Goodman: Is Auburn’s Hugh Freeze building winners or criminals?

This is an opinion column.

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Hugh Freeze was feeling bullish about his Auburn football team at SEC Media Days, but it appears like he has a major problem festering with this team.

The players keep getting arrested for allegedly committing serious crimes.

The latest Auburn football player to run afoul of the law is Malcolm Simmons, the once promising wide receiver from Alexander City. I say “once” because Simmons is presumably no longer on Auburn’s football team after being charged with domestic violence on Wednesday.

Fall camp is close, but it can’t get here fast enough for the Tigers. Freeze predicted that Auburn would contend for a playoff spot this week, but he’s going to need some players to make that happen.

Is Freeze building winners or criminals down on the Plains?

A couple weeks ago, a now-former Auburn football player from Birmingham was arrested for allegedly planning to deal drugs. D’Angelo Barber, who is 19 years old, was stopped by Dadeville police traveling between his hometown and Auburn. In his car were two and a half pounds of marijuana and the things modern-day drug dealers need to turn NIL cash into a budding criminal empire on college campuses: scales, vapes, a gun and a bunch of cash.

Two and half pounds is a lot of dope. Was the plan to sell weed to football players or just students?

Barber’s arrest reminds me of former Alabama football star Sherman Williams, who went to prison for 15 years for crimes related to selling drugs. The difference between Williams and Barber is that Williams was a pro football player when he was busted and Barber was just beginning his career in college.

The problem with this NIL-era of college football is that a lot of these players are becoming wealthy based on potential rather than accomplishments. When people don’t actually do anything to gain their wealth, then there’s a greater tendency to take it all for granted. Just look at bone-headed Tahaad Pettiford, Auburn’s star basketball player who was arrested for driving under the influence last week.

Pettiford has everything going for him after helping Auburn reach the Final Four. He decided to return to Auburn instead of going pro. I’m beginning to question that decision. Maybe he needs to get away from the college scene to fully mature.

At baseline, fans are wary of this era of NIL-infused college football and basketball. How long are supporters of teams going to tolerate paying players who turn around and use that money to bail themselves out of jail?

And the new revenue-sharing model for collegiate athletics is about to give players even more green. With so much cash around, character among players is going to matter more than ever before.

Georgia has had its problems and so has Alabama. Auburn’s string of arrests aren’t unique. But Georgia football and Alabama basketball are established programs. They’ve been able to correct the problems internally and continue winning. Character issues among players can ruin Freeze’s plan of resurrecting Auburn football before the season even begins.

I really wanted this Auburn football team to break its cycle of under-achieving mediocrity and give fans something to love, but I’m beginning to have some doubts. It was only 24 hours ago that I wrote a column backing Freeze and these Tigers. They can be the surprise team of the SEC, but you have to suddenly question all that jive that Freeze was saying at Media Days about a winning culture in this locker room.

“Heading into our third year — with respect obviously to our great league — our roster is just better,” Freeze said. “We’re bigger, we’re faster, we’re stronger. Our culture is strong.”

Really, Hugh?

Earlier this week, SEC commissioner Greg Sankey raised serious questions about the erosion of values in this new era of pay-for-play. Freeze played the holier-than-though routine a couple weeks ago when he accused SEC rivals of cheating, but he might want to focus on his players being arrested for allegedly dealing drugs and choking women.

What is it that I wrote on Tuesday at Media Days? Something about there being no saints in the SEC?

Georgia’s Kirby Smart talked about building character this week and so did LSU’s Brian Kelly. Isn’t it hard to take these guys seriously?

Pretty words mean nothing when players are getting picked up by the cops.

Freeze has a well-documented history of questionable decisions, of course. In the end, for good or ill, every team is a reflection of its coach’s character.

And I really wanted Simmons to be a great player, too. He was fun to watch last season. He was so fast and quick that even his mistakes on the field offered proof of his potential. There were times when he looked like a future All-SEC receiver.

I hope it works out for him, but it can’t be at Auburn. Alleged strangulation and suffocation of a girlfriend? These are charges that can’t be ignored or made to go away. No coach can be associated with domestic violence under any circumstance. Even former coach Urban Meyer, during those notorious years at Florida, had a zero-tolerance policy for girlfriend abusers.

Hopefully the character issues related to Barber and Simmons are isolated to those players and Auburn can be better without them around. We’ll see. Too many times, though, arrests and poor offseason decisions are the beginning signs of a larger problem.

The guys in charge have cut corners building a roster and the foundation of a team crumbles from within.

BE HEARD

Got a question for Joe? Want to get something off your chest? Send Joe an email about what’s on your mind. Let your voice be heard. Ask him anything.

Joseph Goodman is the lead sports columnist for the Alabama Media Group, and author of the book “We Want Bama: A Season of Hope and the Making of Nick Saban’s Ultimate Team.”

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