Auburn 2023 becomes like Louisville in 2014 with Hugh Freeze running the show.
Matt Zemek, 16Powers.com.
Remember Louisville in 2014? Yes, the Cardinals are not an SEC program, but they were prominent in college football back then in a way they aren’t prominent now. Louisville is a mid-tier ACC program today, but nine and a half years ago, the Cardinals were in the AAC and a continuous threat to earn the Group of Five’s BCS/New Year’s Six bowl bid. In the 2012 season, Louisville did in fact make a BCS bowl, and it trounced the Florida Gators in the Sugar Bowl with Teddy Bridgewater under center. Louisville football was a big deal, so when UL coach Charlie Strong took the open head coaching job at Texas, Louisville needed a splashy hire to keep the program rolling.
It went with the splashy hire, and it hired a guy who had proven he could win a lot of games, but none of it felt good. It felt icky. Louisville hired Bobby Petrino a second time, this time after the Jessica Dorrell scandal at the University of Arkansas. Never mind the fact that Petrino blew up an athletic department at Arkansas. It wasn’t the affair with Dorrell which was the problem; the real mess stemmed from Petrino intervening in a hiring process in which Dorrell was being considered. That was the ultimate no-no from Petrino, far worse and more damaging than the affair itself. Petrino couldn’t control himself on many levels, but what happens in a person’s private life is one thing; that he meddled in university business and was manifestly unethical within the workings of a whole athletic department is what should have prevented him from ever coaching again. At the very least, Petrino never should have received a head coaching job. Coaching quarterbacks or receivers? Maybe. That wouldn’t be a huge reward for a man who had been near the top of his profession for several years, guiding Louisville to an Orange Bowl championship and Arkansas to a Sugar Bowl berth in the early 2010s.
A head coaching job at a prominent football school? That’s a reward. It’s not a right. It’s a privilege. Petrino received red-carpet treatment from Louisville despite his egregious sins and willful misconduct at Arkansas. Sure, Petrino knew how to design plays and coach quarterbacks, but it felt so awful for a lot of people in the college football industry that THIS guy was being given a second chance at a seven-figure job other more honorable candidates would have loved to have.
Louisville didn’t care.
Did the move work out perfectly? No. Louisville never did win another New Year’s Six bowl or conference championship. However, Lamar Jackson did win the 2016 Heisman Trophy under Petrino’s watch. The second act of Petrino at Louisville was not a far-reaching success, but it wasn’t a complete bust, either. Let’s put it this way: The episode did not serve as a deterrent for future schools when considering whom they should hire.
This brings us to Auburn and Hugh Freeze.
Yes, Freeze paid players at Ole Miss, and in many ways, his big mistake was not the paying of players itself but how poorly Freeze covered his tracks. Lots of SEC old-timers said something to the effect of, “If you’re going to cheat, be a professional at it, for gosh sakes!” Freeze wasn’t very professional at cheating, but that isn’t the icky part of his story. Freeze leaned hard into faith and character and strong principles as a coach, only for it to be revealed that he called an escort service while on a recruiting trip. As with Petrino at Arkansas, the tawdry personal life and the private sins of the flesh are a personal matter and not an indication of whether a man is fit to coach a football team. However, the public elevation of morals and faith certainly made Freeze a hypocrite in a way which undercuts a coach’s credibility. Had Freeze not made such a show of his faith, we wouldn’t be having this conversation now, much as we wouldn’t have had that same conversation at Ole Miss several years ago. Freeze – not the press or any outsiders – made character an issue. He then showed how little of it he had.
That wasn’t the full story, however.
The truest and most direct connection with Petrino at Arkansas was Hugh Freeze’s use of university time and university resources to do something so obviously (nakedly, shall we say?) bad. That was the bright red line Freeze crossed, much as Petrino had at Arkansas. It should have been disqualifying for a future tenure as a Power Five head coach.
Yet, nine years after Louisville didn’t care about any of that stuff with Petrino, here we are with Auburn University not caring about those same basic considerations and going with Freeze as its new coach.
Auburn could have made a run at Lane Kiffin. It could have made a run at other richly accomplished coaches (Willie Fritz, Matt Rhule) who had not soiled their reputations. There were other options.
Nope. Auburn went for the disgraced former coach – a coach who can definitely work wonders between the white painted lines on fall Saturdays, but who nevertheless had not earned or deserved this second chance.
We know that Hugh Freeze can coach ‘em up on Saturdays. He has beaten Nick Saban multiple times, making him on many levels the natural choice to restore Gus Malzahn’s anti-Saban success story. The Gus Bus defeated Saban on several occasions, and that’s what matters most on the Plains. We get it. The logic, strictly connected to football and removed from all other outside considerations, is unassailable. Yet, we live in a world where consequences and context are supposed to matter.
They didn’t for Auburn in 2023, much as they didn’t matter for Louisville in 2014.
Auburn is probably going to be very good again before too long. When that happens, it will be time to give Auburn’s players their due.
Hugh Freeze presiding over that improvement, though, will still feel icky. That point can’t be wiped away from this larger discussion. We have seen this movie before in major college football.
