Auburn’s firing of Hugh Freeze was necessary, but it’s also a cautionary tale

Nobody in college football will shed a tear over the professional demise of Hugh Freeze, who got the second chance he asked for in the SEC and managed to prove more about his golf handicap than his play-calling prowess.

Auburn fired him Sunday, and unlike when Ole Miss did it the first time there were no excuses, no controversies, no fan base hurling insults at an alleged national media conspiracy and no administrators embarrassing themselves in a hostage video trying to defend the indefensible.

This time, it was merely a coach given plenty of tools to build a winner who managed to build an offense that worked like a jalopy.

But as Auburn enters the coaching market for the fourth time since its 2010 national title, the celebration on the Plains should come with a disclaimer.

As bad as things seemed under Freeze, there are so many ways it can get worse.

Again, this isn’t the day to take a swipe at Auburn for ridding itself of a head coach who was 6-16 in the SEC, made poor evaluations at quarterback and irked his fan base for a variety of avoidable transgressions. Among the most egregious were asking for patience while using Kirby Smart as an example, not realizing he got Georgia to the national title game in his second season, and logging golf rounds into a public database that gave the appearance he’d rather spend time hitting 8-irons than talking to recruits.

For a bit more than $15 million, Auburn made those problems go away for a reasonable number by today’s outrageous buyout standards.

After Saturday’s 10-3 loss at home to Kentucky, everyone understood it was over.

But among administrators around the country monitoring the coaching market this year, a consensus has formed around the idea that schools should avoid a search unless they absolutely have to — unless things are so bad, so toxic that they simply can’t be rescued.

Auburn never gave that vibe. This is a program that played four top-20 opponents in a row starting in mid-September and lost them all by a combined 29 points — yet still had enough fight to come back and beat Arkansas when lots of teams would have let go of the rope.

Even against Kentucky, Auburn played hard. Its offense just didn’t play all that well.

It wasn’t a collapse, but it’s fair to say the standard wasn’t met. And with nobody in the mood to give Freeze much benefit of the doubt, Auburn administrators will tell themselves it wasn’t too tough of a call.

But as with all coaching searches, the imperative for change must be balanced against the reality of the marketplace.

As we sit here in the first week of November, Auburn is the third-best job available in the SEC alone, pretty clearly behind LSU and Florida despite their various administrative issues. When you widen the lens, prime candidates will also have to measure where it stacks up against Penn State, Virginia Tech and even UCLA.

If the question is who has the friendliest path to the playoff — which is going to matter for some coaches — you could argue Auburn is at the bottom of that list.

Maybe Auburn athletic director John Cohen already knows who he wants. But with so few proven candidates available and so many good jobs open, there are a lot of ways the Auburn search could go sideways. Most likely, Cohen will have to settle for an unproven up-and-comer, or someone in the Jimbo Fisher mold who, much like Freeze, is desperate for a second chance.

Again, you can’t criticize Auburn for taking that risk. But when Freeze was hired after resurrecting his career at Liberty, it seemed like an ideal football fit.

You just never know with these things.

It’s why administrators generally hate coaching searches and would rather avoid them if at all possible.

With no crisis at hand, Auburn could have reasonably leaned on how close this team was to winning several more games, made Freeze change some things on offense and doubled down financially on next year’s roster to see if a breakthrough was possible.

That would be defensible, too, but Auburn chose a different and equally defensible route.

Now the hard part begins. Cohen will need all the luck Auburn’s football team didn’t have this season to turn it into a good decision.