This is an opinion column.

Just do it.

Auburn’s in the Nike spirit as its new apparel deal started Tuesday and it’s time to listen.

Hugh Freeze’s offseason tour of excuses and complaints hit Alexander City on Wednesday night for an ironically named AMBUSH event.

It’s the kind of event to raise money and fire up the fans and donors. With it comes a few minutes with reporters and Freeze did what he does.

As the Tigers recruiting class shrinks with four decommits in three weeks, the questions are obvious.

As obvious as the answers are predictable.

 It was no ambush, more of a retreat.

“We’re going by what we believe is an accurate interpretation (of the House settlement),” Freeze said as part of an answer about recruiting. “It’s not really to our advantage to what we’re doing because I think others are operating in a different manner.”

So they’re cheating.

Who is they?

He went on to explain some of the revenue sharing math, the importance of retaining the current roster and how that impacts the math for recruits.

That’s not unique to Auburn or any other school.

But he explained why this new world is “difficult” and how they still need to figure it out. Still, Freeze “wholeheartedly” thinks Auburn will have a top class by signing day in December.

That’s why the coaches get paid the big bucks, as they say.

“It’s hard to feel great when you’re not one of the top-ranked recruiting classes,” Freeze said later.

They’re currently 89th in the 247Sports ranking of 2026 commits after stacking consecutive top-10 classes.

“And I think Auburn should be,” Freeze correctly continued, “but I’m confident in our administration and the way they lead and trust them immensely that we’re doing things the right way.”

Go on.

“In my opinion we can’t put ourselves in jeopardy,” Freeze said. “We’ve got great interpretations from our administration and our legal team on what the settlement really means and how we should operate. That’s what we’re doing.

“If others are operating in a manner not with that, I’m hopeful they’ll be called out on that at some point.”

So just do it.

Call them out.

Let’s cut the nonsense and get right to the real stuff, if that’s what we’re doing here.

If someone is cheating, say it.

If these unnamed programs don’t operate with your degree of integrity, the world should know.

Wisconsin did.

Now this isn’t apples to apples but they think Miami cheated when tampering with a player on their roster so they sued them.

They didn’t go passive-aggressive with veiled shots.

Wisconsin took them to court.

Not saying Auburn should hire a legal team but if Freeze wants to explain their recruiting shortcomings with an “aww shucks, that guy is cheating,” it’s weak.

This is what coaches have done from the beginning of time but the mutual assured mutual destruction factor always kept these comments veiled.

We’ve talked at length this summer about the excuses and the general lack of confidence Freeze has expressed publicly entering his third year at Auburn.

It always comes back to requesting patience for him to build a program through recruiting while living in 5-7 purgatory.

Now even the golden goose of recruiting is subject to this kind of loser’s mentality.

But if we’re to put much stock into the latest twist on the bummer summer, let’s put some chest behind it.

Name names.

Just … do it.

Michael Casagrande is a reporter for the Alabama Media Group. Follow him on Twitter @ByCasagrande or on Facebook.