With each passing firing, Auburn is losing value by keeping Hugh Freeze
By David Wasson
Published:
Anyone who has ever played tournament poker knows that the pre-card blind bets players must contribute steadily raise in value over time – literally “the price of poker going up” – to where a player must keep winning chips to keep getting cards to play.
You’d think that just not betting would allow keep your chips, but ah, those pesky blinds. They keep a player from not betting while waiting on pocket aces to appear… because if they do, well, their chips eventually will get blinded off and their tournament is done.
That tournament poker analogy is happening right now in college football, where the wildest college football coaching cycle we have ever seen is ramping up before our very eyes. Specifically, and with each passing day, the Auburn Tigers have got to be looking around the table with fewer and fewer chips in front of them wondering when it might be time to go all-in.
Seemingly every week this season, we have seen a major college program fire its coach. From the huge jobs at LSU and Penn State and Florida to the smaller-time gigs like Oregon State and UAB and Colorado State. The bold-faced names like Brian Kelly and James Franklin and Billy Napier made national headlines, sure, but the same effect was taking place with every Trent Bray, Trent Dilfer and Jay Norvell.
One by one, each of these programs who took their news-cycle spins in the media blender were also performing the poker equivalent of shoving all their chips to the middle. They were betting big, literally, on getting much better than they were.
Which leads us back to Auburn. Having not exactly entered 2025 with a sail full of wind after previous seasons of 6-7 and 5-7 results, coach Hugh Freeze might not have felt an intense heat through his new Nike togs – but it didn’t take long for the Tigers’ oven to go from preheat to broil.
Losing 4-straight games in this current climate (even if they are all to ranked teams) is worse than what got Kelly canned in Baton Rouge, alas, and he won at a far greater clip both at LSU and programs prior than Freeze could dream of. Heck, all it took for Franklin to negate a run to the College Football Playoff semifinals and be shown the door in State College was a dud on the road against hopeless UCLA and then getting handled at home against Northwestern.
So here we are in October – with a staggering $167.7 million in buyouts already shelled out by 10 programs who fired their coach since Mike Gundy got axed at Oklahoma State on Sept. 23. In the SEC alone, LSU, Florida and Arkansas (thanks for playing, Sam Pittman) are betting big. And that says nothing of if Ole Miss becomes available during the Lane Kiffin Sweepstakes.
And Auburn? The Tigers, whether they want to admit it or not, find themselves with each passing day holding onto a coach equivalent to an off-suit 2-7 poker hand drawing nearly dead with fewer and fewer chips left to play.
Even if Auburn were to lose to Kentucky at home on Saturday and show Freeze the door on Sunday, the Tigers are looking up at the Razorbacks in the imaginary “Coaching Opening Value” metric. Auburn boosters might be well-heeled, but they aren’t Wal Mart-level well-heeled – which is to say that the Hogs can and will be able to NIL-spend circles around Auburn moving forward whether Freeze survives the weekend and season or not.
That COV metric also doesn’t take into account future openings that could happen at Florida State (we are looking at you, Mike Norvell), Wisconsin (ditto, Luke Fickell), Michigan State (we had to look up Jonathan Smith to prove he still exists), Kentucky (Mark Stoops is far from out of the woods) and South Carolina (not much to crow about with Shane Beamer).
The longer Auburn waits to fire Freeze, the longer it waits to dive into the pool with everyone else fighting for what you gotta figure would be a diminishing amount of desirable coaches. The longer Auburn waits to go all-in on shoving Freeze all-out on the Plains, the less value that job retains.
The price of poker is going up, week after week after week, with every subsequent huge firing watering down both the current openings and potential openings to come. How much longer can Auburn really afford to keep folding away its same losing hand?
An APSE national award-winning writer and editor, David Wasson has almost four decades of experience in the print journalism business in Florida and Alabama. His work has also appeared in The New York Times, The Washington Post, the Los Angeles Times and several national magazines and websites. He also hosts Gulfshore Sports with David Wasson, weekdays from 3-5 pm across Southwest Florida and on FoxSportsFM.com. His Twitter handle: @JustDWasson.
