Auburn men’s basketball coach Bruce Pearl is stepping down, the school announced, ending his college coaching career 42 days before Auburn’s first game of the 2025-26 season.
Pearl’s son, Steven, the Tigers’ associate head coach, will take over the program. Auburn announced Monday that Steven Pearl has signed a five-year contract.
Bruce Pearl, 65, leaves college basketball with a 694-270 (.720) overall record, including 232-125 (.650) in the last 11 years at Auburn. The winningest coach in Auburn history, he guided the Tigers to the school’s second Final Four last season, earning the top overall seed in the NCAA Tournament after winning the SEC regular-season championship. The Tigers lost to Florida 79-73 in an all-SEC national semifinal.
In the last decade, Pearl transformed Auburn, long an afterthought in college hoops and mired in nearly a decade of losing seasons before he took over in 2014, into one of the top programs in the country. Pearl took Auburn to two Final Fours and won at least a share of three SEC regular-season titles and two conference tournament championships.
“I’ve been a part of college basketball for almost 50 years, and the truth is, it’s time,” Pearl said in a video posted on Auburn’s social media accounts. “I told myself that when I got to the point when I could not give it my all or I wasn’t necessarily 100 percent, where I couldn’t be the relentless competitor that you expected of me, that it was going to be time. And as hard as it is to say this, I reached the realization that it was time for me to step aside.”
Dear Auburn Family, I truly love you.@CoachBrucePearl x #WarEagle pic.twitter.com/xFJAEetMLv
— Auburn Basketball (@AuburnMBB) September 22, 2025
There had been rumors for months that Pearl, known for being outspoken on social media platforms about a variety of political topics, might consider a run for public office. However, in his farewell video, Pearl made it clear that he would remain at Auburn, transitioning immediately into an ambassador role within the athletic department as a special assistant to the athletic director.
“I thought and prayed about maybe running for United States Senate, maybe to be the next great senator from the state of Alabama,” he said. “That would have required me leaving Auburn. Instead, the university has given me an incredible opportunity to stay here and be Auburn’s senator.”
Before Auburn, Pearl was the head coach at Tennessee (2005-11), Milwaukee (2001-05) and Division II Southern Indiana (1992-2001).
In 2005, Pearl’s Milwaukee Panthers, which had won the Horizon League regular-season and conference tournament titles, stunned fifth-seeded Alabama 83-73 in the first round of the NCAA Tournament as a No. 12 seed.
However, they weren’t finished.
Two days later, Milwaukee took care of fourth-seeded Boston College 83-75, which had opened its season 20-0 and had routed Penn 85-65 in the first round. The Panthers’ dream season came to an end in the Sweet 16, when top-seeded Illinois beat Milwaukee 77-63.
Pearl took the Vols to the NCAA Tournament in each of his six seasons, reaching three Sweet 16s and one Elite Eight. He was fired in 2011 after the NCAA charged him with unethical conduct for lying during an investigation into recruiting violations. Auburn hired him five months before his three-year show-cause penalty ended.
Steven Pearl, 38, has been on his father’s staff since he got to Auburn and was promoted to associate head coach in August. He played for Bruce at Tennessee from 2007 to 2011.
“In a sense, I’ve spent my lifetime preparing for this moment, learning from one of the best in BP, and building a foundation rooted in character, hard work, and team-first values,” Steven Pearl said in a school release. “We’re not starting over — we’re building forward, with the same principles that have made Auburn Basketball elite. I’m honored to lead this program, and I’m ready to rise to the moment.”
Steven is 1-0 as Auburn’s head coach, having filled in for Bruce as acting head coach back in December 2021 when Bruce served a two-game suspension as part of NCAA penalties related to former Auburn associate head coach Chuck Person, who was found to have violated ethical conduct rules.
Auburn faced a variety of penalties resulting from the findings of that investigation, including a self-imposed postseason ban for the 2020-2021 season. According to the NCAA’s release at the time, Pearl “failed to adequately monitor the associate head coach and did not promote an atmosphere of compliance.”
Steven acted as head coach in Auburn’s 70-44 win over North Alabama on Dec. 14, 2021 (another Auburn assistant filled in for Bruce during the Tigers’ 99-68 win over Nebraska three days prior).
Pearl’s coaching career included other situations that left him in the NCAA’s crosshairs.
As an assistant at Iowa, he lost a key recruiting battle to Illinois when Deon Thomas, a top prospect from Chicago, committed to the Illini. After Thomas committed, Pearl called him and recorded the conversation, asking Thomas whether Illinois assistant Jimmy Collins had bribed him. Thomas implied he had, and Pearl turned the conversation over to the NCAA.
The ensuing NCAA investigation didn’t find anything related to Thomas’ recruitment, but the ripple effects lasted for years. Longtime ESPN analyst Dick Vitale said Pearl had “committed professional suicide,” as Pearl could not get a Division I job for a decade despite significant success at Southern Indiana. Collins, who had likely been in line for a major head coaching job of his own, instead settled for taking over Illinois-Chicago. When the two men coached against each other in the Horizon League, they did not participate in a traditional postgame handshake.
In 2005, Thomas, the player at the center of the scandal, told the Chicago Tribune of Pearl, “It’s kind of hard to forgive a snake. I don’t want to really use the word, but he’s evil. What else can you say he is?” (In 2019, Thomas told The Athletic he wished Pearl “nothing but the best” and that he was “at peace” with everything that had happened.)
(Photo: Jamie Squire / Getty Images)
