From the 2023 SEC Spring Meetings in Destin, Florida, Auburn football head coach Hugh Freeze sent a strong message about his coaches being run into the ground from all of the work on the recruiting trail, in practice, and traveling to and from games: balance is needed.
https://twitter.com/CoachHughFreeze/status/1664296020694511618
Freeze was responding to a stat about college coaches working all seven days of the week for 44 weeks of the year from Alabama head coach Nick Saban, shared by ESPN’s Peter Burns on the bird app.
Evidently, the previous Auburn football coaching staff led by Bryan Harsin had the new Tigers administration working day and night to put out a competitive product onto the field during the 2023 season after nearly two years of severe under-recruitment on the Plains — with several prior cycles of underwhelming results under Gus Malzahn in key areas like the offensive trenches.
Auburn football head coach Hugh Freeze wants to preserve Deep South’s Oldest Rivalry
Count Freeze as one of the many people to want to see the Deep South’s Oldest Rivalry game between Auburn and Georgia continue once the SEC schedule gets upended by the end of SEC East/West divisions with Texas and Oklahoma’s arrivals in 2024. He told reporters in the Sunshine State (h/t Dawgs247) his inclination to want to be part of it but also noted his limited influence on what will happen to the rivalry.
“It goes back so far,” Freeze prefaced before saying, “It’s important that we give our fans and their fans that and that game remains vital to us. Now, what that looks like in respect to what is best for the Southeastern Conference, man, I don’t know. I’m not in those discussions. And I try not to. I have enough to worry about with everything on my plate.”
The college football world will have its eyes on this decision from Greg Sankey and the SEC brain trust. Profits feel like a good reason why the conference will preserve this pillar showdown.