Since taking over as head coach of the Auburn Tigers football team, Hugh Freeze has a record of 11-14 and is 0-2 in the Iron Bowl. That’s not the kind of thing that’s going to cut it around there.
It’s not helping matters that, according to 247Sports’ composite rankings, Auburn currently has the lowest-rated SEC 2026 recruiting class.
Making matters even worse was Matt Stahl’s article in AL.com last month, which noted that Freeze played a lot of golf in June, a month in which the program lost several blue-chip prospects.
According to Stahl, Freeze “posted 10 rounds since the start of June, and has maxed out the number of public rounds that the [USGA’s GHIN database] will show at one time, meaning he’s over 20 for the calendar year.”
Freeze is hardly the only coach hitting the links during the offseason, but the optics aren’t great given the situation Auburn football finds itself in.
Freeze was a guest on David Pollack’s See Ball Get Ball podcast last week, where he defended his prodigious golf play and said that it had no bearing on his work as a coach or recruiter.
“I know that this is that time where people are looking for things to write about, and I do love golf. I enjoy playing,” Freeze said, via BroBible. “But what people don’t realize is, I assure you, I never missed a camp day or a recruiting day. But if camp got over at three o’clock one day, and Jill [Freeze] and I go out at 4:30, we absolutely might do that. I’m not apologizing for that part of it. My focus is one hundred percent on getting Auburn in that win column this fall.”
Freeze also made sure to blame his program’s poor recruiting numbers on NIL, noting “a lot of people right now that are operating under a different set of rules.”
Freeze certainly has a way with words. Last season, he threw his players under the bus following a loss to Oklahoma and claimed his Tigers would beat Arkansas 9 times out of 10 following a loss to the Razorbacks. He’s also said many more unsavory things as well.
About Sean Keeley
Along with writing for Awful Announcing and The Comeback, Sean is the Managing Editor for Comeback Media. Previously, he created the Syracuse blog Troy Nunes Is An Absolute Magician and wrote 'How To Grow An Orange: The Right Way to Brainwash Your Child Into Rooting for Syracuse.' He has also written non-Syracuse-related things for SB Nation, Curbed, and other outlets. He currently lives in Seattle where he is complaining about bagels. Send tips/comments/complaints to sean@thecomeback.com.