National college football writer gives Auburn football's Hugh Freeze hire a 'B+'
We need football practices to start already.
There's nothing on the college football calendar at the moment - National Signing Day isn't until February 1st (and most of the top prospects are already off the board, having signed early) and spring practice hasn't started yet. College football writers are trying to find something to talk about.
With the coaching carousel over, Stewart Mandel of The Athletic has gone ahead and put out his annual column grading all of the coaching changes ($) in this cycle, from Colorado to UAB (an "F" for Trent Dilfer). It's not incredibly deep - three or four sentences concerning each team - but it is an interesting window into an outsider's perception of the changes on each campus.
Coming in with the highest grade, A+, was Colorado's hiring of Deion Sanders from Jackson State. The NFL Hall-of-Fame cornerback's selection was deemed a "home run" by Mandel, since it generated excitement for a program that hasn't been nationally relevant since they split a national championship with Georgia Tech (another rumored suitor for "Coach Prime") in 1990.
For Auburn, they got the 5th highest grade in all of the Power 5, behind Colorado, Wisconsin (an "A" for Cincinnati's Luke Fickell), Louisville ("A" for Purdue's Jeff Brohm), and Nebraska ("A-" for former Carolina Panthers HC Matt Rhule).
But yet, many Auburn fans won't be happy with the 5th place score, or the actual letter grade: B-
Because Mandel explained why, and it's a telling window into the outsider's perspective of Auburn as a disjointed program with too much booster influence and meddling.
Here's the quote, in full:
Auburn (B+): Liberty coach Hugh Freeze. From a pure football standpoint, there’s not much to argue here. Freeze won (and cheated) at Ole Miss, where he became a thorn in Nick Saban’s side, and won again at Liberty. But ethically, his hire definitely feels icky, and the fact Auburn fans weren’t universally behind it led me to downgrade from a possible A- to B+. I would not be surprised if he proves me wrong.
Is it true that not everyone was on board with the Hugh Freeze hire? Of course, because no fanbase ever is. Is it true that most, if not all, of the reasons people didn't like the Hugh Freeze hire pertain to off the field issues? Again, yes.
But it's frustrating to see the words "icky" and "cheated" to describe your football coach, and that's what everyone is reacting to.
And when there's no games being played, it's easy for everyone to get sidetracked with other concerns. But the fact is, the program is getting better. Workouts are more intense. Recruiting, the lifeblood of a program, is leaps and bounds better than it was under the previous coaching staff, whether you're talking transfer portal or preps.
But until games are being played, expect most of the outside "noise" to be about non-football concerns. As Hugh Freeze said in his introductory press conference:
“I’ve come to grips with everybody doesn’t know me, everybody doesn’t care to get to know me,” Freeze said. “And everybody has an opinion and they’re entitled to that." Freeze went on to say the “ones I care about” are the Auburn players, the administration and my family. “They’re the ones that matter,” he said.
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