Auburn head coach Alex Golesh had a different path than most other coaches in college football. His story was a feature on ESPN's College GameDay Saturday morning.

In the feature by ESPN's Jen Lada, Golesh talked about his family moving from Moscow during the fall of the Soviet Union at the age of seven. His family would move to Brooklyn, New York, before eventually moving to Dublin, Ohio, where his love of football was born.

An interesting part of the feature was that he was the fastest to learn to speak English among his family.

His path to becoming the Auburn football coach first started as a student assistant under Jim Tressel at Ohio State in 2004. His path to becoming a head coach would include stops at Northern Illinois and Oklahoma State as a graduate assistant before landing his first assistant coaching job at Toledo in 2009. He eventually partnered with current Tennessee head coach Josh Heupel at UCF and with the Volunteers as an offensive coordinator. His success at South Florida over three years and a 23-15 record led Auburn to hire Golesh to lead their program.

He coached Auburn to the program's biggest win in years with a 27-24 win over No. Georgia last week. That win proved that Auburn may have finally found the coach to turn the program around. He will not attempt to do the same thing against No. 18 LSU on Saturday. This time, Auburn will attempt to do it in front of their fans at Jordan-Hare Stadium. This Tigers team has the confidence now to beat any opponent they face.

The feature ended with a quote that describes the philosophy that Golesh lives by, and is evident what he is trying to teach his team.

"Nobody cares what excuse you got, figure out a way to get where you go to go. I think I learned that at such an early age that the only person that controls the outcome of anything is you," said Golesh.

"He'd say, 'That's pretty badass, you're the head coach at Auburn.'"
Coach Alex Golesch tells @JenLada what his 7-year-old self would say after his journey to his dream job 🥹 pic.twitter.com/Oej44Ao1px

— College GameDay (@CollegeGameDay) October 24, 2026

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This article originally appeared on Auburn Wire: Auburn's Alex Golesh featured on ESPN College GameDay

Source: Yahoo Sports