AUBURN | In his five years as Ole Miss’ head coach, Hugh Freeze was 2-3 against Auburn.
He saw the Tigers win the national championship the year before he joined the league and saw AU’s incredible run to the SEC Championship and BCS national championship game in 2013.
Freeze has seen Auburn at the top of its game, which is one of the reasons he was surprised by the roster he inherited on Nov. 28 and equally surprised by the relative difficulty of restocking it.
Here’s how Auburn’s first-year head coach described it last week at SEC Media Days.
“I don't want to be negative. Just, it was off from what I believe an Auburn roster should look like,” said Freeze. “Recruiting has been a little more challenging than I thought for Auburn, because of what I believe Auburn should be and what it's proven it can be. It's, what, one of six teams that has played in two national championship games in the last 13 years or so? I mean, that's pretty recent.
“There's a lot of things we battle in recruiting a little bit that I don't think are true — any longer, anyway. It might have been before. I wasn't here. I don't know.”
Auburn’s recruiting failures over the final couple of years of Gus Malzahn’s tenure and the two disastrous years under Bryan Harsin have been covered extensively in this space and many others.
So AU’s roster issues at the end of the 2022 season come as no real surprise to anyone that’s been paying attention.
But the current recruiting obstacles are a bit unexpected.
Freeze followed up his statements by talking about AU’s current alignment being strong between him, athletic director John Cohen, president Chris Roberts and the Board of Trustees.
We know that hasn’t been the case for many years and really decades. And that disfunction among the AU administration has played a part in the football team’s inconsistencies and eventual decline.
That’s certainly not something a recruit would pick up on his own so it’s pretty clear it’s an angle opposing coaches are using against Auburn.
I don’t necessarily blame them. For example, a strong Auburn makes it much tougher for Alabama and Georgia to have the success they’re having right now.
But a strong Auburn certainly makes the SEC and the future 12-team college football playoff a lot more interesting. And a strong Auburn is exactly what Freeze is building.
He’s already made big strides in the transfer portal and recruiting over the last eight months, and can take some more big steps forward in the 2024 and ’25 classes.
If AU’s is to get back on par with its two biggest rivals, it has to be done through high school recruiting first and foremost.
It’s not a switch you can just turn on. It’s going to take time and a whole lot of effort, especially from Freeze.
Freeze knows exactly what AU looks like at its best and he’s confident he can return the Tigers to the top of the conference.
“I think Auburn can be great, obviously,” he said. “And I think we will be. How fast we can close the gap on the ones who are doing it on a very, very high level right now, I don’t really know. I’ve said it and I’ll say it again, I think the ’24-25 class will probably tell that story.”
***
In today’s musical journey, we go back just three days to the death of one of the most successful musical artists of all time whose career spanned 10 decades. On July 21, 2023, Tony Bennett passed away at the age of 96, two years after his final live performance and 84 years after he began his career at age 13 playing in Italian restaurants in his hometown of Queens, N.Y. He went on to produce more than 70 albums, write five books and win 20 Grammy Awards and two Primetime Emmy Awards. He sold over 50 million records and set three Guinness World Record including being the oldest person to release an album of new material at the age of 95 in 2021. Throughout his career, Bennett performed with a number of other great artists including Frank Sinatra, Dean Martin, Connie Francis, Amy Winehouse and Lady Gaga. He has been inducted into the Jazz Hall of Fame, Hollywood Walk of Fame and International Civil Rights Walk of Fame.
Anthony Dominick Benedetto was born in Queens in 1926 to a grocer father and seamstress mother. His father, who died in 1936, was sick and unable to work and the family was supported by his mother during the Depression. He dropped out of school at age 16 to support his family and was drafted into the U.S. Army in 1944, serving on the front lines in the 63rd Infantry Division during WW II as the allies pushed into Germany. He was involved in the liberation of Kaufering concentration camp, ending his tour after the war performing in a Special Services band. After returning to the states, he got his break when Pearl Bailey asked him to open for her at a concert where Bob Hope noticed him and invited him on the road. It was Hope that convinced Benedetto to change his name to Tony Bennett. He signed with Columbia Records in 1950 and his first big hit came with 1951’s “Because of You,” which spent 10 weeks at No. 1. The hits continued with 1953’s “Rags to Riches,” 1959’s “The Best Is Yet To Come,” which was popularized by Frank Sinatra, and 1962’s “I Left My Heart in San Francisco,” which became Bennett’s signature song. Bennett also sang on the first broadcast of The Tonight Show starring Johnny Carson in 1962. Bennett participated in the Selma to Montgomery civil rights march in 1965. Afterwards he was driven to the airport by Viola Liuzzo, a mother of five from Detroit, who was murdered later that day by members of the Ku Klux Klan. After a lull in his singing career, Bennett made a comeback in the 1990’s including his version of “Steppin’ Out With My Baby,” which got airplay on MTV, and his MTV Unplugged session with Elvis Costello and k.d. lang. His career continued to prosper for the next quarter century including a T.V. special and tour with Lady Gaga from 2014-15 that produced two albums. Bennett was also an avid artist, spending a lot of time painting nature scenes in Central Park. Bennett was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s disease in 2016 but continued to perform until a final concert at Radio City Music Hall on Aug. 5, 2021.
