Hugh Freeze shares brutal admission on Auburn football's turnover in the transfer portal
Hugh Freeze knows he won't bring back his entire Auburn football roster in 2025. Freeze shared choice words about the current NIL-fueled transfer portal-heavy offseason college football has every year since 2021.
He also stressed the importance of the OnToVictory NIL Collective on his program's ability to lure top talent to the Plains.
"We would be very, very foolish to think their phones aren't ringing," Freeze said of his current players on November 11 (h/t Auburnundercover). "I don't like it. I don't like that part of the new world we're in. I don't know any coach that does. Everybody thinks they're an agent now. When you're playing as many young kids as we are that are very talented that we signed in the '24 class, their phones are going to ring. I wish they wouldn't take the calls. That's probably a little naive of me also. I don't run from it.
"We have open dialogue and depend a lot on our OnToVictory people and our personnel department to try to handle some of those conversations that I truthfully don't want to be in at all during the season. It's very hard for me if I had to do all those conversations and then walk out on the field and try to coach for the next game when I know what's really going through everybody's mind. It helps me some to stay out of those right now. I'm sure I'll have to get into some in December. I'm depending a lot on OnToVictory. Jason Campbell does a great job with that and our personnel department are handling a lot of those discussions."
Hugh Freeze banking on OnToVictory to keep his Auburn football coaching job
Follow the money. If the program isn't being supported by its donors to the fullest extent and isn't producing a groundswell of support from fans either, the man in charge of inspiring funding the team won't have job security.
Thus far, Freeze has been empowered to spend big. But if outbound flips and portal losses mount up in the offseason, there's a chance a buyout that can be spread out over the next half-decade can be worth it to get a new CEO.
There's no signs of that just yet. Any future sign will cause a stir, though.