Hugh Freeze Buyout: How Much Auburn Owes Coach After Firing

Freeze is the latest fired college football coach owed a huge buyout.

Auburn owes Hugh Freeze a huge buyout after firing him following a 4-5 start to the 2025 season. / John Reed-Imagn Images

Auburn has fired Hugh Freeze as its head football coach after three unsuccessful seasons. The Tigers will now have to pay the 56-year-old coach a significant chunk of change to walk away.

Freeze was hired on November 29, 2022, after four excellent years at Liberty. The former Ole Miss head coach took over the Flames’ program and brought it to prominence, most notably with a 10-1 season in 2020, which got the team ranked in the top 20. He won eight games in each of his three other seasons.

Auburn hired Freeze on a six-year deal worth $6.5 million annually. In 2023, the Tigers went 6-7 and lost the Music City Bowl. They followed that up in 2024 by going 5-7, and had begun the 2025 campaign 4-5 before the athletic department pulled the plug.

In his nearly three seasons in charge, Freeze led Auburn to a 15-19 record, and the Tigers were 6-16 in the SEC. He is just the latest head coach to be fired from a prominent job, as Power Five jobs are opening weekly.

Huge Freeze buyout owed by Auburn

While Freeze doesn’t have a buyout in the neighborhood of the massive piles of cash owed to Brian Kelly and James Franklin, he will still get a significant payout. Auburn will reportedly owe him $15.8 million to walk away.

Perhaps most notably, the money is not subject to offset or mitigation, meaning it will not be reduced if he takes another job. Auburn will pay him every cent of it, no matter what he decides to do next.

This is the third straight coach the Tigers have owed a ton of money to. When the school fired Gus Malzahn in 2020, it owed him $21.45 million. Then it canned Bryan Harsin in 2022 and owed him $15.3 million.

With Freeze’s total added in, that’s a total of $52.55 million paid to failed coaches.

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