Sports

Auburn’s Reported Top Target To Replace Bryan Harsin Already Has A Better Job

#College Football
by Last Updated
Bryan Harsin Auburn Lane Kiffin Ole Miss

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The Auburn Tigers announced on Monday that they’d fired head coach Bryan Harsin. The timing of Harsin’s firing means Auburn University will now owe him $15 million in buyout money and $7.5 million of that is due within 30 days.

This also extended Auburn’s streak of expensive college football head coach buyouts. In the past 687 days, the Tigers have paid roughly $37 million in buyout money to their former coaches.

Auburn’s Reported Top Target To Replace Bryan Harsin Has A Better Job

Now the conversation turns to ‘who Auburn will target as a replacement for Bryan Harsin’ and Brandon Marcello of 247 Sports (previously Birmingham News) belives the Tigers have already found their guy: Lane Kiffin.

Brandon Marcello elaborated on this, telling CBS Sports HQ/247sports:

“The No. 1 candidate will be Lane Kiffin at Ole Miss. He will be the No. 1 guy, and I can tell you this because John Cohen, coming from Mississippi State, is very familiar with what Lane Kiffin has obviously done at Ole Miss. But here’s the No. 1 thing. He has been a killer in the transfer portal. He calls himself the Transfer Portal King. Auburn needs immediate help in that football program. They can fix a lot of their issues with the transfer portal. It won’t be an overnight rebuild. But a man like Lane Kiffin would come in there, fix things, get it back on the right track almost immediately. They need a coach like that to do it.”

“John Cohen is very familiar with that. Also, Auburn will offer a much larger NIL base than Ole Miss. Lane Kiffin has complained about that publicly and privately at Ole Miss about their NIL situation. Auburn is in a position right now, based off my sourcing this past weekend reporting the story, they have at least $11 million piled up in NIL money right now ready to go to help that football program, and that is only going to increase over these next coming weeks and these coming months. Whoever they try go after as a coach, you’re gonna want someone who can work that transfer pool, is a killer recruiter, and they’re going to promise them the world when it comes to NIL.”

The problem for Auburn, of course, is Lane Kiffin already has a better job at Ole Miss. The firing of Gus Malzahn triggering the most expensive buyout in college football history has told every prospective coach considering Auburn everything they’d ever need to know about the job security that comes with that position: there is none.

Lane Kiffin earns a base salary of $7.25 million and that goes up in 2023, 2024, and 2025. Kiffin’s Ole Miss Rebels are currently a 1-loss team and ranked #11 in the country. Auburn, on the other hand, hasn’t had a season with double-digit wins since 2017. Sure Lane Kiffin would likely get a massive buyout in the future from Auburn if he went there but coaches want to coach, not get fired and paid to sit at home.

What people are saying about the Lane Kiffin rumors

It wouldn’t be:

It’s really not, despite how many Auburn fans disagree:

Some other candidates that will reportedly be considered:

Here’s where the rumors are primarily coming from:

There certainly is a chance Lane Kiffin becomes Bryan Harsin’s replacement, albeit a very small chance because Lane has a better job at the moment.