What does the John Cohen hire mean for Auburn Athletics?
Confirming our reporting from this weekend, Auburn is hiring Mississippi State Athletics Director John Cohen to the same position at Auburn, reportedly on a 5-year deal at $1.5M per year. Cohen, who has spent six years as Athletic Director for the Bulldogs after a long career as head baseball coach at Mississippi State (2009-2016) and Kentucky (2004-2008).
Here's five things to think about with the John Cohen hire:
NOW a change can be made with football coach Bryan Harsin
It's difficult to terminate any head coach with no athletic director in place to lead the search, and that holds doubly true with football. Cohen's dealt with coaching changes in his time at Mississippi State (he famously fired a soccer coach on his first day as Athletics Director) and hired 14 new coaches during his tenure at Mississippi State, including bringing in current football head coach Mike Leach and a coach that went on to win a national championship in baseball head coach Chris Lemonis.
UPDATE: Auburn has announced that they have "made a change in leadership of the Auburn University football program." President Roberts reportedly made the decision, pre press release from the school.
What facilities improvements does he prioritize?
John Cohen led numerous facilities upgrades and improvements during his time at Mississippi State, including building a $68M baseball field (Dudy Noble Field) with innovative revenue streams (like the "Left Field Lofts", luxury two-bedroom suites for rent overlooking the field). He renovated football's Davis Wade Stadium, spending $3.6M on a game-day home locker room in 2018 and upgrading the daily headquarters of MSU football in 2019, as well as building a $8M tennis pavilion and initiating plans to renovate basketball's Humphrey Coliseum.
Auburn is in the process of upgrading baseball's Plainsman Park, is looking at additional projects inside football's Jordan-Hare Stadium, and just recently delayed the start of a basketball renovation at Auburn Arena that would provide additional practice space for the multiple programs (men and women's basketball, volleyball, gymnastics) that all share the facility.
How will he approach NIL?
Part of the reason for the reported chilly relations between Cohen and some MSU boosters is because of comments he made about the state of the school's NIL funding. Speaking to the Starkville Rotary Club in August, he lamented the current usage and structure of NIL while commenting on State's inadequacy at it, commenting that there were three SEC baseball programs with more NIL funding available to them than Mississippi State's entire athletics department.
Rather than giving up,though, he vowed to fight:
“Now, if you’re sitting in my chair, you can throw your arms up in the air and you can say, ‘Woe is me, we quit,’” Cohen said. “Anybody who knows John Cohen knows that ain’t happening. What’s going to happen is we’re going to get aggressive in this space.”
The same search firm that landed Cohen in Auburn, TurnkeyZRG, is also in the process of hiring an Associate AD for NIL, as well. This position is expected to coordinate and liason with collectives and student-athletes, as well as facilitate Auburn NIL efforts to the limits of NCAA guidelines (which were just "clarified" by the NCAA last week).
How will Cohen's hire go over with Auburn's current coaches?
As we've reported, many Auburn head coaches were not consulted prior to the decision by President Chris Roberts to hire John Cohen. Head basketball coach Bruce Pearl, Auburn's highest-profile coach, was surprised by the news over the weekend. Butch Thompson, head baseball coach and former pitching coach for Cohen at Mississippi State, wasn't aware Cohen was a candidate until the news leaked on Saturday.
In addition, Cohen also has a direct history with women's basketball coach Johnnie Harris. She spent eight years (2012-2019) at Mississippi State as assistant head coach under legend Vic Schaefer, and left to join Schaefer at Texas in 2020 after Cohen passed over her in his search for Schaefer's replacement, hiring former WNBA-er and then Old Dominion head coach Nikki McCray-Penson. McCray Penson lasted one season at Mississippi State, going 10-9, and is now an assistant at Rutgers.
Will Auburn finally have the fabled "alignment" in the athletics department?
Reports are that University President Roberts was on his own with this hire, as boosters and donors had seemingly all settled into the camps of Utah State's John Hartwell and New Mexico's Eddie Nunez for the AD job. After being promised "autonomy" to make the hire, Roberts went outside the candidate pool to pluck Cohen from Mississippi State. How will the last-minute change impact the boosters' desired involvement in the football head coaching search? Will there be a desire for less autonomy, or more outside involvement, in the search process? Will this drag out the process, as boosters request more frequent updates on the process? It's generally considered a done deal that Bryan Harsin is fired no later than the day after the Iron Bowl, and the desire has been expressed to have a head coach in place as soon as possible after so that they can recruit before Early Signing Day on December 21st. Does Roberts going "rogue" jeopardize that timetable?
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