Things have taken a slight turn in Harsin's direction over the last 24 hours. Apparently, several current players, including TJ Finley, have come in support of Harsin and state he's a man of incredible character. According to several of my Auburn buddies, this is a dogfight between the powerful booster Jimmy Rane, the president/CEO of Great Southern Wood and one of the richest individuals in the state, and Auburn AD Allen Greene who selected Harsin over the disapproval of Rane. Simply put, it's a power struggle and who wins, nobody knows. From all indications, Harsin doesn't plan on going anywhere and if they want to get rid of him, it will cost them the full buyout of $18.3 million dollars. Add that to Malzahn's buyout last year and it will cost Auburn almost $40 million dollars to get rid of the last two coaches in a span of about a year! We're talking about a lot of money and a lot of big egos. This situation could get real ugly, real fast, but it's in Auburn's best interest to solve this quickly one way or the other.
This feels like deja vu. Hasn't this wealthy asshole booster vs Athletic Director story played out at Auburn several times in the past? Is this the same guy that forced out cheese-dick and boobervill?
During my sales days my company's cut-off for driving distance was 4 hours one way. Further than that and we flew.
I lived in San Antonio and my physical territory was basically San Antonio to Corpus to The Valley (for non Texans think Brownsville) to Del Rio. With customers scattered across the small towns in between. I would fly to Harlingen to work the valley exclusively sometimes, but sometimes I would work my way down there stop by stop.
Yep, this is common there, but until Colonial Bank collapsed, it was always Bobby Lowder running the show.
I’m still something of a road warrior. Mostly only around New Orleans and BR but occasionally I have to visit distributors in Mississippi & N Louisiana and last week in Houston. As long as I can control the times it’s no problem.
Yeh, that's the asshole I was trying to remember. So now he is out of the picture. But to no-one's surprise Auburn has a ready supply of dick's to step up and take his place and keep the program in chaos. Come on Jimmy Rane, get in there and kick ass. Show em who's boss, stir the pot, make a lot of negative noise. I'm routing for ya.
I'm not sure if he's the one because they had one booster a few years that was out of control. His name was Bobby Lowder and he basically ran the entire athletic department. He was the big money guy and he gave millions of dollars to Auburn, but in return, he basically had total control of everything, particularly football. Nothing was done without his approval and there was no question about it. He was eventually banned from Auburn, his banking empire crumbled and he was caught in that huge banking crisis scandal and I think might have even been prosecuted. This new booster Jimmy Rane is now the man in charge and apparently he is determined to get Harsin out one way or another. It's going to get real nasty here soon!
