The inevitable looms on Friday, when Auburn’s Alan Green resigns From his position — an unheard of move for an athletic director to be safe in his post, Green has never really been safe in the role.
Green’s tenure has been rocky and his ground has changed rapidly as a contract slated to expire in January 2023 is about to expire. A month before he was hired in January 2018, then football coach Gus Marzan received a seven-year extension from school principal Steven Leath at the end of the 2017 football season. his Worked in May 2017). Some presidents aren’t very hands-on with athletics, but Rice is. Marzan earned a spot in the SEC Championship Game and a College Football Playoff berth in the rematch with Georgia. Auburn lost, but Marzan bought back the stake and signed a new deal for a massive buyout.
Boosters who wanted him away couldn’t really get rid of him after such a stellar season, even if they wanted to, and the new contract helped avoid a vacancy at Arkansas (Marzan’s hometown where he was a high school coach) legend and assistant year with pig). None of the above is Green’s fault, it’s a vacuum of athletic department leadership that nature abhors, so Rice stepped in.
With coaches expected to be cut for the foreseeable future, Green is largely responsible for the rest of the athletic department. In 18 months, he didn’t make friends in the department, in large part because of a 10% budget cut, including a baseball team just entering the College World Series and a Fourth in the men’s basketball team in the Finals, tensions with head coach Bruce Pearl have intensified. By mid-2019, Leath was out and replaced by former president Jay Gouge, and Malzahn spent the 2019 and 20 seasons before being fired in December 2020.
Green oversees the Auburn sports department, which has undergone significant changes during his tenure.
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Influential supporters orchestrated a palace coup and cost Marzan his job through the huge takeover that followed. They tried to get their people involved in the work, but backed off after (partly) the social media campaign spooked them. In the Auburn tradition of leading one opening after another, Green stepped in and conducted a routine search that landed under an unconventional name on then-Boise State coach Brian Hassing. Harsin’s hiring isn’t the reason Greene no longer has a job, but it certainly doesn’t help. And there are rumors that Green is involved in multiple other executive searches in the sport as it becomes increasingly clear that he won’t be getting an extension. Green also saw some of his power in the athletic department waned after the university’s chief operating officer, Lt. Gen. Ronald Burgess, was brought in to help oversee athletics.
In February 2022, the boosters are back, trying to drum up anything that will ignite Harsin. He insists he owes him money, and after an internal investigation no one found anything concrete, Hassing remains the head coach. Many sources expected Harsin and Greene to leave together at the end of the season if the Tigers had a rough year on the field, but now that’s over, Greene is leaving, as the press release says, “to explore other career interests.” .
If you’ve followed along so far, you know that Auburn works almost exclusively through dysfunction. The current wave of commotion comes from the artist who brings us hits like the JetGate, Cam Newton recruiting and probation scandals that brought the program to the title in the early 1990s – and that’s only on the surface .
Auburn has another new president, Christopher Roberts, and the question arises again: What type of project does it want to be, and who really has control? Auburn is no stranger to scandal or dysfunction, but for the past 40 years, you have to give them one thing in common: victory.
If Auburn chooses to go inside, there are usually suspects: Tim Jackson, head of the Auburn Booster organization, or Rich McGreen, director of compliance. Former NFL CIO and Auburn alum Michelle McKenna was also a name that became widely known as the search progressed. Auburn could also choose to go the search company route and hire another outsider, but it’s unclear how much has really changed internally.
Here’s a best-case scenario, with Auburn seriously contending for the SEC West with good defense, which makes firing Hassin politically untenable, like Marzan in 2017. The football program played out amicably and tensions cooled. A new ad could come into the situation with a burgeoning men’s basketball program, and there will be some stability.
But if Auburn isn’t doing well on the field and those who don’t like Hassing want to get their way, there could be a whole new AD either trying to hire a new one against a huge headwind they may not fully understand. coach or An ad works with a new head coach who has no say in hiring, plus all the problems that could arise if that head coach is not the right person.
This is Auburn. Which do you think is more likely?
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