AUBURN | Just when it seemed like the idea of an open football practice at Auburn had gone the way of the dinosaurs, Bryan Harsin opened the gates and said, ‘Hey y’all, come on in.’

Well, Harsin didn’t actually say that but he did hold the Tigers first open practice since 2008 at Jordan-Hare Stadium Saturday.

“I think it's awesome. I really do,” said Harsin, who was hired in December. “I tell you what, I had fun. It's good to be out here, and you feel that, too. You've got people in the stands and you get the nerves, right? You kind of get those butterflies, and I think that's a good thing. That helps you. That's how you should feel.

“When you come out and something's important, you should feel that way. And you've got people in the stands watching, they're evaluating and they're going to have opinions. You want to go out there, and as a player you want to perform.”

Approximately 3,500 fans spread out in the stadium to watch Auburn practice for about two hours. In AU’s third of 15 spring practices, Harsin put his players through individual drills, tempo, had a couple of special teams periods, and had the offense work against the defense in 7-on-7 and 11-on-11 periods.

Associate athletic director and football chief of staff Brad Larrondo was on the microphone explaining drills and even providing some play-by-play during scrimmage work.

The music blared through much of the workout ranging from AC/DC to Michael Jackson to more present-day hip hop.

“Our guys, they enjoyed it,” Harsin said. “This is good for us, and not just because we had fans out here and kind of just playing in front of them and providing that environment, but just go back to last spring, there was no spring practice.

“These guys did a really good job of preparing themselves to come out here and get after it. Some things were good, some things were bad. We’ll go back and correct it. We’re going to watch meetings here in a couple hours and then we’ll get these guys out of here and go have a little bit of fun tonight with them.”

The day was big for Harsin’s staff too. Many of them joined him from Boise State and it was their first opportunity to be around a large group of fans and media.

“If you think about it, as this transition came about, we have a new staff, a lot of people that are new faces, we haven’t had a chance to really get out and do anything,” Harsin explained. “This was a chance for us to be able to get people out, get around our players, get around people in our community, which we haven’t had a chance to do. Let them see some of the coaches, some of the new faces and just really show an appreciation.

“We’re all glad to be here, let me tell you that. Everybody on our staff, all the new coaches, all the new people on our staff, we’re all glad to be here. We talk about that quite often. We haven’t really had a chance to express that, I don’t think, properly. And so this was a chance to just show some gratitude for living in Auburn and being a part of this program and having fans come out here and watch their players, watch this team, watch their coaches. Just get a chance to see it and spend a Saturday with us. I hope they appreciated that. We did, and we’ll kind of see where we go from there.”

Auburn will hold its fourth practice of the spring Monday.