The Auburn Tigers have hired Liberty head football coach Hugh Freeze to be the new head of their football program. Hugh Freeze will be making his return to the SEC for the first time since he was fired from Ole Miss in July of 2017. Freeze has been with Liberty since 2018 and has had incredible success that no one expected from the Liberty Flames. Since 2019, Freeze has gone 34-15 with Liberty, even going 10-1 in 2020. Now, Freeze will make his unlikely return to the SEC in blue and orange.
Controversy and Scandal
Freeze has had trouble avoiding scandals in the past. His resignation from Ole Miss was a result of one of the biggest scandals in school history. It started when Ole Miss was investigated by the NCAA and was found to have given impermissible benefits to players. Things such as car loans and cash. With NIL making waves in college athletics, that doesn’t sound like a big deal.
However, at the time, it was a huge deal. The NCAA passed down numerous sanctions, including a two-year ban from the post-season and a four-year ban on some scholarships. Freeze was also found to have made phone calls to a number associated with a female escort service. All of this culminated in Freeze resigning before Ole Miss could fire him. The entire situation was a circus for the Ole Miss football program, and most considered Freeze blacklisted from the SEC.
Freeze did well avoiding scandal at Liberty, until he didn’t. In a way, Liberty set themselves up for scandal. Not only had they hired Hugh Freeze, who was fresh off a recent scandal, but they also hired Ian McCaw, who was the former athletic director at Baylor and had resigned due to a sexual assault scandal.
The controversy involving Freeze started when it was revealed that he sent several direct messages to a woman named Chelsea Andrews. At the time, Andrews was part of a lawsuit against Liberty for the mishandling of her sexual assault case and was very critical of the universities decision to hire McCaw.
Andrews has recently warned Auburn about Freeze in an email detailing her concern. Andrews says she hasn’t received a response from Auburn and was never contacted about the controversy when Auburn was in their vetting process.
Needless to say, Auburn is taking a risk hiring Freeze. Auburn is known as a dysfunctional program who has trouble keeping its donors from forcing decisions on the program. However, Auburn is very much so in a “win at all costs” state, and the best man for the job might just be Hugh Freeze.
Going Against Saban
The Alabama Crimson Tide are the premier football program in the country. Naturally it is hard for any program to be in the same conference as the college football juggernaut. But to be in the same state is a whole different animal. For Auburn fans, it is all about beating Alabama.
Everything you do over the course of an entire season is done with the Iron Bowl in mind. It’s fair to say that Alabama lives rent-free in the minds of the Auburn faithful. So, there is always a tremendous amount of pressure on Auburn head coaches to be better than the best to ever do it, Nick Saban. However, Hugh Freeze is no stranger to besting the Crimson Tide.
Freeze is actually one of the few coaches to beat Nick Saban and Alabama twice in a row. Currently, Freeze holds a record of 2-3 against Saban, but the two wins he has were no fluke. In 2014, Freeze and the Rebels took down Saban 23-17. That year ended up being one of Ole Miss’s most successful. The Rebels were ranked third in the country in the first-ever college football playoff rankings and ended the season ranked number 17 with a record on 9-4. That season Ole Miss go off to a hot 7-0 start and defeated both number three ranked Alabama and number 14 ranked Texas A&M. The following season, 2015, Freeze and the Rebels beat Nick Saban and Alabama once again 43-37 in the third game of the season. The Crimson Tide were ranked number two at the time.
Hugh Freeze is also no stranger to upsets. Not only has he upset Alabama as head coach of Ole Miss, but he also led Liberty to a dominating victory of BYU which was followed by a big upset win over Arkansas. The Flames beat the Razorbacks 21-19; something Freeze was unable to accomplish during his time at Ole Miss.
As stated before, Hug Freeze may be a risky hire for Auburn. But if the Tigers are looking for a coach who can win, Hugh Freeze may have been the best man to hire. Freeze will have his work cut out for him in his first year at Auburn. He will take on some of the top teams in the SEC in LSU, Ole Miss, Georgia and, of course, Alabama.
