In today's edition of Auburn Tigers News, head coach Hugh Freeze mentions tampering with younger players and talks about maintaining the 2025 recruiting roster
It's a new day in college football, one that has seen the rise of NIL and the transfer portal and the downfall of letters of intent and many traditional recruiting methods. For coaches who have built their recruiting reputations on building relationships and signing players who intend to stay at the school for the whole four years, changes have had to be made.
Even though there are more tools than ever in recruiting, there are always shady attempts that may or may not fly under the radar and Auburn football head coach Hugh Freeze spoke about it on Tiger Talk earlier this week, per Auburn Rivals.
"We live in a world today ... where all of our top kids are getting calls from top schools. It's filthy, it's dirty, I think it's crazy. The temptation is for them to listen to voices ... that care about immediate gratification. We're trying to do our best to educate and obviously develop those real relationships with them that last those tests. It's going to be tested. We'll find out ... in a little while what's real and what's not. It could be very, very sad and disappointing. If so, we'll regroup and go find other players. You sure would like to think there's still a group of guys that want to stick with a process of helping the school I chose rebuild itself."
Maintaining the 2025 recruiting roster
While the coaches are charged with keeping their players out of the transfer portal, they are also charged with keeping the commits solid in their pledge to the Tigers until signing day. Auburn football landed the #8 recruiting class last season, but despite massive roster improvements, the team is facing a lot of adversity on the field.
How do you still recruit at a high level and sell kids on the future of the program when you fail to achieve the desired results on the field? According to Hugh Freeze, it's all about recruiting the right kind of players who are truly buying in to the vision.
“That’s why they want to come here," Freeze said, per AL.com. “Yeah, you can go to the places that are currently doing it, or you can help restore one that’s proven it can also do it.
“Obviously the battles for the guys we want are never over and we’ve got to continue to fight for that, but I feel like we’re in a pretty good position hopefully to finish strong with another top-five-ish class."