Alex Golesh faces Auburn's harsh recruiting reality in rebuild

The Auburn football program is on a rebuilding mission, and it's no secret that new head coach Alex Golesh had a great challenge in front of him when he took the job on the Plains.

Golesh knew that Auburn football fans were hungry for success, and that he was going to have to convince recruits that success could, in fact, be found on the Plains. But the extent of his challenge only hit him when he got on the road to start recruiting in high schools.

"That's where it really hit me," Golesh said Tuesday at SEC media days, per ESPN. "When I'm talking to a high school junior, the last time Auburn had a winning season, the kid was in sixth grade."

Since starting his tenure with the Tigers, Golesh has been realistic but optimistic when it comes to talking about the rebuild. Only so much can be expected from a first-year staff who mostly inherited its first recruiting class and must work to transition the culture, the playbook and more before the season starts in the fall.

But Golesh has insisted he only took the job on the Plains in the first place because he believes that Auburn is a program that can be returned to the relevance and glory of the past.

"How many other places can say that there's still 88,000 in the stadium every week through that?" Golesh said in a previous Fly War Eagle article. "How many places can say there's 40,000 for a spring game after all of that? Are the fans tired? Yeah, they're tired. I have met with every big money donor in the last six months, and man, they're tired. They're sick of it. But they're still willing to help. They're still willing to be involved, which is why I took this job — because I felt like you genuinely can do it."

While the head coach had a little more flexibility with his rebuild timeline at South Florida, Golesh said he's aware of the impatience on the Plains.

"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," Golesh said. "But I think I feel just a hair more pressure to peak earlier than that."

The first Auburn football game of the Golesh era will kick off on September 5 when the Tigers take on the Baylor Bears in Atlanta.

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This article was originally published on flywareagle.com as Alex Golesh faces Auburn's harsh recruiting reality in rebuild.