On the day most college basketball programs started official practice for the 2025–26 season, one of the sport’s most recognizable head coaches announced he was walking away.
Auburn head coach Bruce Pearl retired Monday, announcing his decision in a 14-minute address the school posted less than an hour after ESPN broke the news. The winningest coach in Auburn history, Pearl took a school with perhaps the worst basketball tradition in the SEC to a pair of Final Fours and ignited the Tigers’ fan base into one of the most rabid in the sport. He made Auburn into what he called an “everything school,” trying to shed the program’s football-first label and proving it could compete with the best on the hardwood.
Pearl’s future in Auburn has been speculated about plenty in recent months, especially after Republicans courted the outspoken coach for a potential 2026 U.S. Senate run in Alabama. In Monday’s announcement, Pearl officially shot down the idea of running for office, saying he intends to stay around Auburn and hopes to be at plenty of Tiger sporting events in his retirement.
Importantly though, Pearl’s late retirement paved the way for his son Steven, the program’s associate head coach, to take over for him on a full-time basis. These early fall retirements have become something of a tried-and-true method to ensure the desired succession plan for elite head coaches.
The trend can be most notably traced back to Dean Smith’s exit in Chapel Hill, N.C., with the legendary coach walking away in early October 1997 and leaving the North Carolina program to top assistant Bill Guthridge. Jim Calhoun retired at UConn in mid-September 2012, paving the way for his former point guard, Kevin Ollie, to take over in Storrs, Conn. Bo Ryan stepped away at Wisconsin midseason in late 2015 to give Greg Gard a chance to audition, and Tony Bennett fought hard for Ron Sanchez to be his long-term successor at Virginia after an October retirement.
Pearl pushed multiple times in the latter part of his Auburn tenure for Steven to be given the head-coach-in-waiting title, something Auburn never agreed to. Without that contractual assurance, Bruce instead walked at a time that gave the Tigers no choice to even explore options. A late-September coaching search would have been untenable, and even making Steven the interim coach would’ve created unneeded drama throughout the season. The only choice was to lock in the younger Pearl as the long-term answer, and Auburn did so by giving him a five-year contract Monday afternoon.
Was the calculus of not issuing the coach-in-waiting title worth it for athletic director John Cohen (and former AD Allen Greene, who was in charge when these conversations first popped up after the 2021–22 season)? Only they can answer that. Either way, Bruce Pearl got his wish, and in the process was able to set his son up with an extremely talented roster for his first year.
Players have 30 days to enter the portal, but logistically finding another school that can take them (and pay them what they’re making at Auburn) is close to impossible. Outside of a few schools on the quarter system, players’ best bet would likely be enrolling in time for the second semester, missing the first several weeks of the season. In all likelihood, Steven Pearl will be able to keep this roster together, coaching a squad that is receiving preseason top-15 attention thanks to the return of star guard Tahaad Pettiford and a strong transfer class.
Of course, all this neglects the pawns in these increasingly common late departures: the players on the team. Think Pettiford might have gone a different way with his down-to-the-wire stay-or-go NBA draft decision this spring had he known his head coach would walk away months later? Might some of those transfers, like UCF’s Keyshawn Hall and Mississippi State’s KeShawn Murphy, have chosen a situation with a more proven head coach? Steven Pearl is heavily involved in the program’s recruiting and is more qualified than anyone to help keep the Auburn program’s culture the same, but this still isn’t quite what Pettiford, Hall and Murphy signed up for.
It’s fair to take Pearl at face value when he says he didn’t want to continue as head coach if he was at a point where he “couldn’t be the relentless competitor that [fans] expected.” He’s 65, has a taxing 365-day-a-year job and accomplished everything he could’ve realistically dreamed of when he took over the program more than a decade ago. To frame this move only as a power play to ensure his preferred succession plan would be unfair. Had he walked away on April 15, Steven Pearl would still likely be the head coach at Auburn. But doing so when he did certainly acts as him flexing his muscle on the way out the door.
He almost certainly won’t be the last to make such a maneuver to ensure his preferred successor takes over. Tennessee’s Rick Barnes has been the ultimate kingmaker, helping tons of his assistants get head jobs over the years. Could his last act be an attempt to get his current top assistant Justin Gainey the job whenever he decides to hang it up? Houston’s Kelvin Sampson is likely on his last legs, though he may opt for a more traditionally timed retirement given his son Kellen already has that head-coach-in-waiting tag. Gonzaga’s Mark Few has made clear his intent to pass the job down to Brian Michaelson. And Kansas’s Bill Self, who has dealt with health problems in recent years, brought on a Jayhawk and former NBA head coach in Jacque Vaughn to his staff this summer. Perhaps that move foreshadows Self’s desired succession plan if he elects to hang it up soon.
However engineered Pearl’s retirement was, he got his wish. Six weeks from now, Auburn will tip off its season at Neville Arena against Bethune-Cookman with a new Pearl in charge. Will Bruce be watching from home, behind the Tiger bench or shirtless in the student section? That’s an answer we’ll have to wait on.
