Auburn QB Jackson Arnold Breaks Silence on Lows with Oklahoma Sooners

College football presents unique challenges for young men to handle, and new Auburn Tigers quarterback Jackson Arnold lived through some highs and lows last season.

In what proved to be his last season as a member of the Oklahoma Sooners, Arnold felt as if he had gotten as low as he could possibly go in the college game.

"Yeah, the beginning of last year wasn't fun," Arnold told On3's J.D.PicKell at SEC Media Days. "But honestly, I'm appreciative of something like that, just to look back. Benched. Being real - that's about as low as you can go in college football, especially on the scale it is now. With social media everywhere. I got people in my frigging DMs telling me to go kill myself. It's unbelievable what social media has come to, but that's a whole different story."

It's worth remembering that Arnold is still only 20 years old, and no one should have to receive the kind of online abuse he's previously received.

Hitting the transfer portal might have ultimately come as a sweet relief to Arnold, a new start was pretty inevitable all told.

Even so, how Arnold toughed things out to return to the Oklahoma lineup late last season undoubtedly marked him as a man who didn't want to quit on his teammates.

"I'm proud of myself for how I handled things after that," Arnold told PicKell about reacting to his benching positively. "I know there is a bunch of people very early on in the season having something like that happen to them -- they just instantly hit the transfer portal, and dipping out on their team. I didn't want to do that to those guys that I've been around for the past two years. I wanted to keep in there and fight for them, and keep that team going for as long as I could."

Arnold's strong character traits played a major part in how Auburn head coach Hugh Freeze went hard after Arnold's signature during the transfer window. Those high levels of mental toughness should stand the Tigers' starter in good stead for the challenges which lie ahead.

Giving Arnold back his swagger is something Freeze is fully committed to, and tapping back into what he showed when leading the Sooners to a late-season win over Alabama, in particular, really stood out to the Tigers' boss.

"Then you look at his toughness, and in the Alabama game putting his team on his back with his legs, and I mean, he has some tough runs," Freeze reminisced during his SEC Media Day podium visit. "So I knew he had the toughness to him. And now it was just a matter of, ‘man, let's give this guy a restart and let him regain his swagger and confidence,’ and I knew that the receiver room we had could assist in that.

“It did pretty quickly when he found out, ‘man, I make a good throw in this area and this one-on-one, our guys are making plays.’ I've seen that swagger and confidence come back pretty quickly."

Starting off with the Week 1 visit to face Baylor, Arnold would immensely benefit from getting off to a fast start. However, he’s proven he’s not afraid to face early adversity either.