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Auburn is making this search a whole lot harder than they should. The people in charge are turning what should be Coach Hiring 101 and turning it into rocket science.
It doesn’t have to be this hard. All they need to do is pick up the phone and call Hugh Freeze.
(As always, full disclosure that Freeze and I are friends.)
Listen, for all of you worried about the baggage he might bring to Auburn after his troubles at Ole Miss, I am here to settle you down. He’s a different man than he was then. I know firsthand. When we met in 2018 while I was working on a feature about him during his darkest days when he was unemployed, I asked him what he would do different if he got a second chance at coaching.
Curious, I question him on how he would handle being the head of a football program if given another chance. As he does with all of my questions, he doesn’t hold back, laying out part of a plan that he hopes he soon will present to athletic directors looking for reasons to hire him.
He ponders the question again, drifting off with his thoughts. He looks at me and states, “I will be more determined.”
He even admitted that he might have been in over his head during his days in Oxford. If you are afraid of him embarrassing the program, you shouldn’t be. Given another chance in the SEC, he’s not going to make the same mistakes twice. While many may consider him a hypocrite because of his failings while also being so upfront about his religious beliefs, stop it. Everyone makes mistakes in life. He has paid his penance for it, most importantly to his family
His building of Liberty into a top-25 team in just two seasons has been nothing but astounding. He has taken a roster of players that were overlooked by other FBS schools and won big, including a huge victory at Virginia Tech this past season.
More importantly, he has taken an Auburn and Gus Malzahn castoff in Malik Willis and turned him into an offensive machine. All of the things that Auburn said Willis couldn’t do, he has done.
We have seen what he can do at Ole Miss and, yes, while recruiting violations will always overshadow his tenure there, there is still one truth: he won. He won like the Rebels had hardly ever seen. He beat Alabama two years in a row including in Bryant-Denny Stadium. He beat the snot out of Kirby Smart and Georgia. Doesn’t that sound appealing to you considering the Tigers record against the Bulldogs recently?
His players truly love him. Attending practices as his guest at Liberty over the past year, I have seen the affection that the men who play for him have not only for Freeze but for the entire coaching staff. I’m basically a nobody but each and every player greeted me with a “Hello, sir.” Hey, hanging out with the head coach has some advantages, I suppose.
I’m not the only person endorsing him as ESPN’s Kirk Herbstreit came out in favor of the Tigers going with Freeze.
“To me, I think you have to look at Hugh Freeze,” Herbstreit said. “I think you have to look at what he went through at Ole Miss, how he’s owned that, how he’s talked about that. You have to come to grips with that. You have to see if you can come to grips with that. And if you can, then you hire him — because he’s got an offense. He’s got a system. I think he is very different than Gus offensively even though they get labeled from the same coaching tree and coaching branch. I think he’s different in the pass game. I think he’s got a way about him. He competes. He’s done very well against (Alabama head coachNick Saban in recruiting and competing against him. I don’t know. That’s who I would look at.”
There’s no reason he shouldn’t be given a chance to come and win at Auburn. And trust me, he would win. He would be the slam-dunk hire that we all were expecting once the powers that be paid $21 million to fire Gus Malzahn, ironically one of Freeze’s good friends.
This is how I described Freeze in the final part of my 2018 feature:
Publicly, he is a football coach who can be outspoken about his beliefs; a man who uses his fame to advance his platform; and a man who was part of a major investigation into his football program that led to violations and his eventual firing for personal transgressions.
Privately, you find the person who people cling to, a man who friends describe as a very genuine person through good and bad and someone whose sense of humor will have you crying in laughter. He’s a man who sticks to his conviction but would never judge others because he has his struggles as well, some that became extremely public. He’s charismatic, self-deprecating and has so many other assets that you appreciate in a human being.
Don’t make this more complicated than it is, Auburn. A man who is ready and prepared for the job is just waiting for the call and, if the Tigers don’t grab him, some SEC school will soon. Don’t let the opportunity pass by.