Booger McFarland believes Auburn coach Bryan Harsin needs to swallow his pride and fall on his sword in order to get the program back on track.

McFarland, the ESPN analyst, was a guest on “The Paul Finebaum Show” and said as someone who grew up in the South, there’s a certain way to talk to people and communicate and it’s not like there’s a different language. But McFarland said to be honest and respect Southern formalities.

“It’s a great place to be, and people are very hospitable,” he said, and added that often times people come from other parts of the country and are a little rough around the edges and don’t know how treat people. “They don’t know how to do the simple things that make me and you feel that, you know what, you are welcome in my presence,” he said.

Then McFarland put it simply.

“The bottom line is it didn’t sound like Bryan Harsin fit in the South,” McFarland said. “It sounded like a guy out in Boise who came to the South and he had trouble dealing with Southern athletes, both black and white, and usually when that situation happens, it doesn’t end well. But we get to the point, as you say, 8 days later where Bryan Harsin is still the coach at Auburn.”

McFarland said he is very leery about how it’s going to play out.

“Perception is reality, and the reality is he’s still there,” he said. “But the perception is that Bryan Harsin doesn’t fit and I don’t know what a couple of tweaks will do, I don’t know what an article is going to do, or what a new policy is going to do to make the perception go away of how Bryan Harsin feels about certain people, where they’re from and where he’s from. So to me, that’s the biggest issue.”

What Harsin must do is walk into a team meeting and admit mistakes, McFarland said.

“Football is a microcosm of life and we are a second-chance country in America,” he said. “We’ve seen people do things that are way worse than what Bryan Harsin’s accused to have done and they’ve survived. … The first part of recovery is to admit you’ve got a problem, if he doesn’t admit he has a problem, he will never ever make it at Auburn.”