Hugh Freeze Contract Buyout Revealed for Auburn Tigers

As contract buyout talks escalate on the national stage, one can't help but wonder how hot Hugh Freeze's seat is with the Auburn Tigers.

Hugh Freeze took over a mess at Auburn, but the Tigers' have yet to show the requisite improvement on the field. / Jake Crandall/ Advertiser / USA TODAY NETWORK

Nothing will come to define the extent to which Auburn Tigers head coach Hugh Freeze has struggled this season more than his own analysis of the program's misfortunes under his leadership.

"It makes you sick, physically ill, when you don't get over the finishing line," Freeze lamented during media availability this week.

Outspoken ESPN analyst Paul Finebaum suggested that the decision makers at Auburn had been sold a bill of goods when they hired Freeze as their head coach.

"I wonder if Auburn wasn't sold a bill of goods on (Freeze)," Finebaum declared on the McElroy & Cubelic In The Morning Show. "If you take away those wins against Nick Saban, what exactly has Hugh Freeze accomplished as a football coach? I know what his record was at Liberty, and I really don't care. I'm looking at Ole Miss and Auburn, and he has been a failure as the Auburn head coach in my mind. And I know Bryan Harsin was fired at this point two years ago with a better record by a game or two, but that's not really telling the story. On the football field, which is where you are ultimately judged, I'm not liking anything I'm seeing."

Certainly Freeze has struggled to get wins that anywhere near mirror has acumen at recruiting talent to replenish a roster that was woefully lacking in it. Nevertheless, the Auburn power brokers weren't caught napping when it came time to add a vital-escape clause to his contract.

As per Blake Toppmeyer of USA TODAY Sports, as part of the package Freeze inked which still runs in theory until 2028, if he were indeed fired future payments could be structured on a monthly basis.

"While Freeze melts on the Plains, his buyout after this season would total $20.3 million. If you think that safeguards Freeze, you don’t know Auburn," wrote Toppmeyer on USA Today. "Auburn isn’t known for a level-headed handling of coaches, but it shrewdly structured Freeze’s buyout. How so? Like this: If Auburn fires Freeze, it could spread out its financial obligations to him in monthly payments throughout the remainder of his contract, which runs through the 2028 season.

"In other words, don’t think of the cost of firing Freeze as one giant flush of cash. Instead, think of it as an annual hit of less than $4.9 million for the next four years."

In the billion-dollar world of college football, there are players who make more than $4.9-million per year through NIL.

Detailing how buyout packages might work at this early into the Freeze tenure is quite frankly going from the sublime to the ridiculous. His recruiting alone will get him into year three of his tenure at Auburn, but he's going to start 2025 on the hot seat.

All said, it's all hearsay at this juncture anyway, but exactly how Freeze corrects the listing ship is also a real stab in the dark right now.

For what it's worth, Freeze is opting to double down on coaching his guys up even more rigorously the rest of the way, but in the modern day transfer portal, even that's extremely dangerous territory to veer into.

"We won't demean kids," Freeze insisted. "But we're going to coach them hard and the good ones should want that."

This undoubtedly wasn't the way Freeze or the program had envisioned things would work out during his second season in charge. His constant struggles this season have piqued the interest of national writers talking buyouts.

That's dangerous territory for Freeze.