Will Harsin's Boise State plan work out?

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Auburn football: Will new Tigers coach Bryan Harsin's Boise State plan work out?

ByGarrett Stepien 20 hours ago

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Can Bryan Harsin's Boise State Blueprint Work In SEC? (Late Kick Cut)

 

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Auburn rolled the dice with a new head football coach last December, firing Gus Malzahn after eight seasons and hiring seven-year Boise State leader Bryan Harsin. Following a 69-19 (45-8 Mountain West) run with the Broncos from 2014-20, can Harsin harness similar success at a step up in the SEC?

After 247Sports national college football reporter Brandon Marcello spoke with Harsin earlier in July about the plan entering a debut campaign with the Tigers, The Late Kick with Josh Pate took a closer look.

"It's not whether Bryan Harsin gets it, it's not whether his model works — of course it works," Pate said on Episode 153. "Multiple guys have implemented it — himself included at Boise. It's worked. So you don't have to question whether the approach works. What you have to question is whether he gets enough buy-in — from his roster, from his coaching staff, from the entire organization at Auburn — 'cause that's the key. And there's a certain kind of guy who can accomplish that, and they're few and far between.

"And that's what (athletic director) Allen Greene was looking for when he went out to find his head coach. He wanted a guy with a proven process, but then he wanted a guy who was going to come in — in this case, totally unfamiliar territory and not let that shake him — and he's going to get in, roll up his sleeves, go to work, get you a staff that knows the backroads and recruiting territories in the SEC, at least to start off with. But then, you talk about your player. Auburn's had a little recruiting run of their own right now, but they haven't been flashy about it. It hasn't been a bunch of five-star guys committing to Auburn. But what that staff will tell you is that, 'It's our guys.'

"Now, this is not just me just baselessly spouting off propaganda for Auburn. What I'm telling you is I'm giving you a fair shake of how things are viewed at Auburn, and that may be a little bit different than how they're viewed outside of Auburn. What Auburn folks — that staff, most importantly — is going to tell you right now, if you would talk to 'em is, like, 'It doesn't really matter,' like, 'We've got our guys in here. We've got what we could call Auburn guys in here. And so, if we've got them, then we don't really care how many stars are next to their name — all due respect. We don't really care necessarily who we had to beat for this guy, who we had to beat for that guy. What we know is we've got a development system in place. It's already tried and truth proven. And so, we don't have to worry about that. We've got every step of this process laid out. What we have to do is we have to get buy-in.'

 

Harsin leads Auburn into the 2021 season after Malzahn accumulated a 6-4 record against SEC-only play in 2020. The Tigers, then led by interim head coach Kevin Steele, suffered a 35-19 Citrus Bowl loss to Northwestern.

"But what you're going to find, what Bryan Harsin will find — and he already knows it, long before I say it — is in this conference, and in the division they play in, there is a minimum baseline of talent that they're going to have to have," Pate said. "Even if every part of that process is adhered to, because of how good the teams you play are — how talented they are and how good at developing a lot of those teams are, too — you're going to have to have a certain baseline of talent. So you can't Michigan State or Iowa State your way through the SEC and achieve at an SEC-championship-caliber level — let me put it that way.