Auburn football head coach Hugh Freeze casted doubt on Trent Dilfer's decision to allow his UAB players to join the Jim Cavale-sponsored Athletes.org; something Dilfer reportedly proposed to his Blazers roster.
“I would need to see the details of that to see,” Freeze said (h/t On3). “I think there’s a lot of discussion that needs to be had toward things like that, but there’s also some tricky issues that I don’t think the players really want either.
“I’m on both sides of, hey, let’s make it right. So, I really don’t know all the details of that to really comment on it, but I do think we need to head toward where hopefully all of this can be in-house and they can be under contract and it can be beneficial for both sides and have some structure around it. I think that’s probably where Trent is trying to head, but as we’ve seen, as soon as you make a decision rash and you don’t think it all through, there’s, ‘Aw heck,’ and ‘We didn’t think about that,’ and this thing really needs to be thoroughly discussed and hopefully finding some solutions to put some structure around it."
Hugh Freeze reluctant to get too involved in NIL since becoming Auburn football head coach
Freeze admitted to being reluctant to getting involved in bidding wars via the transfer portal and has largely been tight-lipped about his opinions on the modern state of recruiting in the NIL in general; not going the Nick Saban/Dabo Swinney route of opposing it but certainly not embracing it in the same way Steve Sarkisian, Ryan Day, and Jim Harbaugh have.
And it makes sense. At Ole Miss, Freeze was charged with numerous recruiting violations by the NCAA, four of them being the most severe level (Level 1) of violations, so he may not want to be involved too heavily in the NIL system until he knows the rules and regulations.
It's on the NCAA to make those clear, which so far they haven't. Hence the trepidation about what Dilfer did with his players at UAB.