Why Auburn QB Byrum Brown Followed Alex Golesh to Auburn in 2026

After four seasons at USF, the fifth-year will look to put a bow on his collegiate career in an emphatic way at Auburn.

Former USF quarterback Byrum Brown holds a deeply rooted connection with head coach Alex Golesh, following him to Auburn. | IMAGN IMAGES via Reuters Connect

It’s often said that a player-coach relationship determines how good a single player can be. New Auburn quarterback Byrum Brown embodies that. 

The USF transfer followed his head coach, Alex Golesh, to the Plains this offseason for his final season of eligibility. It doesn’t come as a shock, with plenty of other former Bulls following Golesh to the Tigers after he was hired at the end of 2025. 

It’s not just about the scheme that Brown believes in, but it’s Golesh himself. 

“He’s the same guy every day,” he said at SEC Media Days on Tuesday. “He demands the absolute best out of everyone he comes in contact with. He cares for his players deeply.”

It’s a deeply rooted relationship between Brown and Golesh since the Raleigh, North Carolina, native headed to Tampa, Fla., to join Golesh’s program. The two have seen a lot of life together, and when the redshirt senior was in the final year of his college football experience, he wanted to stick with what he knew. 

And he said that was “a man I want to follow.”

“Coach Golesh, he’s had a tremendous amount of confidence in me since I was 18,” Brown said. “[He] handed the reins over to me and then got hurt one year, and then he poured into me even more, had more confidence in me.”

Many coaches use a metaphor of football and life between young athletes, and the quarterback alluded to that when speaking on his experience in South Florida. He had buzz from plenty of other Power Four schools, but the life that Brown experienced with Golesh taught him a lot about the player and person he wants to be. 

The result? A player who is looking to bring back a program standard of the past. 

“We’re bringing, you can say, our chip on our shoulder,” Brown said. “We know we’re looked down upon, but we don’t really take it any type of way. We just put our heads down and go to work.”

Brown was one of 12 former Bulls who went to the Plains in the offseason, and all of them had the same type of reasons for why they went to the SEC: to follow Golesh and his culture that unites the group. Although USF was third in total offense per game last season, the buy-in that the head coach had in his players was more important. 

It allows Auburn, a team that struggled on offense in 2025, to have a solid foundation already. That will look to build with a head coach looking to establish an identity as one of the only goals of his first season. 

“Why not go play for the man that demands the very best for me since he got there, has helped me in ways I can’t express, and a tremendous offensive staff that’s gone as well,” Brown said. 

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