‘Twitiots’ to arrests: Auburn coach Harsin’s tenure at Boise State wasn’t without controversy
The Bryan Harsin saga finally came to an end Friday.
Auburn went 6-7 last season and finished Harsin’s first year at the helm on a five-game losing streak, and Auburn officials opened an investigation into the program after 20 players and five assistant coaches left since the beginning of last season.
The situation looked dire for the former quarterback and coach at Boise State, but Auburn announced Friday afternoon that Harsin will remain the Tigers head coach and assured the public that the university has his back.
“To be clear, this process, which was never individual- or outcome-specific, did not yield information that should change the status of our coaching staff or football program,” Auburn President Jay Gogue said in a statement. “Our university, the administration and the entire Board of Trustees stand behind coach Harsin and are ready to help him succeed as the leader of our football program.”
Harsin, who was out of the country on a family vacation until Wednesday, released a statement Friday.
“This has been one of the hardest weeks of my career and it had nothing to do with my coaching ability,” Harsin said in a statement. “The personal attacks on me and my family went too far and were without justification.”
“I know who I am as a father, husband and football coach, and fully cooperated throughout this process,” he continued. “I believe that every challenge in life is an opportunity to grow and learn. This is no different.”
Harsin took over at Auburn after seven years as the head coach at his alma mater, which included three Mountain West championships and a win over Arizona in the 2014 Fiesta Bowl — Boise State’s only appearance in a New Year’s Six game in the past decade.
It wasn’t always smooth sailing for Harsin at Boise State, though. Here’s a look at some of the controversial moments from his tenure.
‘Twitiots’ got his attention
Responding to critics on social media after a lackluster offensive performance in a 20-17 overtime win against Wyoming in 2019, Harsin went on a rant during his weekly press conference and referred to the Broncos’ online critics as “Twitiots.”
“You used to actually have to be somebody to have an opinion, which means you had to work your way into a position where your opinion actually mattered,” Harsin said. “If you remember back to where it was like, ‘Hey, don’t say anything until you’ve shown you have the knowledge, wisdom and little bit of expertise to go out there and actually provide a valuable opinion.’ You don’t have to do that anymore. Any idiot can say what they want and they usually do, and it’s usually negative.”
“I’m not going to listen to opinions unless they matter,” he continued. “A booster texts me and tells me something like that or people I care about and I interact with and are a part of this team and have invested in it and are around here and see these guys, and man I’m listening. But if you don’t even come to the game, you don’t sit in the stands, you’re not a season ticket holder, you probably don’t even watch the whole game because it’s too late, and you have an opinion. Why does that matter? And the worst part is people actually listen to it.”
Boise State was 8-1 at the time of his rant, and the Broncos went on to finish the season 12-2 and win their second Mountain Went title in three years.
Complaints about support from Boise State, Mountain West
After Boise State missed out on a New Year’s Six bowl game in 2019, Harsin went on another rant during a press conference before the Las Vegas Bowl — a game Boise State lost to Washington 38-7. Harsin demanded more support from the university and the Mountain West, and he suggested he wouldn’t be sticking around if the program didn’t get it.
“Settling, or same old, same old, that’s not the mentality, and that’s not what Boise State was ever built on,” he said. “And so if we decide that we want to settle, settling is not a place that I want to be. If we want to get better, then I’m all about that. If we want to grow and develop and put ourselves in a position where we can take that next step, like we need to with the type of opponents that we’re about to play moving forward, then those are the types of places you want to be a part of.”
Harsin’s issues with the university were not totally unfounded. A lack of progress on renovations to the east side of Albertsons Stadium — a project that has yet to be completed — played a major role in his gripe. Harsin’s predecessors, former Boise State coaches Chris Petersen and Dan Hawkins, had similar complaints about a lack of support for facilities upgrades.
Hawkins pushed hard for an indoor practice facility, and the Broncos didn’t move into the Caven-Williams Indoor Facility until after he left for Colorado. Petersen wanted a standalone football facility, and the Broncos didn’t move into the Bleymaier Football Center until the summer before he left for Washington.
Harsin’s issue with the conference revolved around Mountain West Commissioner Craig Thompson’s perceived reluctance to promote the league, especially in the face of American Athletic Conference Commissioner Mike Aresco’s constant stumping for his league. Memphis got the Group of Five’s New Year’s Six bid in 2019 and lost to Penn State in the Cotton Bowl.
“When things like this season are happening, you’d sure like to see our university and our conference do the most they can to help put us in a position at the end of the year if everything else has been taken care of,” Harsin said.
Harsin didn’t directly suggest Boise State should leave the Mountain West during his talk before the Las Vegas Bowl, but emails from Harsin to university officials surfaced about a year later, in which he did.
“I am 1,000% convinced we need to make this move for football, and if that means other sports, too, in the long run it will be what’s best for the university,” Harsin wrote in an email to Boise State President Dr. Marlene Tromp and former athletic director Curt Apsey. “I understand there are risks and budgets and travel costs. That’s all real to me. I also know that’s exactly why Boise State is the program it is today, because we took risks necessary to grow our program.”
Revolving door of assistant coaches
There was constant turnover on Harsin’s staff at Boise State. He went through four offensive coordinators in seven seasons — five if you count himself — and hired more than 20 assistant coaches between replacing Petersen in 2014 and leaving for Auburn following the 2020 season.
Harsin used a different primary play caller for each of his first four seasons at the helm. Offensive coordinator Mike Sanford left after the 2014 season for the same position at Notre Dame. Eliah Drinkwitz got the coordinator job in 2015 and left after one season to assume the same role at North Carolina State.
Harsin directed the offense in 2016 before Zak Hill took over in 2017, and Hill was the only offensive coordinator to hold the job for multiple seasons under Harsin. In 2019, Hill shared co-coordinator duties with Eric Kiesau, who took over in 2020 after Hill left for Arizona State. Kiesau followed Harsin to Auburn, where he replaced wide receivers coach Cornelius Williams, who was fired four games into last season.
Former defensive coordinator Marcel Yates left Boise State after just two seasons (2014-15) to take the same job at Arizona, which opened the door for the Broncos’ current head coach, Andy Avalos, to take over the defense.
All of Harsin’s former coordinators at Boise State left for higher-paying jobs in Power Five conferences — including Avalos, who left for Oregon in 2018 — but Drinkwitz joined a staff at N.C. State that was considered on the brink of getting fired, Sanford left after calling Boise State his dream job and Yates made a quick exit after calling Boise his second home.
In comparison, Petersen lost three coordinators in his eight years as the Broncos’ head coach, and Hawkins lost one in five years.
Harsin has already lost five assistant coaches and three coordinators at Auburn.
He fired offensive coordinator Mike Bobo after last season ended, and Bobo’s successor, former Seattle Seahawks assistant coach Austin Davis, resigned for personal reasons after less than two months on the job. Defensive coordinator Derek Mason also took a $400,000 pay cut to assume the same role at Oklahoma State.
On, off the field
Harsin won plenty of games at Boise State. He went 69-19 in seven seasons. The results on the field weren’t always pretty, though.
In 2015, the Broncos dropped back-to-back home games against New Mexico and Air Force. Their loss to the Lobos — as 31-point favorites — was just Boise State’s fourth home loss since 2001, and it snapped an 18-game home winning streak.
The Broncos were undefeated and ranked No. 13 in the AP Top 25 seven games into the 2016 season, but they dropped three of their final six games, including another setback against Air Force and a 31-12 loss to Baylor in the Poinsettia Bowl.
Harsin wasn’t immune to off-the-field issues, either. Former quarterback Ryan Finley was arrested on underage alcohol possession and resisting or obstructing officers charges during the 2015 offseason — he started the season opener anyway — and a locker room fight left former wide receiver Rick Smith injured and led to a police investigation.
Quarterback Rathen Ricedorff departed the program after a positive test for a performance-enhancing drug, and linebacker Tyson Maeva was sent home from a bowl game for allegedly smoking marijuana in the team hotel, the Idaho Statesman previously reported. Former tight end David Lucero (charged with attempted strangulation; pleaded guilty to misdemeanor battery) and running back Robert Mahone (charged with domestic battery or assault in the presence of a child; pleaded guilty to disturbing the peace) were suspended from the program after two notable arrests.
This story was originally published February 11, 2022 at 10:00 AM.
