I’m glad there are people like Bryan Harsin in the world because they are the reason things get done. And God knows, if only people like me existed, not a damn thing would ever get done. Ask my wife.
But the new Auburn coach is clearly all about completing tasks. He appears to be what they call in the neurology business a “linear thinker”. His brain was on full display yesterday during what can only be called a full-on office meeting from hell of a press conference in the run-up to Saturday night’s match with Penn State.
Harsin’s session made Mark Dantonio’s seem like a 4th of July fireworks display. In Boston Harbor. Over the Tall Ships. With the Pops playing. I have heard bingo callers in rest homes with more dynamic speaking presence than this guy. It was like listening to a pivoting table fan for 20 minutes.
I don’t know how many times Harsin said the words consistency and preparation and overcoming adversity and practice habits. I just know it was like somebody was spinning a wheel of coaches’ clichés and he just kept seamlessly using them in sentences like it was some weird board game.
But you know what? Guys like Harsin are multiplying. The days of Jimmy Johnson and Bobby Bowden and Barry Switzer and Joe Tiller and Hayden Fry and their once abundant like are over. I miss ‘em, but they’re not coming back.
Nick Saban and Urban Meyer have reset the mold. Actually, Saban is now considered a relatively spicy personality, a 7 on the new coaches’ Scoville scale.
That’s partly because most fans really don’t give a damn what their coach says anymore, where he’s from, whether he’s witty, has eclectic interests or has a personality of any kind. They just wanna win.
And Bryan Harsin knows how to win. He showed it for seven years at Boise State after Chris Petersen left for Washington. That’s why a school 2,000 miles away in the heart of Dixie hired a man who was born, raised and has spent virtually his entire life in Idaho to be their football coach.
People like Harsin aren’t commonly any good at dancing or writing songs or picking up women in bars or telling a joke in front of a group. But they are exceedingly good at organizing, at compartmentalizing and at juggling several balls at once. They can task, they can multitask, they can macro- and micromanage at once. They are patient, they can teach, and they are obsessive about details.
They get things done. They get others to get more things done.
These are all very good traits for a major college football coach.
You can win in different ways and fans generally don’t care how, only if. Bill Belichick would be fine with most fans.
But that’s not quite true at the University of Southern California. They want the whole show in LA. They want Traveler the majestic white horse, and they want not just cheerleaders but the incomparable white-sweatered Song Girls, and they want an emcee as their head coach, not some droning widget going on about preparation and consistency and limiting distractions. Hell, they love the distractions.
They want it all. The wins and the show. That’s why the ‘80s “Showtime” Los Angeles Lakers were probably the most popular sports franchise the city has ever had, and it’s not even close.
But Pete Carroll’s ‘00s Trojans are in the conversation for runners-up, right there with the ‘70s-’80s Lasorda Dodgers and the ‘80s Marcus Allen Raiders and the ‘00s Kobe-Shaq Lakers. Lots of fizz in those teams. They didn’t just win, they had the coach with style, the stars with smiles and the banners and parades.
At USC, they want Pete Carroll back. But Carroll has a better job now.
And they never wanted Clay Helton. But, finally, mercifully, after three years of speculation of whether he’d fall from the spindliest branch of the Tree of Troy, the fathers of the program spoke forcefully on Saturday night when USC was routed at home in the Coliseum by two-TD-underdog Stanford. They made it clear to newbie Cincinnati-transplant AD Mike Bohn that he needed to shake Helton off that branch. So, he did. Two games into the season.
And you knew what was happening then. The name James Franklin was popping up everywhere. On Twitter, on impromptu podcasts, in urgent cellphone conversations.
Because the Penn State coach is the perfect fit for USC. He’s the whole show.
There is the distinct possibility that Bohn could call on his old pal still at Cincinnati, Luke Fickell. Bohn hired him there. But Fickell has exactly the sort of arid linear personality of Harsin and so many others who populate the college coaching landscape these days.
Franklin does not. His Nittany Lions will need to continue to have a good 2021 season. They might need to beat either Auburn on Saturday in State College or Ohio State in Columbus on Halloween weekend and make a run at the Big Ten East title.
But if Penn State doesn’t fall on its face like it did during the COVID-crippled 2020, Franklin is going to be awfully attractive to those who buy Traveler’s hay. I’ve heard through my agent and Los Angeles sources and written for three years that he has significant support within the USC board of trustees chaired by billionaire Rick Caruso. So have all the national college football writers, guys who have many more coaching agent sources than I do.
The buzz is there for a reason. A lot of people who matter at USC are enamored with Franklin.
Because he doesn’t just win. He does it with pizzazz.
Will he listen? I think he will. He always has. He’d be crazy not to. I’ve thought so since I first wrote this piece almost three years ago entitled “Ten Good Reasons James Franklin Could Leave Penn State for the USC Trojans”.
Of course, it was all contingent on Helton being fired and there being a job to be offered and considered. And damned if he didn’t hang on to that swaying branch every year since, partly because of the needless, buyout-heavy extension to which ex-AD Lynn Swann signed him, partly through winning just enough at the right times late in seasons.
But he finally fell. Now, the USC job finally is open. And if you’re one of those who believe it’s nonsense that Franklin would consider a job three time zones from his good, old home state, click the link and re-read that column from Nov. 21, 2018. Because every single reason of the 10 I gave then still applies.
Collectively, they all say the same thing: he would fit there like a glove – if he wants to.
In a coaching business more bereft every year of outgoing and ebullient personalities, Franklin is an increasing rarity. If he eventually gets the call in November, no matter what has happened in this 2021 Penn State season, I think he will end up having a big career decision to make.
He might just decide it’s time. This would be the time in his career to make such a move. If not now and there, when and where? Probably never and nowhere.
It’ll be his decision. And if he decides to go, there won’t be a damn thing Penn State can do or say to keep him.
Southern California is a unique and seductive place. And a few people at USC still know how to get things done, too.
More PennLive sports coverage:
• Big Ten Power Poll: OSU gets Duck-pinned; Iowa steals Cy-Hawk win; PSU welcomes Auburn in.
• Sunday Morning Quarterback: Four postgame reads on Penn State’s 44-13 win over Ball State.
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