The Arkansas search for a new head coach put Alex Golesh squarely in the rumor mill. After Sam Pittman’s firing and a 2-9 Razorbacks season, multiple reports framed the USF football team coach as the favorite in Fayetteville, pointing to his rapid rebuild in Tampa and SEC ties from his Tennessee days.
Publicly, though, nothing was confirmed, and Golesh kept coaching a Bulls team that surged to a nine-win regular season and blowout wins over UAB and Rice.
Right after USF’s 52-3 demolition of Rice, Golesh was asked directly about a report that had effectively labeled him “the next Arkansas coach.” Speaking to reporters, he pushed back hard, saying the story did not come from him and was simply not true, as detailed by On3.
He admitted the noise had become a distraction, apologized to his players for anything that leaked into the locker room, and stressed that his priority was winning games with the group that “has my back and I have theirs.”
Golesh then asked for space to process what was happening around him. He said he had barely had time to sit down with his family, praised USF’s administration for committing to keeping the staff together, and framed his next move as an organization-wide decision, not a personal whim. Whatever choice he made, he insisted, his players would be the first to know.
And then the next domino fell. Not at Arkansas, but at Auburn. According to Matt Zenitz and Chris Hummer of CBS Sports, Auburn is expected to hire Golesh as its next head coach, pulling him straight from USF’s football team's breakthrough season into the teeth of the SEC coaching carousel. For Bulls fans, it is a whiplash ending: the coach who denied the Arkansas report and asked for time is now headed to another SEC job, leaving behind a revived program and a big vacancy in Tampa.
