Hugh Freeze left the Auburn Tigers with a 15-19 overall record and a 6-16 mark against SEC competition. Freeze also left fans believing that refining his golf game always meant more to him than meaningfully rebuilding Auburn's football program.
CBS Sports' Brad Crawford recently looked at all the fired head coaches from the 2025 coaching cycle. Crawford put Freeze in the "Put out an APB on these guys" category and joked that Freeze was last seen on a golf course.
"Auburn moved on from Freeze in November after he compiled a 15-19 record and failed to return the Tigers to relevance as quickly as promised. Offensive execution was a major issue. Before hiring former USF coach Alex Golesh, Auburn conducted its third coaching search since 2020, the most of any SEC program during that span," Crawford wrote.
Freeze is a meme now among his peers after word got out last summer that he was a frequent guest at the Auburn University Club and Moore's Mill Golf Club and that his golfing may have been getting in the way of his coaching. Scoring three points against the Kentucky Wildcats at Jordan-Hare Stadium pretty much unilaterally proved that to be true.
To be fair, Freeze is a great golfer. Stick him in the American Century Championship with Charles Barkley, and he'd probably clean up at the Edgewood Tahoe Resort. And to be fair, Freeze is, for the most part, a good coach. It just seems he didn't give the same level of effort at AU that he did with the Ole Miss Rebels during his five seasons in his native Oxford, Mississippi.
Was Freeze a mole on the Rebs' behalf? If Pete Golding flames out in Lane Kiffin's shadow and the program revisits Freeze afterwards, well, you'd have to keep that open as a possibility. Freeze is undoubtedly better than the efforts he gave in East Central Alabama. Bryan Harsin has since proved that himself with the Cal Golden Bears.
Alex Golesh has an easy act to follow due to his lack of golfing interest
Freeze's locker room was somehow less chaotic than Harsin's. Sure, the players did whatever they wanted, but that's better than the accusations slung at Harsin for the culture that he fostered behind the scenes.
Alex Golesh is walking into an even easier situation in some ways, since the bar is so low from a work ethic standpoint. Freeze recruited his tail off but left it at that. Golesh is recruiting well, but he could prove that his practices make perfect, or at least closer to perfect than the Tigers have been in a long time.
Sure, the weight of finally snapping the losing malaise is present. There will be patient fans that know that Rome wasn't built in a day, though. As difficult as managing expectations and feelings will be, it's easy to become likable for Golesh by just working hard.
Golesh is doing the right things, including sharing his lack of interest in golf. He could get right what Freeze couldn't, and it'll be easier to since Golesh knows exactly where his predecessor went wrong.
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