Auburn Tigers football coach Hugh Freeze's hot seat just continues to get hotter as the 2025 season approaches.
August 1 has come and gone without any recruiting fireworks, despite Freeze and AU AD John Cohen promising that there'd be significant noise with the shift in NIL regulation. Ultimately, third-party collectives were banned and unbanned, with additional oversight from the government being the compromise.
Not only that, but the expectations are finally at contention for the College Football Playoff after several recruiting cycles of top-20 talent infusions. ESPN's Heather Dinich went as far as claiming Auburn and the Alabama Crimson Tide are both nine-win teams.
If the Tigers can't overcome a tough early schedule that includes the Baylor Bears in Week 1, and the Oklahoma Sooners, Texas A&M Aggies, and Georgia Bulldogs over a four-week span from September 20 to October 11, Paul Finebaum is calling for Freeze to be fired.
"Finebaum believes that if Freeze does not perform well in the upcoming four games against the Baylor Bears, Oklahoma Sooners, Texas A&M Aggies and Georgia Bulldogs, three of which are on the road, he could be fired as the head coach," relayed Athlon Sports' Jaron Spor.
Finebaum believes the past few months have ratcheted up the pressure.
"I think Hugh Freeze is under more pressure than we thought maybe a couple of months ago," Finebaum said on "The Paul Finebaum Show." "If you look at the schedule, there are at least four games in the first half that are incredibly challenging. How does he do with those four?"
Freeze has undoubtedly taken the shovel and started digging his own grave over the past few months.
Between his obsessive golfing habit and claiming the goal for the 2025 season is just making a bowl game, it's almost as if he's accepting his long-term fate.
Beat just one of the Bears, Sooners, Aggies, or Bulldogs, and this conversation could go away.
We'll see how bad Freeze and his players want that, or if they are even capable of making that happen.