key point in McCready’s article. The reputation of AU  athletics for everyone who is not an AU fan, is that we’re a dysfunctional mess at the booster/admin level. If that was our reputation with media types only, who cares? But that reputation carries over to coaching candidates and high school coaches. It has an effect on our recruiting: both for recruits and coaching candidates. We have to use the firing of Harsin and hiring of a new President and AD to change that narrative and enhance the reputation of our brand. 

Most with any sense don’t believe the media.
 

We can go on, and on, and on. I guess that’s what social media boards are for. It comes down to a trifecta of bad hires. School president, Athletic  Director, Head Football Coach.

[AU57 67]

Can't read the article because of  the dark mode. Barely see the text