Auburn Targeting Former Ole Miss Coach Following Lane Kiffin's Comment
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Ole Miss and Auburn are just a match made in heaven.
According to multiple reports, Auburn plans on targeting Liberty's Hugh Freeze for its head coach opening should Lane Kiffin decline the offer. Freeze coached the Rebels from 2012-2016.
Freeze, 53, has been linked to Auburn for several seasons. Following the firing of Gus Malzahn in 2020, Freeze was considered a top candidate but did not interview for the position before the job was offered to Boise State's Bryan Harsin.
Harsin was fired by new athletic director John Cohen last month after going 9-21 in less than two seasons. A source tells TheGroveReport.com that Freeze and Kiffin are the top two candidates for the open position as of this time.
Kiffin, 47, was asked following the Rebels' 24-22 loss to Mississippi State Thursday night if he planned on being the head coach at Ole Miss next season. In short, Kiffin said, "Yes I do."
On Monday, WCBI-TV of Columbus, Mississippi, reported that Kiffin would be announced as Auburn's head coach as soon as Friday. Kiffin denied the report on social media by trolling WCBI's Jon Sokoloff with a report claiming he would be leaving for a rival station in Oxford.
Kiffin met privately with his team Wednesday confirming his plans to remain on The Grove past the Egg Bowl. The third-year coach told reporters Thursday that the rumor concerns potentially factored into the team's game plan throughout the week.
“I had to have a team meeting to say that his article was wrong… I’d love to know these unnamed sources,” Kiffin said. “So yes, I had to have a team meeting because of that. They don’t (care) when it's each other, and chat rooms and stuff like that, but when a reporter writes it, it changes the game a bit.
"I just told them that, that the report, you’re probably not paying that much attention to, but your family is, is inaccurate. It’s false reporting.”
Freeze, who led Liberty to its best season in program history during the 2020 season, signed an eight-year extension with the Flames last month, making him the highest-paid Group of Five coaches starting in 2023. Currently, Cincinnati's Luke Fickell is the highest-paid Group of Five, but the Bearcats will move to the Big 12 next July.
Should the Tigers hire Freeze, it's unknown how much the program will have to pay Liberty in terms of a buyout. If Auburn hires either Kiffin or Freeze, it would mark the second time that an Ole Miss coach was named to the position on The Plains.
In 1998, Tommy Tuberville told reporters that "They’ll have to carry me out of [Oxford] in a pine box,” only to take the Tigers' job 48 hours later. Tuberville went 85-40 during his 10-year stint with the Tigers, including going 13-0 with a Sugar Bowl victory over Virginia Tech.
In five years with the Rebels, Freeze went 39-25 with four bowl appearances. Since being hired by Liberty in 2019, he's gone 34–14 with three bowl appearances.
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