Alex Golesh won't preach 'patience' for Auburn football — even if Charles Barkley will

AUBURN — He was appreciative of the kind words, Sir Charles, but he didn't quite see eye to eye.

Auburn football head coach Alex Golesh expressed his thanks for Charles Barkley 's support on Auburn 's Tiger Talk coaches radio show Wednesday, Sept. 30, specifically addressing recent comments from the noted Auburn alumnus by way of an audience question.

"He (Barkley) recently said, 'Hey, Auburn nation, let's be patience, all right?'" Andy, among the show's viewing public at Baumhower's Victory Grille, said. "I can't say exactly what he said, because the FCC is probably monitoring this."

Barkley shared those sentiments ahead of the annual Bruce and Barkley golf event Monday. In specific, he said: "You Auburn people are so damn impatient — and y'all always compare yourself to Tuscaloosa, which is stupid. I'm very happy with our football coach. People who know football tell me we got us a winner, that if we can just be patient and give him an opportunity to put his footprint on it. ... Guys have no patience anymore and that's unfortunate, but I got patience with him, and I'm excited for him."

Golesh's view of the matter — particularly, the word "patience" — wasn't so similar.

"I don't know if I've ever used that word with anybody," Golesh said. "There's things that you can't shortcut, and that's the building of a culture, the building of a standard. Expectations, like that stuff takes time, but the expectation is you win now. I'm fully aware of the job that I took, and the fact that there's an expectation and a standard. It's got to match the investment, which is why we made the decision to come here, because I do think that the investment matches the expectation."

Through four games, Auburn is 3-1 overall under Golesh and 1-1 against the SEC, suffering its only loss to No. 8 Florida . The road ahead appears packed with Florida equivalents, as Auburn will face five ranked opponents and play four road games in its next six contests.

Regardless of the results, Golesh doesn't appear keen to preach patience, at least in the scope of results, any time soon.

"I don't know that I would ever say that," Golesh said. "You can't look at a room full of competitors, in terms of our staff and our players and say, 'Man, everybody just chill out here. It's going to take a little bit of time.' ... Our job is truly to be as good as we can as fast as we can. I appreciate Sir Charles for preaching that, but at the end of the day, we've got to go win football games as fast as we can."

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Adam Cole is the Auburn athletics beat writer for the Montgomery Advertiser. He can be reached via email at acole@gannett.com or on X, the platform formerly known as Twitter, @colereporter . To support Adam's work, please subscribe to the Montgomery Advertiser .