Bama Hammer's Ronald Evans wouldn't side with the Crimson Tide-based X account that accused Auburn football head coach Hugh Freeze of stealing NIL funds from the baseball team for his own program; instead choosing to side with the truth and denying it.
"Maybe Auburn's pockets are not deep enough to meet all the needs of the football program," Evans prefaced before saying, "Which leads back to the current rumor. It is that a million dollars of money was reallocated from Auburn baseball to Auburn football. The rumor did not state if the dollars were part of the Auburn University budget or a reallocation of NIL resources. My quick take is to doubt the rumor because it seems implausible that Auburn Football would be so short of cash that it needed an extra million."
One Alabama account tried to push a lack of alignment nightmare scenario behind the scenes on the Plains that a source close to the program told Crain & Company's Jake Crain that it was false.
"Claims that Freeze has burned through the football program’s collective fund have left the powers that be at Auburn unhappy with the head football coach," the Alabama troll account prefaced before saying, "To make matters worse, there is word that Freeze reallocated $1 million from the baseball fund to spend on commitment and visitation expenses for football recruits."
Hugh Freeze spending Auburn football NIL dollars but not enough to think he was stealing funds
Freeze is not being frugal at the helm of the Tigers, but he's not such a crazy spender that you'd have to assume he was stealing funds from elsewhere to make it all work. The idea that he was spending big on recruiting visits isn't far-fetched, but we're acting like the program's boosters don't have the kind of pockets to pay for those visits too.
Freeze balked at signing a QB from the transfer portal for $1 million. He's not running up an impossible tab in his first few seasons at AU before proving himself on the field first.