Auburn football: Gus Malzahn’s UCF recruitment questioned with Big 12 move imminent

Former Auburn football head coach Gus Malzahn had his UCF recruitment questioned by 247Sports’ Late Kick host Josh Pate, who gave the Knights coach a B+ recruiting rating but also wondered if the program was ready for its 2023 Big 12 jump.

UCF finished with the 64th-ranked recruiting class in the nation, which put the AAC championship runner-ups squarely in the middle of the pack ahead of their inaugural Power Five season this coming fall.

While he acknowledges that the program has good momentum — outside of the Knights’ Military Bowl loss to Duke, at least — Pate scribed that he needs to see an improvement from Malzahn and UCF soon if they want to make good on his lofty championship expectations:

"“(The Knights) are not acquiring talent quite at the level they need to be acquiring it at to go to the Big 12 and compete at a high level. That doesn’t mean it won’t change, but when we look at the record and recruiting under Malzahn, their average recruiting ranking is in the 50s right now. I need it to be in the 20s.”"

Bama Hammer believes Hugh Freeze won’t reach recruiting heights with Auburn football that Gus Malzahn did

One of the hotter takes of the post-Hugh Freeze hiring media firestorm was Bama Hammer’s Ronald Evans claiming that Freeze won’t reach the recruiting heights that Malzahn did on the Plains.

Thus far, Freeze has already worked on adding starting-caliber talent along the offensive line and brought in experienced top level options from USF (RB Brian Battie) and Florida International (TE Rivaldo Fairweather) at the running back and tight end positions given the losses of Tank Bigsby and John Samuel Shenker.

It’s true that Malzahn had some notable recruiting wins during his time at AU, but Freeze has the NIL element as well as a program starving for success after two straight losing seasons under Bryan Harsin.

Evans’ statement could become cold very quickly.