Auburn, Harsin get a shot to show off mettle on road
It’s almost as if Bryan Harsin wants Auburn’s team bus to get a flat tire on the way to Penn State’s Beaver Stadium on Saturday, just so he can say: I told you so!
Auburn’s football coach took multiple opportunities during his Monday news conference to stress that this nonconference showdown (7:30 p.m. ET, ABC) between the No. 20 Tigers (2-0) and No. 12 Nittany Lions (2-0) will test how his team handles adversity.
“Something happens to the bus. … The plane’s late. The rooms aren’t ready. You didn’t have the bed that you wanted,” Harsin said, rattling off the ways a road trip can go sideways. “Whatever it is, there’s always something.
“Being resilient and being able to respond, I think, are big keys. Those are things, to me, that I think good teams have.”
Like any first-year coach at this point in the season, Harsin is still establishing his culture, so it wasn’t unusual to hear Harsin lean into buzzwords like adversiThe ty, attitude, leadership and resiliency.
But for those of us who aren’t college football coaches, the real intrigue Saturday won’t center on how the Tigers adapt if their pregame smoothies aren’t the right temperature – yes, Harsin mentioned this as possible game-day adversity – but whether Auburn is actually good.
The early results are promising. A 122-10 margin of victory after two weeks is impressive, no matter how lackluster the opponents.
The offensive line looks first-class. Freshman Jarquez Hunter’s two-game outburst indicates that an Auburn backfield that was supposed to feature the one-two punch of Tank Bigsby and Shaun Shivers instead might be a triceratops.
Bo Nix has never gone this deep into a season without throwing an interception.
And Harsin’s tapping of Derek Mason as his defensive coordinator is looking like the hire of the offseason.
But it’s also possible that these first two results revealed little, because Akron and Alabama State don’t resemble what Auburn will face the rest of the way.
The Tigers have six games remaining against opponents ranked in the USA TODAY Sports AFCA Coaches Poll. No other SEC team will face such a challenging remaining schedule.
Of the four SEC head coaching hires last offseason, Harsin was most intriguing. He had the most polished resume, but the Idaho native had never coached east of the Mississippi River. As compared to fellow first-year coaches Josh Heupel (Tennessee), Shane Beamer (South Carolina) and Clark Lea (Vanderbilt), Harsin inherited a well-stocked roster.
But he also faced the highest expectations among the SEC’s newbies after his predecessor was fired despite not posting a losing record in eight years on the job.
It’s a testament to Auburn’s hot start under Harsin that ESPN’s “College GameDay” will broadcast from State College, Pennsylvania, on Saturday morning. It’s also a testament to Penn State’s program.
The Nittany Lions returned nine starters on offense and seven on defense. They’re allowing 11.5 points per game after wins over Wisconsin and Ball State. Coach James Franklin is a proven winner, and quarterback Sean Clifford is a third-year starter.
Happy Valley will be rocking in a game designated as a White Out.
“Embrace it. Be a guy that embraces that,” Harsin said of the environment. “Enjoy the opportunity to play in somebody else’s house and to go in there and play good football.”
Win this game, and we can label Auburn as a legitimate threat in the SEC West Division.
Win this game, and the Tigers will show their coach that they can handle the adversity of life on the road.