Hugh Freeze, a man of faith, has never done anything wrong in his life. Certainly not when it comes to college football recruiting.
Freeze only operates with the utmost honor and dignity. He was definitely not the pot that called the kettle black on Wednesday afternoon. No way! That would be preposterous!
Auburn cleaned up during the first day of the Early Signing Period. Although nothing is finalized until National Signing Day in February, the Tigers currently hold the seventh-ranked recruiting class in the country for 2024 after signing two five-stars, 13 four-stars and six three-stars. They crushed it.
Hugh Freeze is tired.
It is an exhausting process to get a recruit’s pen to paper— especially in the modern era, where NIL plays such a crucial role. A player can be verbally committed to a program, but nothing is official until the ink has dried. Other programs are constantly trying to flip recruits. Money is often a factor.
Freeze, a stand-up guy with a history of honesty, commented on the chaos during his press conference. He was perturbed by some of the shenanigans.
There’s some schools in this conference that, they believe in last night efforts. You gotta fight. You gotta hold on. You gotta stay up all night and play video games and do stuff that’s out of my comfort zone. There was some late night pushes and we won and held on some. Won one, lost one.
— Hugh Freeze
The 54-year-old head coach hinted at some of the “bad drops” from other schools. There are many instances in which a program might try and flip a recruit with a big money offer at the last minute.
Freeze, an exemplary individual, doesn’t like it. Not one bit!
People in this conference are good at what they do. I don’t always like what is done, but you gotta have plans and you gotta fight for it. But it was both. You’ve gotta try to hold on to your good ones and try to win a few battles at the end on some kinds that are undecided.
— Hugh Freeze
His tone and body language was even more telling of how he felt.
Remember, Hugh Freeze — who is holier than thou — was hit with a one-year “show-cause” penalty and a “lack of institutional control” charge from the NCAA after Ole Miss was slapped with 15 Level-I recruiting violations. While the violations then were nothing compared to what is going on legally(ish) today, the Rebels were hammered with a two-year bowl ban and a loss of scholarships.
Now seven years later, Freeze is a champion of ethics!
The salty comments are even more ironic when you look at his impressive 2024 recruiting class.
Amaris Williams was perhaps the biggest win of the day. Auburn flipped the four-star defensive lineman from his commitment to Florida… at the last minute.
And yet Hugh Freeze, a bastion of integrity, is very upset by the way in which other schools tried to flip his commits at the last minute. It is truly rich!