AUBURN | A complete transformation.
I don’t know how else to explain what I’ve seen over the last 273 days since Hugh Freeze was hired as Auburn’s head football coach.
Freeze and his staff have overhauled the roster by more than 50 percent, turned the Tigers into a recruiting force and brought excitement back to a program that has suffered through nine consecutive seasons of four or more losses.
There’s no better current example of this transformation than the offensive line.
Freeze inherited a non-functional position group on Nov. 28 and with the help of offensive line coach Jake Thornton, built it into perhaps one of the SEC’s better units.
The starting lineup for Week 1 could include three transfers, one junior college signee and a sixth-year player. Among the top backups should be two more transfers and a talented true freshman that AU flipped from Miami shortly after Freeze was hired.
Seven newcomers — Dillon Wade, Gunner Britton, Avery Jones, Izavion Miller, Jaden Muskrat, Dylan Senda and Connor Lew — should be part of AU’s two-deep.
It’s not just that Freeze and Thornton added players — that had to happen because of the roster deficiencies. It’s that they signed quality players and managed to meld them together into a very functional group that’s been a highlight of fall camp.
Combine an improved offensive line with a deep and talented running back room and Auburn could pile up some big numbers on the ground this fall.
New Mexico State ran for 197 yards in a loss to UMass in Week 0. Could Auburn eclipse that in the first half? I wouldn’t rule it out.
This is truly an exciting time for Auburn’s football program.
The start of the Freeze era is upon us and it looks like he’ll field a much improved team this fall. With the way he’s recruiting, AU could be just a year or two away from competing on the national stage.
It’s early, yes, but this is as positive I’ve felt about the future of the Auburn football in quite some time, which is the opposite of how I felt 274 days ago.
Freeze has made all the difference.
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In today’s musical journey, we go back 24 years to the day a light-hearted hip hop song referencing a teen clothing story became a surprise summer hit. On Aug. 28, 1999, LFO’s “Summer Girls” peaked at No. 3 on the Billboard 100. It was kept out of the No. 1 slot by Enrique Iglesias’s “Bailamos” and Christina Aguilera’s “Genie in a Bottle.” The song, written by LFO lead singer Rich Cronin and Boston music producers Dow Brain and Brad Young, is best known for the line, “I like girls that wear Abercrombie & Fitch.” Cronin said the song was about summer on Cape Cod and inside jokes with his friends. He would write a line about himself or a former girlfriend and follow it with a random phrase that rhymes including a lot of pop culture references from the 1980’s and 90’s. Other memorable lines include, “New Kids On The Block had a bunch of hits, Chinese food makes me sick,” “You’re the best girl that I ever did see, The great Larry Bird, jersey 33,” and “Fell deep in love but now we ain’t speaking, Michael J. Fox was Alex P. Keaton.” It was some fortunate circumstances that allowed “Summer Girls” to become a hit. A DJ at a Washington, D.C. station played it on a whim and it was heard by a N.Y. DJ driving through. That DJ started playing it regularly on Z100 in New York and it took off from there.
Lyte Funkie Ones (LFO) was formed in New Bedford, Mass., in 1995 by Cronin, Brad Fischetti and Brian Gillis. Devin Lima replaced Gillis in 1999. They struggled to gain success early on before signing with Arista Records in 99 and releasing their self-tiled album, which included “Summer Girls.” The album sold over 2.5 million copies and included another top 10 single in “Girl on TV,” which was written about Cronin’s new girlfriend, Jennifer Love Hewitt. The song had the potential to be even more successful but never caught on with MTV’s Total Request Live (TRL), which was hosted by Carson Daly, who was Love Hewitt’s former boyfriend. LFO released one other album, 2001’s Life os Good, which failed to produce any top 40 hits but did include the popular single, “Every Other Time.” Tragedy then decimated the group. Cronin died of acute myelogenous leukemia in 2010 at the age of 36. Lima passed away of adrenal cancer in 2018 at the age of 41 and Gillis of unknown reasons in 2023 at the age of 47. Fischetti plans to continue touring to carry on the band’s legacy and honor Cronin, Lima and Gillis.
