The Auburn Tigers are still seen as a potential entry into the mass firing spree taking place across college football. Saturday Down South's David Wasson mentioned the possibility of AU firing Hugh Freeze after the upcoming home game against the Kentucky Wildcats in Week 10.
Wasson also made the case that the Tigers are already behind the Arkansas Razorbacks, among other SEC schools they would've naturally been behind like the Florida Gators and LSU Tigers, during the hiring cycle because of their reluctance to fire Freeze.
"Even if Auburn were to lose to Kentucky at home on Saturday and show Freeze the door on Sunday, the Tigers are looking up at the Razorbacks in the imaginary “Coaching Opening Value” metric. Auburn boosters might be well-heeled, but they aren’t Wal Mart-level well-heeled – which is to say that the Hogs can and will be able to NIL-spend circles around Auburn moving forward whether Freeze survives the weekend and season or not," Wasson wrote.
"That COV metric also doesn’t take into account future openings that could happen at Florida State (we are looking at you, Mike Norvell), Wisconsin (ditto, Luke Fickell), Michigan State (we had to look up Jonathan Smith to prove he still exists), Kentucky (Mark Stoops is far from out of the woods) and South Carolina (not much to crow about with Shane Beamer).
"The longer Auburn waits to fire Freeze, the longer it waits to dive into the pool with everyone else fighting for what you gotta figure would be a diminishing amount of desirable coaches. The longer Auburn waits to go all-in on shoving Freeze all-out on the Plains, the less value that job retains."
Auburn has given no inclination Hugh Freeze will be fired
Wasson is speaking about the Kentucky game like the Wildcats have a chance of an upset. Las Vegas oddsmakers don't know everything, but it's worth noting that they see Auburn as a double-digit favorite against UK.
Firing Freeze after a winning streak would be, to say the least, weird. Especially with bowl eligibility almost a guarantee.
Once it became known that the powers that be on the Plains viewed the Oklahoma Sooners and Georgia Bulldogs losses as asterisks at worst and wins at best, Freeze's job became safe. And with benching Jackson Arnold for Ashton Daniels, and immediately seeing success, there's hope that a different style of dual-threat quarterbacking could create different results.
Freeze probably isn't going anywhere, barring catastrophe against Kentucky, the Vanderbilt Commodores, or heaven forbid, the Mercer Bears. Auburn has made its bed, and it will likely sleep in it.
Who knows? If Freeze can have an Eli Drinkwitz-like year four, maybe some dreams can be realized.