J.D. PicKell: Revealing the 'good things' going on at Auburn despite tumultuous offseason

In what seemed like a nonstop college football soap opera, the Auburn Tigers had one of the strangest and bizarre offseasons of any program in America. The school was very close to firing their head coach, Bryan Harsin, but ultimately opted against it. On3’s J.D. PicKell recently talked about the Tigers on “The Hard Count” and said despite their tumultuous offseason, there are plenty of positives going on in the Auburn program.

“If we can get on the same page, there’s some good things within this program, like we’ve already talked about. To have a buy-in, after all the craziness that happened in the offseason from the internal side of this program. That’s phenomenal. That’s huge. That’s something you would almost not expect when you try to get your coach fired. To have one of the best running backs in the country coming back [Tank Bigsby]. That’s also huge,” PicKell said.

Another benefit PicKell noted is that all the players on the current roster for the Tigers had to make a conscious decision to stay on the current roster.

“Every single player in this locker room had a decision to play for Bryan Harsin. Because with the transfer portal and all of the commotion in the offseason, the headlines, there’s a lot of guys that could have left. So, if you’re still on this roster at Auburn, Alabama. You decided you want to be a part of this. And that means something. In house, they’ve got a lot of good things. Can they get out of their own way in the external circumstances with the boosters, to allow themselves to take steps forward? That’s what I want to see. Ultimately, I’d love that for Bryan Harsin. He seems like my kinda guy. We’ll see what happens,” PicKell said.

J.D. PicKell addresses ‘elephant in the room’ surrounding Bryan Harsin, Auburn boosters

This offseason wasn’t an easy one for Harsin and Auburn. His job security came into question, assistant coaches left the program, and multiple players entered the transfer portal. Ultimately, he remained standing as the head man for the Tigers and J.D. PicKell said the situation had to do with the amount of power Auburn boosters have.

“We have to talk about it. The elephant in the room,” PicKell said. “Bryan Harsin was, in a lot of ways, tried to be pushed out by the boosters. … The boosters right now in Auburn, Alabama have probably too much pull. They have way too much say in what goes on. From my understanding, after talking to people closer to that program, Bryan Harsin has a lot of conviction, which is a good thing. It’s a very good thing. But when boosters want to have a say in a program and your coach doesn’t want to budge, your coach doesn’t want to bend the knee, it’s like oil and water. They don’t mix.

“The boosters, essentially, didn’t want Bryan Harsin to say no to them and Bryan Harsin, from my understanding, again, wouldn’t bend the knee. So they tried to get him out of there, uneffectively. On top of all that, it doesn’t help your case if you’re Bryan Harsin to lose the last five games of the season. Because besides that, Auburn was looking pretty solid at one point in the year. Then they lost the last five and then that gave the boosters all the ammunition they needed to try and get him out.”

On3’s Nick Schultz also contributed to this article.