This end of this week is fall break for Auburn students and midterms are on the horizon, so Hugh Freeze and his staff set parent-teacher, or rather parent-coach, conferences for this midpoint in the football season.

Last week was Auburn’s bye week. It sat between a close loss to No. 1 Georgia and trip to Baton Rouge this weekend to face No. 22 LSU. Freeze had many responsibilities during the week. That included recruiting and reviewing film and figuring out how the team can move forward from a 3-2 start. It also meant working with his position coaches to make sure every single player’s parent was called. It’s a check-in Freeze said he likes to do during the open week.

And this year, those calls with often raw feedback hit Freeze in the junction of his time as Auburn’s head coach where he’s still learning a new program and a new job, but also far enough into the season to have his feet a bit more settled.

He’s now about midway into his first season here, and while feedback this early is no referendum, it brought mixed reviews in largely the way Freeze appeared to imagine.

“You have to be prepared,” Freeze said of the calls. “You’re hearing the good and the bad. I think that’s healthy. I think that’s good. They know we care.”

Largely, the position players called the parents in their own position groups. Freeze stepped into the calls if the situation warranted it.

Freeze said the positive feedback was from parents who supported the Monday “Truth Meeting” Freeze holds for brutally honest feedback on the previous game and brutally honest planning for the game upcoming. Parents also enjoyed Freeze’s “teaching series” and the energy they believe he has brought to the Auburn program.

Most of the negative comments, Freeze said, had to do with parents wanting their kid to have more playing time. Freeze pushed back on those responses. In his press conference Monday, Freeze said that while he knows everyone wants to play, it’s not possible. He instead wants players to stay and compete for playing time that they might get in the future.

“That’s a lesson that I think will prepare them more for life than if they had it their way every single time and it was easy,” Freeze said. “Life’s not easy. And neither is earning your time to play at this level of football. It’s not easy, and it shouldn’t be easy. It takes you embracing the grind and then going to work and enjoying the process of becoming. I sure hope we can do a good job of getting our kids to believe that and not always (be) in this world looking for greener pastures and an easier way. I think that sets you up for failure in life.”

Yet this is all part of Freeze’s great challenge early on at Auburn.

Freeze’s frequent comments on his roster have shown that he knows it isn’t as good on paper as others in the SEC, but he also doesn’t want to waive the white flag to his own players and especially their parents. He plans to build a roster through recruiting and the transfer portal, but also implores the players he has to not immediately seek a transfer elsewhere because they can’t get on the field at Auburn right now.

It’s an old-school way of thinking coupled with his new-school approach to adding players to his program.

The phone calls were a form of politicking, it seems. It doesn’t appear Freeze got much in the way of illuminating feedback, but they likely kept families happy — especially if Freeze intends the players on this roster to stay.

It didn’t seem like he intended to learn much from these calls. Parent-teacher conferences rarely provide that, anyway.

Matt Cohen covers Auburn sports for AL.com. You can follow him on Twitter at @Matt_Cohen_ or email him at [email protected]