Halftime adjustments for Hugh Freeze include staffers changing clothes

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Hugh Freeze Auburn — (Denny Simmons / The Tennessean / USA TODAY NETWORK)

Superstitions are a real thing in sports. Hugh Freeze might be the superstition king in the SEC.

Auburn brought the Liberty head coach back to the SEC to hopefully bring the Tigers back to glory. The 53-year-old offensive mind ran the Ole Miss program from 2012-16 leading the Rebels to two top-20 finishes and a 39-25 (19-21) record heading into the 2017 campaign. Freeze resigned after receiving an ultimatum from the university administration. However, the play-calling head coach never forgot how to coach.

After taking two years off, Liberty hired Freeze, and in four years he led the Flames to a 34-15 record and won at least eight games in every season. That got him another chance in the SEC. On gamedays, Freeze is known to be a shrewd play-caller but he also has some unique superstitions.

“Coaches are creatures of habits, and if this is what they’ve done on every second and long, then what is our best call,” Freeze told reporters on Tuesday at SEC Media Days. “That should be the first call we make the next second and long we get.”

“That’s not some mystery or — I’m sure other coaches do the same thing. I don’t know. I make my O-line coach change his clothes at halftime if we’re not doing well. I don’t know if that helps, but I do. Matt Luke started that for me truthfully.”

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Well, that’s a first. A lot of Under Armour polos will need to be burned through for offensive line coach Jake Thornton. The locker room at Jordan-Hare Stadium will be a busy place on the Plains.

We were losing our first game at Ole Miss to a 1-AA opponent and it wasn’t going well. He changed all of his clothes and we rolled up a bunch of numbers the second half, and from that point on, our entire five years together, Matt knew he had to change clothes at halftime if things weren’t going well.

If Auburn can pull off some big second half comebacks during the Freeze era, an offensive line clothes change might be the secret sauce that creates the winning formula for the Tigers.