Auburn head coach Bryan Harsin and Missouri head coach Eli Drinkwitz are on a collision course, pushing their Southeastern Conference squads into an important sport of their respective teaching careers. The former mentor and pupil have but to partake in a battle of wits as head coaches. Missouri and Auburn’s early Saturday conflict will change that, with each units of Tigers opening league play. The stakes are clearly profitable in any respect prices and getting off to begin within the deepest convention in America. The penalties of dropping will put the defeated coach in deep shit, just a little nearer to being thrown overboard by the athletic departments that joyfully employed them lower than three years in the past.
Drinkwitz and Harsin are each of their second stops as head coaches, departing one of many Group of Five’s finest applications for an opportunity to use their craft within the prestigious SEC. The 39-year-old Drinkwitz was employed in December 2019, leaving then-Sun Belt champions Appalachian State for Mizzou. Following a 5-5 pandemic season and a 6-7 document final 12 months, Missouri is 2-1, after a convincing victory over Louisiana Tech to open the season, adopted by a dismantling by the hands of Kansas State, then a 17-point win over FCS-level Abilene Christian.
With Georgia and taking part in in The Swamp towards Florida instantly following the highway journey to Auburn, Mizzou must keep away from the free fall of heading into its bye week 2-4 with video games towards Tennessee, Arkansas, and Kentucky nonetheless to go. It’s the naked minimal anticipating to make a bowl sport. Auburn is proving to be the most-winnable sport of these six. While Drinkwitz’s job safety hasn’t turn into a each day matter in Columbia, probably due to how effectively the Tigers have recruited beneath his management, are these blue-chip prospects sufficient to maintain the sharks from circling if his employees can’t persistently flip them into reputable SEC-caliber athletes?
While the temperature of Drinkwitz’s seat is just a little ambiguous and will fully cool with a profitable subsequent month, when has Harsin’s seat not been scorching on The Plains over the past a number of months? This offseason was filled with controversy at AU, with main questions on Harsin’s locker room tradition. And all that existed 12 months after former head coach Gus Malzahn bought one of the best job in America, fired FBS soccer coach, being paid $21.45 million by Auburn to depart, much like the $15 million Scott Frost not too long ago obtained from Nebraska to not be on the helm. Will Muschamp earned almost $13 million in 2020 from South Carolina to go coach elsewhere.
After defeating FCS-level Mercer and skating by San Jose State, Harsin’s Tigers bought dismantled by Penn State. Auburn has an much more troublesome schedule than Mizzou to finish 2022. Due to the upper expectations for a program that final appeared in a nationwide title sport in 2013, the need to return to the mountaintop as quickly as attainable if you share a state with Nick Saban turns into paramount yearly. Harsin’s have to win on Saturday does high Drinkwitz even when each desperately need it. Look again to the final time the groups performed in 2017. Kerryon Johnson ran for 5 touchdowns and Auburn trounced Mizzou. Nearly 5 years to the day, they’ll sq. off once more in an enormous signal of how far the mighty have fallen. It’s been even longer for Missouri’s drop from mighty standing, as that Auburn-Mizzou SEC Championship sport was 9 years in the past. The argument that Missouri made it again to Atlanta a 12 months later solely proves my level concerning the want for SEC groups to remain related or cascade down the convention’s hierarchy.
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Both Drinkwitz and Harsin inked six-year offers to hitch the SEC, however have had historical past effectively past their present posts. Harsin’s first head teaching alternative got here at Arkansas State, and Drinkwitz was on his employees. As Boise State got here calling to get Harsin out of Jonesboro, he introduced Drinkwitz with him to the Mountain West. In 2016, Drinkwitz solid his personal path and have become the offensive coordinator at NC State. Before heading to Arkansas State, Drinkwitz bought his begin in faculty soccer beneath Gene Chizik at Auburn. The now-Mizzou coach hasn’t been again to the place he bought his collegiate begin since 2013, when the Red Wolves traveled to play the Tigers.
On Tuesday, Drinkwitz mentioned he’s indebted to Harsin for believing in him when not many did. He then contemplated whether or not he’d nonetheless be in faculty soccer, a lot much less with one of many coveted 64 Power Five Conference head teaching jobs, if not for Auburn’s present coach. In this ruthless gridiron enterprise, mixed with the win-now calls for from AU boosters, Drinkwitz taking down his former mentor ought to put Harsin one foot out the door. They’ll give the previous Boise State coach an enormous quantity to not be round their program anymore and again up one other truckload of dough to herald one other coach to attempt to rectify the issues. That’s the circle of life within the SEC. You’ll get wealthy even when you do a shitty job. Winning on Saturday simply prolongs the slippery poop slope for one in every of them. Only then they’ll have an opportunity to dig themselves out. I’ll go together with Drinkwitz having a cheerful homecoming at Auburn. Keeping Harsin on the helm is simply prolonging the inevitable.
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