When Derek Mason was let go by Vanderbilt after serving as head coach for the Commodores for seven seasons, he wasn’t sure where he would end up next. At first, he thought heading back to the NFL where he was an assistant for the Minnesota Vikings for three seasons was a possibility.
Then, he got a call from new Auburn head coach Bryan Harsin. The choice was easy for Mason after that.
“I feel good about where we are right now. Believe me, I would’ve made this decision 10 out of 10 times. Auburn is the place for me,” Mason said on Monday.
It almost came as a surprise to Mason that he would re-enter the college world so soon.
“I didn’t think I was going to take a college job,” Mason said. “I felt like, for me, I needed a break from the college game for just a little bit after seven years at Vanderbilt. I had been contacted by several college teams about their opportunities.
“So, when we (Mason and Harsin) had an opportunity to talk, the conversation was very much to the point about his vision for Auburn. And that vision was set in stone, it was very strategic, it had all the making of what I thought a good leader should talk about coming into a situation like this. Which I thought was unique.
“For him to get me to come up here on my way home — because believe me, I was on my way back home — we got to come through here, sat down for a couple of hours. Had a chance to talk ball, but it was more about connecting on, like, the ideology of how he wanted to run the program and what he wanted and what he needed from me.”
Mason is now in charge of a defense that is lacking up front in the trenches but has all the talent necessary at the other two levels to become a solid unit. As the defensive coordinator at Stanford from 2011-13, Mason built some solid defenses concluding with a side that finished No. 16 in the FBS in 2013 by allowing just 343.5 yards per game.
Those defenses were known for solid fundamentals and hard hitting, two things that Auburn has had for some time but, with the former, have lacked at times over the past several years.
Star linebacker Owen Pappoe, one of the team’s leading tacklers last season, is already excited about what he has experienced under Mason.
We love the system that he’s bringing in for us, and we love him as a person,” linebacker Owen Pappoe said. “He’s accepted us all as his sons. It feels like we’re a real big family out there.”
