Highland Home product Keldric Faulk admitted at last week’s Alabama Sports Writers Association’s annual Mr. Football banquet that he flipped from Florida State to Auburn football due to the coaching change of Bryan Harsin being replaced by Hugh Freeze.
Faulk has few regrets about staying in-state — Highland Home is south of Montgomery and just west of Troy, Alabama — over joining Mike Norvell’s Seminoles staff in Tallahassee — even proudly proclaiming he’s glad to be an Auburn man.
He explained his decision without naming Harsin specifically:
"“Auburn was really my No. 1 school for two or three years in a row, but there were certain coaching changes that just didn’t fit me personnel-wise. When coach Freeze came in and gave me the opportunity to come look at everything, I took the chance, and I really enjoyed my last visit. I took the time to really think of my decision, and I really felt like Auburn was for me.”"
The new Auburn football is winning recruits over that Bryan Harsin’s staff lost
A number of Auburn football transfer portal entries during the dying days of Bryan Harsin’s tenure have returned under the new regime. Among them are Landen King and Tar’Varish Dawson, two bigger receivers who were projected to do bigger things than they ended up doing in 2022.
Locker room strife defined the Harsin era on the Plains, but Hugh Freeze seems to be shifting the culture and selling recruits that were previously bearish on what previous leadership was offering. Just take a look at how Faulk spoke about the new staff:
"“It was just me building the relationship with those guys for maybe two weeks and how I connected with them. It was like I’d known them for a couple of years.”"
Freeze is winning in an area Harsin struggled mightily at: likeability, which in turn, brings top talent to the program.