Auburn Tigers football coach Hugh Freeze had a display of anger and frustration at practice on Thursday as Jackson Arnold held onto the ball and didn't make a throw during a team drill. It got so bad that Freeze threw his visor down.
That video is gone. Stormin' in Norman's Dekota Gregory believes AU is responsible for the video's disappearance from social media.
"Auburn likely pressured the reporter to delete the post as Freeze has already made it clear that the program is trying to coddle Arnold. It's not the first leak out of Auburn's fall camp that Arnold has been struggling, and Freeze even admitted recently that the defense was told to take it easy on Arnold," Gregory wrote.
Auburn University's athletic department is tight-lipped about Freeze. When it comes to football, there is no open access to just any interested media member. Pro-Freeze media members get preferential treatment. The basketball decision-makers behind the scenes act in lockstep with football's.
It'll be interesting to see if there are any repercussions for posting this video for Gunner Norene of Auburn On SI.
As for the school forcing him to take it down? That's a tough one. AU has had people like Richard Spencer speak on campus back in 2017 to exhibit their freedom of speech. It's hard to imagine pressuring a reporter to take down a video from practice, even if there's allegedly context missing. That'd fly in the face of any freedom of speech concerns the school has ever had.
The Auburn Creed is about believing in honesty and truthfulness, after all. Video proof is the opposite of a lie.
As for Norene being harassed by enough fans to take it down because of how it makes the program look? Now that is a much likelier reality.