Alex Golesh Defines Challenges with Auburn’s Transfer Portal Roster

It is no secret to any Auburn Tigers fan at this point in the year that this upcoming year’s roster is going to look quite different from last year’s. After all, the Tigers rank dead last in the SEC for roster retention, so new head coach Alex Golesh has had to work hard to ensure that his program is as strong as possible, despite nearly 40 departures.

In an interview with 680 The Fan, a local radio station in Atlanta, Golesh went in-depth on the exact challenges he is facing as he tries to implement a high volume of transfer players into the Auburn system.

“You're trying to almost mesh two families together,” he said. “You got half that have a perception of what Auburn is, because they've lived it. They've been in it. They've been through some hard here the last couple years, and then you got half that are beyond fired up to get here and don't know anything and don't really care. They came here with the hope and and an ambition to go, go win at a high level.”

Even Golesh himself is not exempt from this analogy, as the Tigers’ new head coach is beginning his first year ever on the Plains in any role. He has experience in the SEC, as he formerly served as Tennessee’s offensive coordinator and tight ends coach, but this year, he falls firmly into the second category, by his own definition.

This split in hometown experience can prove to be a season-defining problem for many teams and coaches, but Golesh believes that once the Tigers find their stride, they will be hard to compete against throughout his first season on the Plains.

“The biggest challenge I think we have as coaches right now, certainly here, is meshing the two and bringing them together,” he said. “And this connection piece, you got from essentially from January until the beginning of September, for these guys to build trust in each other, to build trust in the staff, for the staff to build trust in them. And I truly believe that the teams that are the most connected and have the most trust going into the season are going to be the ones that sustain it.”

However, it is not all sunshine and rainbows for the Tigers, as Golesh is still adjusting to the era of the modern Transfer Portal, particularly the aspect of not being able to develop players for quite as long as he could in earlier years.

“It used to be you were playing second, third, fourth-year guys, and they had been together forever,” he said. “And that's the part that's changed, is you don't have that time.”

So, what will Golesh do with his shortened time and high transfer-volume roster this season? He has certainly had his work cut out for him, and he’s put together quite a strong roster, but synergy could very well be the difference when his team kicks off in September.

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