Allen Greene reportedly stood his ground. The Auburn athletic director did what most of us only dream of doing: telling the power boosters to back off, that they had done enough damage already to the school’s reputation.
Of course we will never know what went on behind closed doors but from everything being said, Greene saved the day and Bryan Harsin is now the head football coach, ending an eight-day search that bordered on the absurd and chaotic. People were just waiting for Auburn to screw up again as coach after coach seemingly turned down the job.
Greene, who for the most part had been a silent leader in this search, not even holding a single press conference, showed for once that he was in control and, for the lack of better wording, showed he had some major cojones. He wasn’t going to let a guy that dresses up as a yellow cowboy or a nosy businessman or even a glorified ticket salesman get in the way of doing what was right for the whole of Auburn.
The hiring came out of nowhere with the timing of it being reported that he was the favorite for the job and it being announced coming within a few hours. While we still have to learn a lot of Harsin, the hire has been praised and it is expected that he will have full control over who is on his staff, something that wouldn’t have been the case had Greene not stepped up and taken control.
For years and years, the athletic director position at Auburn has just been treated as someone on strings controlled by the men with the money. David Housel, a wonderful Auburn man, couldn’t get away from it, famously going on the infamous 2003 plane trip to Louisville. Neither could Jay Jacobs. Too many connections, too many relationships. They were insiders and they following orders.
This is why Greene was considered such a splash of a hire. He was an outsider with no preconceived notions of how Auburn “should” be run. He had his own ideas and plans and finally, someone might put the money players where they belong.
It didn’t look like that would happen as the coaching search became an embarrassment, possible candidates leaked and then disappeared, infighting within a room full of men that, as Cole Cubelic put it, would rather be on the sidelines and see the Tigers go 7-5 then be in a suite for an undefeated team and, all along, making Gus Malzahn look like a saint for putting up with all of this behind-the-scenes foolishness for eight season.
We don’t know how the Harsin hire will work out. While he’s a proven winner and continued the success of Boise State after taking over for Chris Petersen, his lack of any experience in the SEC and being a head coach at a Power 5 school leaves a lot of question marks. As an assistant coach in the Mountain West told me on Tuesday night, it is like trying to put a square peg in a round hole.
Yet it could very easily work out and, after a coaching search that made Auburn look like it was run by a bunch of greedy lunatics, the hire is garnering some good press when the media was just waiting for a disaster.
We can thank Greene for that. He stepped up to the bullies that run Auburn like a personal playground and proved his worth.
