During the chaotic sequence of events that made up Auburn’s coaching search, the Tigers initially set their sights on John Sumrall, while over in Fayetteville, the Arkansas Razorbacks were quietly tracking Alex Golesh. In the end, though, Auburn athletic director John Cohen zeroed in on Golesh as his top choice, and the former South Florida head coach wound up on the Plains rather than joining the Razorbacks.
From the very first moment he stepped onto campus, Golesh fully understood the magnitude of the undertaking in front of him. Auburn’s program finds itself mired in its most difficult stretch since the late 1940s, and the team hasn’t managed a winning season ever since Gus Malzahn was let go back in 2020. Even with a long string of heartbreaking defeats, the Auburn faithful have continued turning out in massive numbers for games both at home and on the road, and that fan base is desperate for a return to winning ways.
Golesh has no regrets about picking Auburn over Arkansas, and CBS Sports points out that he has solid reasons for feeling that way.
“How many other programs can claim that 88,000 people are still packing the stadium week after week, in spite of all that?” Golesh remarked. “How many can say 40,000 show up for a spring game after everything that’s gone down? Are the fans worn out? Yeah, they’re exhausted. I’ve sat down with every major donor over the last six months, and believe me, they’re drained. They’re fed up. But they’re still ready to pitch in. They still want to be part of it—and that’s exactly why I accepted this job. Because it felt like a place where you truly can get it done.”
There are moments when Auburn seems a world away from the level of success everyone craves, particularly when you glance at the Tigers’ head-to-head results against Alabama and Georgia over the past decade. Yet people tend to overlook the fact that Auburn football played in the BCS National Championship game twice within a three-year span, and the blueprint for winning hasn’t simply disappeared.
“Honestly, I don’t think I would’ve said yes to this job if I didn’t believe we can get back to contending for national titles,” Golesh stated. “I took this position because it struck me as one of the rare ones that actually could.”
He might not pull it off in his very first season, but the expectation is that Golesh can steer Auburn football beyond the frustration of the last half-decade and restore the program to the level of annual championship contention it once occupied.
“You can’t let yourself get bogged down by what’s already happened,” Cohen commented. “But at the same time, I really like the forward energy that I think coach Golesh has already generated.”
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