Auburn is hiring Hugh Freeze as its next head coach, sources tell RossDellenger
’s winding search for a head football coach ended with the hiring on Monday of Freeze, the Liberty coach who while holding an impressive on-field record was fired in 2017 at Ole Miss amid NCAA and personal scandal, a source toldThe 53-year-old Freeze, who has just one losing season in 12 years as a college coach, makes a long-awaited return to arguably the country’s most powerful league, completing Auburn’s overhaul of its football program with a splashy hire of a sometimes-polarizing figure...
Freeze’s contract details are unclear. Auburn is expected to owe Liberty about $3 million in buyout money for hiring the coach, a source confirmed to SI. Although he’s been courted for bigger jobs in the recent past—even at Auburn in 2020—Freeze’s off-the-field issues at Ole Miss kept many programs from hiring him. While in Oxford, Miss., Freeze presided over a program sanctioned for NCAA rule-breaking and embarrassed over an extramarital scandal that emerged in the summer of ’17.
The marriage with Auburn makes plenty of sense. One of Freeze’s daughters, Jordan, attended Auburn and still lives there. Freeze and his wife, Jill, have long discussed eventually building a retirement home on a lake near Auburn. “To my knowledge, I’ve tried, with anybody I could, I made sure they knew that if I hurt them I was sorry, but it’s time to move on,” he said. “How many times can we write about it? How many times can we talk about it? I said I was wrong. I’ve paid a price. My family paid a heck of a price. When can we move on?”In the winter of 2018, Freeze said that both Gus Malzahn at Auburn and Saban at Alabama approached him about joining their staffs.
Nestled in a fertile recruiting footprint with a deep football history and abundant resources, Auburn has for years been the victim of its own internal dysfunction. Cohen and Freeze arrive at a place that is one of the more fractured in the country, often hindered by heavily involved boosters and board members. For years, the authority at Auburn has come from those outside of the athletic department, using their power and authority to insert themselves into decisions and sway movement.
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