We were worried for a few moments that the athletic directors/state governors/rich swine who run college football would forget about their seven-week streak of coach firings, but that is a personal failure of faith in the power of administrative bloodlust. They know what must be done, and they never hesitate to do it.
So hello and goodbye to Hugh Freeze, who just got the cardboard box at Auburn after a humiliating (well, for Auburners) 10-3 loss to Kentucky on Saturday. Freeze had the mark of the goat upon him almost from the moment he was hired at Auburn based on the NCAA's skepticism stemming from his cavalier view of rules at Ole Miss, and losses in his three-year tenure to powers like pre-NIL Vanderbilt, Cal, Oklahoma and New Mexico State convinced whoever makes decisions at Auburn to make the call on Freeze. Interestingly, the interim coach is D.J. Durkin, the former Maryland coach who was fired in the wake of a school investigation following the death of offensive lineman Jordan McNair due to heatstroke following an offseason workout. "Toxic environment" was the key sentence here, so whatever the Auburn fanbase may think, they are hardly out of the frying pan, let alone the fire.
But nobody asks the players ever because the football team is about the richest one percent of the richest adults, and Auburn's 15-19 record under Freeze and 1-5 conference record this year, with the one win over Arkansas which already did its coach decoupling last month . . . well, all that, plus Freeze's 3-13 record in games decided by fewer than 10 points was considered a sufficient referendum at a school that is now working on its fourth coach in the first half of the decade. And since you asked, the buyout is a relatively thrifty $15 million.
As has been pointed out somewhere else, this is the best year for resume updating services in decades, and Freeze has been all but tagged and bagged for some time now. But the real lesson here is that with the regular season close to its end, we feel increasingly secure in the notion that someone is going to be fired every week until bowl season, if only to keep the streak alive. Navy and Georgia Tech lost their undefeated seasons Saturday, so there are two new hot seats in the field. Mostly, though, it is a reminder to us to just sit back and have faith in the process. Nobody wants to be left behind when the time comes to say those magical three little words: Hit the bricks.
