BIRMINGHAM, Alabama — Bruce Pearl’s retirement last month was a surprise to his Auburn team and even his son Steven, who succeeded his father as the Tigers’ new head coach.
But Pearl’s announcement was not a shock to everyone.
Steven Pearl said he didn’t officially know about his father’s decision until the day before the Tigers’ first practice. Bruce Pearl, however, had told Auburn athletic director John Cohen years ago that he had been thinking about retirement.
“Three years ago, [my father] told him, like, ‘Listen, I don’t know how much longer I’m going to do this,'” Steven said Wednesday at SEC media day. “So [Cohen] has been actively, in his mind, being prepared for this for three years now and going through all the different options of, ‘Do I bring in an outside coaching staff? Do I bring in a big-name guy or watch this grow? Does the staff grow as a unit and stay together and not go chasing other assistant jobs, not go chasing other coaching jobs?’ And he ultimately felt like the staff had earned the right and the opportunity to continue to move this thing forward.”
Bruce Pearl’s retirement followed months of speculation that he would leave coaching to pursue Alabama’s open U.S. Senate seat that had been vacated by Tommy Tuberville, the former Auburn football coach who is now running for governor of the state.
Steven said the last three weeks have been, as expected, a frenzy. But he also said his time with his father — he played for his father at Tennessee and spent more than a decade as his assistant — helped prepare him for the role at Auburn, which is ranked 20th in the Associated Press top 25 preseason poll.
“As far as when it hit me, it didn’t hit me until I showed up at the gym and [my father] was filming his goodbye video and [Cohen] pulled me aside and he was like, ‘Hey, you’re the guy,'” Steven said. “So then I was like, ‘All right, here we go. Let’s go.’ It all happened really fast, but I’m ready because I spent 38 years watching [my father] do this.”
Steven said the continuity of the staff and the stability of his team has eased his transition. His staff has a combined 40 years of coaching experience at Auburn under Bruce, who is now an ambassador for the university. Every player decided to stay despite having a 30-day window to enter the portal and transfer, according to NCAA rules on coaching changes.
Tahaad Pettiford, a star for a Tigers team that reached the Final Four for the second time in team history last season, said the players found out about Bruce Pearl’s decision when they all received a text message to return to the gym the day of the announcement.
Pettiford said he never once considered transferring after Steven was announced as head coach. But Pettiford is also the only remaining player on the roster who played for Auburn in the team’s loss to Florida in the Final Four.
“It’s definitely something new for me coming into this with 10 new guys,” he said. “It’s definitely different from being the youngest guy on the team last year to being one of the older guys on this year’s team.
“I’m just trying to give them the stuff that I learned last year and trying to pass that down to the new guys, especially some of the freshmen, and trying to give them the blueprint of what we did last year and how we were successful.”