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topicnews · October 25, 2024

Auburn football’s acquisition of Hugh Freeze was a smart move

Auburn football’s acquisition of Hugh Freeze was a smart move

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  • When Auburn hired Hugh Freeze, it made a particularly good decision: the escape hatch was easy to find.
  • If Auburn fires Hugh Freeze, his buyout payments could be spread out over more than four years.
  • Hugh Freeze’s recruiting momentum could give him a third season even if Auburn languishes on the field.

When Auburn hired Hugh Freeze, it made a particularly good decision: the escape hatch was easy to find.

As Freeze languishes on the Plains, his buyout after this season would total $20.3 million. If you think this protects Freeze, you don’t know Auburn.

Auburn isn’t known for its level-headed approach to coaching, but it cleverly structured Freeze’s acquisition. How come? Something like this: If Auburn fires Freeze, the company could spread its financial obligations to him in monthly payments over the remainder of his contract, which runs through the 2028 season.

In other words, don’t think of the cost of firing Freeze as a huge flood of money.

Instead, think of it as an annual hit of less than $4.9 million for the next four years.

That’s a manageable expense for a strong SEC athletic department, especially when it comes to swapping Freeze for a better coach. Costs of doing business.

Athletic departments typically get whipped at the contract negotiating table, but structuring Freeze’s deal with a smart exit path shows intellectual maturity on Auburn’s part.

Hugh Freeze struggles to match Bryan Harsin’s low bar set

When Auburn released Gus Malzahn (transfer fee: $21.5 million) and Bryan Harsin (transfer fee: $15.6 million), the contracts required Auburn to pay half of their transfer fee to the fired coach within 30 days of their firing to pay.

That gave Auburn great financial success up front and still fired Malzahn and Harsin, two coaches who outperformed Freeze.

Auburn’s bills to Malzahn are paid. Under the terms of his contract, Harsin remains on the hook for around $4 million.

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If Freeze wins his next game – Auburn (2-5) plays at Kentucky (3-4) on Saturday – he will have the same record as Harsin when Auburn sacked the Idaho invader on Halloween in his second season.

The freezing point is 8-12. His second season looks worse than his first. When Auburn hired Freeze, he had only experienced one losing season. He’s on pace for two straight losing seasons at Auburn.

“It’s disappointing for the Auburn family,” Freeze said.

Auburn’s family doesn’t handle disappointment well.

What’s most concerning is that this former offensive guru is leading an offense that is one of the SEC’s worst.

How bad could this get? Well, Auburn’s five remaining opponents all have better records than the Tigers. The last time Auburn won fewer than five games was in 2012. Gene Chizik was fired this year, two years after Chizik won a national championship.

Auburn keeps finding new ways to lose. Freeze’s Tigers led Missouri for most of the second half Saturday in Columbia before MU marched 95 yards for the game-winning score.

“It makes you sick, physically sick, when you don’t get to the finish line,” Freeze said.

This coaching carousel should be relatively quiet. If Auburn opened, it would be the best job on the market. If Auburn waits and fires Freeze next year, it would likely enter a more crowded carousel.

Best argument for Auburn football to keep Hugh Freeze: Recruiting

When Auburn hired Freeze, I thought he would be an improvement over Harsin for three reasons: He would improve an offense that had been stagnant for years; it would encourage recruitment; and he should better integrate into Auburn’s culture.

The first point turned out to be wrong. Freeze hasn’t fixed Auburn’s quarterback problems, and its offense remains as bad as it was with Harsin and as bad as Malzahn’s last season.

Freeze meshes well with Auburn right up to the last point – when he starts winning. But all the handshakes and Southern catchphrases in the world won’t save him if he keeps losing.

What could save Freeze for at least another year? His recruiting class. In this regard, he is a marked improvement over Harsin, an ineffective recruiter unsuited to the NIL era.

Auburn’s class ranks fifth nationally in the 247Sports Composite. Keep an eye on this ranking. If casualties mount and some recruits leave the service, the argument for keeping Freeze becomes moot.

Either way, the strength of a school’s NIL collective influences recruiting as much as a coach’s, and a coaching change wouldn’t necessarily ruin a class at a school where a strong collective exists. Consider that Texas A&M committed a top-20 class last year, a month after Jimbo Fisher was fired.

If Freeze keeps losing and the Auburn boosters think they can keep most of the class together without him, what’s to prevent a firing? Don’t think the answer lies in Freeze buying the company.

Auburn paid more — and faster — to fire a better coach than Freeze.

Blake Toppmeyer is the national college football columnist for the USA TODAY Network. Email him at BToppmeyer@gannett.com and follow him on Twitter @btoppmeyer.

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