Casagrande: Auburn basketball gambles again on a Pearl

This is an opinion column.

Pearl retired. Pearl hired.

How does Auburn basketball knock football from the headlines on the most unlikely day? That’s how.

We’re talking 40-or-so hours after the SEC admitted it bungled a ruling that cost Auburn football 7 points in a game it lost by 7 points.

Just hours after the future of the SEC football scheduling structure leaked, the job-juggling Pearls snatched the spotlight.

No risk of a sack here, father cleanly handed off to son in what was a predictable outcome. A transfer of power from Bruce Pearl to Steven Pearl was the whisper all summer as Auburn’s basketball coach of 11 transformative years mulled a run for the United States Senate.

Part of that scenario became reality on a busy Monday in the thick of football season.

Bruce Pearl’s retirement was officially announced at 1:30 p.m. CT on social media, while Steven Pearl’s hiring dropped 31 minutes later.

Within the 14-minute, 8-second video, the father used to announce his transition from the coaching ranks was the revelation he was not pursuing the Senate seat Tommy Tuberville was vacating after one term.

Instead, he’ll be an ambassador/special assistant to Auburn AD John Cohen as his son takes over the program he built from the studs.

The Tigers were a basketball non-factor when Bruce Pearl arrived in 2014 from a stint with ESPN after being fired three years earlier by Tennessee.

There’s no denying that everything this program became in the past 11 years is because of Bruce Pearl.

It a result of the gamble Auburn took on hiring him despite the NCAA show cause sanction he carried from Knoxville.

Now the school is rolling the figurative dice on his son.

Handing the keys to a program coming off a Final Four season to a first-time head coach isn’t something you see every day. Miami was two years removed from that status when hiring Jai Lucas, fittingly the son of prominent retired coach John Lucas.

But this is a direct snap from father to son at the last possible moment. Auburn began practice Monday for the 2025-26 season following months of speculation about who was going to lead the program.

Steven Pearl did several donor and media events in July that would typically be the place for the head coach. The younger Pearl said his dad was taking a much-needed vacation when asked why he was in Birmingham to announce an exhibition game appearance.

“I absolutely expect (Bruce Pearl) to be the head coach at Auburn,” Cohen told AL.com later that month. … But things can change. We’ve seen that.”

We sure have.

It’s hard to say exactly when this succession plan was set in motion. Auburn clearly filmed and produced this lengthy retirement/replacement video before Monday.

Notably, the announcement of Steven Pearl’s hiring stated he already signed his contract making him the new head coach.

The timing is also important in terms of the transfer calendar. A coaching change automatically opens a transfer portal for 30 days, should players choose to leave a program when a coach exits. Given that practice opened Monday and its first exhibition game is Oct. 15, this makes it difficult for an exit.

It will be interesting to hear how much advance notice players were given, while recognizing nothing leaked until ESPN reported the move an hour before the school made Bruce Pearl’s retirement official.

What’s also significant here: This isn’t an interim deal like most hires made outside the normal window of coaching changes. Auburn stated the deal was for five years, meaning this isn’t just a tryout year for the rookie head coach.

The exact wording of the contract isn’t yet public so the buyout details will be worth skimming but Cohen and Auburn are betting big on transfer of these strong head coaching genes.

It’s safe to say Steven Pearl got his father’s charisma and personality.

He’s also been a part of the Auburn program for the entirety of the Pearl 1.0 era. Beginning as an assistant strength and conditioning coach before moving into operations and eventually a full assistant coaching role, Steven Pearl was the associate head coach for the previous two seasons.

On the bench for both Final Four runs -- the first more improbable than the second -- Steven Pearl learned from the best.

Speculation began in March after he interviewed for the Murray State head coaching job. That’s a perfect first job to use as a stepping stone to the power programs, but Steven Pearl turned heads in an interview with The Next Round on March 18.

“I don’t want to leave Auburn,” Steven Pearl said.

He didn’t.

Now he’s succeeding his father, knocking football refereeing anger out of the headlines and stepping into the headlights that come with this uncommon scenario.

Replacing a legend is never easy.

Doing so under the inevitable nepo-baby accusations will add some motivation to an already emotional situation.

But for now, we just know the basics.

The speculation, as it relates to Auburn basketball, is now reality.

One Pearl was hired as another Pearl retired.

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