On3 Roundtable: Hugh Freeze must combat negative perception on Auburn's alignment

SEC Media Days is a massive event, one that doesn’t always lend to truly candid conversations. But in one meeting with local reporters, Auburn coach Hugh Freeze provided some fascinating insight on some early challenges he has faced.

They’ve been two-fold, featuring the current roster and recruiting.

“He was asked when we were speaking to him, ‘What’s the biggest surprise since you arrived at Auburn? What’s just caught you, what’s resonated the most?'” explained Auburn Live’s Justin Hokanson. “And he said, he goes, ‘Look, I don’t want to really get negative, but the roster, the state of the roster was probably one of the most surprising things.’ He goes, ‘It’s just not where Auburn should be’ in terms of the roster.

“Then in the same vein in that answer he said recruiting has been more challenging than I thought, and he kind of alluded to maybe a perception of Auburn before he got there. Or maybe some things that happened on the recruiting trail that aren’t happening now in a negative recruiting sense.”

Auburn has a good deal of retooling to do after a challenging Bryan Harsin tenure. Harsin really never got things going, with the ensuing chaos that accompanied his tenure potentially even damaging the brand.

That’s where the recruiting concerns Hugh Freeze listed came in.

Auburn was apparently getting tagged on the trail with several negative recruiting pitches from competing schools. Not all of the knocks even made sense, Hugh Freeze explained.

“One of the things he talked about was he said they had gotten asked, some people had said to them, ‘Hey you guys don’t seem like maybe you’re that aligned,'” Hokanson relayed. “And he was like, ‘We just got here. We couldn’t be more aligned. We have a new president, who hired a new AD, who hired me.’ He goes, ‘We couldn’t be more aligned.'”

That’s certainly hard to argue against as a fact pattern, but recruiting can be a fickle beast. Often perception becomes reality, so Hugh Freeze has had to work hard to make sure the accurate reality is being portrayed.

That sounds like an ongoing concern based on his comments.

“He addressed the alignment thing, but he also seemed to say there’s been some maybe some things they’ve had to battle recruiting that maybe he didn’t anticipate,” Hokanson said. “So I thought that was interesting, because you figure him, and they’re rolling — and they’ve done well in recruiting — but maybe there’s still a little bit of a hangover, still some things lingering from the past couple of years that they’re having to address off the field to show that their program is headed in the right direction.”