Auburn Coach Alex Golesh Targets a Quick Return to National Relevance

Auburn’s football program has struggled to reach former heights. The Tigers have not recorded a seven-win season since 2019, and the last time they finished ranked in the AP top 10 was in 2020, when they ended the year at No. 14 nationally. Historically, Auburn spent parts of 14 seasons between 2003 and 2020 inside the AP top 10 and captured national titles in 2004 and 2010.

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Since being hired in December, Alex Golesh—Auburn’s fourth head coach in four years—has emphasized accelerating the program’s rebuild. Golesh highlighted the need for unified support from the athletic department, noting that athletic director John Cohen serves as his point person and that the university president has personally wished him luck. He also pointed to the recent vacancy of Alabama’s longtime coach as an opening for Auburn to regain prominence.

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• No seven-win season for Auburn since the 2019 campaign.

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• Ranked No. 14 in the final 2020 AP poll, the most recent top-25 finish.

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• Historically a top-5 program for roughly a decade, with 14 top-10 AP appearances between 2003-2020.

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• “That's where it really hit me,” — Alex Golesh, Auburn's fourth coach since 2019

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• “My mindset is I want to do it for the long haul, where at [USF] we tried to set it up to peak in Year 3, 4, 5,” — Alex Golesh, Auburn's fourth coach since 2019

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• “But I think I feel just a hair more pressure to peak earlier than that.” — Alex Golesh, Auburn's fourth coach since 2019

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• “This was a top-5 program in the country for a long time -- like 10 years ago,” — Alex Golesh, Auburn's fourth coach since 2019

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• “There's one guy that hired me," Golesh said of Cohen.” — Alex Golesh, Auburn's fourth coach since 2019

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