Auburn has an open date this week, so head coach Hugh Freeze made the rounds within the state to meet with fans and recruits on Monday.

After making a stop at the Monday Morning Quarterback Club in Birmingham, Freeze spoke to the 68 Ventures Bowl 1st & 10 Club in Mobile late in the afternoon. He addressed many of the topics that were broached earlier in the day, as well as several others.

Two members of Auburn’s decorated group of freshman receivers — Foley’s Perry Thompson and Baker’s Bryce Cain — hail from the Mobile area. Along with Cam Coleman (Central-Phenix City) and Malcolm Simmons (Benjamin Russell), Thompson and Cain form the so-called “Freeze Four,” the cornerstones of Auburn’s highly rated 2024 recruiting class.

Coleman, Simmons and Thompson have played in all six games this season, with Simmons and Coleman currently second and third on the team in the team in receptions. Freeze said he has seen positives from all four.

“They’re freshmen,” Freeze said. “They’re really, really talented and are starting to catch on and understand how this game has to be played against some of the elite athletes in the secondary at some of the other places.

“We’re really excited about their future. I think all four of them — Bryce, Cam, Perry and Malcolm — I think all four have huge ceilings and chances to be really, really special.”

No player in college football made more headlines this past weekend than Vanderbilt quarterback Diego Pavia, who led the Commodores’ stunning upset of Alabama. Freeze got an up-close look at the quarterback twice when he was at New Mexico State, with Pavia the Aggies to wins over Liberty in 2022 and Auburn last season.

Pavia will face off with Freeze’s team a third time on Nov. 2, when Vanderbilt visits Auburn. He said Pavia’s competitiveness is what separates him from others.

“I’ve seen him now twice, at Liberty and last year (at Auburn),” Freeze said. “The guy is just one of those freakish competitors, it seems. Just watching him; I don’t know him personally — but he’s tough, a winner — all those attributes seem to describe him pretty well. He seems to rise to the occasion when he needs to.”

A number of players around college football have announced in the last week that they plan to take a redshirt year after playing in four games, with intentions to enter the transfer portal at season’s end. Though Auburn has not had a player announce such plans publicly this year, schools such as Alabama, USC, Iowa, UNLV and UCF have fallen victim to the unintended consequences of the rule.

Freeze said he has a solution to the four-game redshirt trend, and that’s to do away with redshirting altogether. It would make roster-management that much easier, he said.

“I don’t think they think through much anymore,” Freeze said. “I personally think … just give them five years to play five if they want to stay five. We haven’t expanded our 85-man roster, and we keep adding games. You lose folks to injury, you lose folks to opt-outs, and it makes it even that much harder. Why in the world wouldn’t we just say they can play up to five years and not worry about a four-game redshirt or whatever?

“Times have changed, and I think we’re still behind a little bit in a few of those (rules). Nobody’s really thinking about those things, but you start having folks deciding when and where they’re going to play, and it gets really challenging to have a healthy roster.”

Late Monday afternoon, news broke that a preliminary settlement had been reached in the House vs. NCAA lawsuit. The settlement clears for, among other things, direct compensation to athletes through revenue sharing.

Auburn has been at the forefront of NIL compensation for athletes, and Freeze said he’s in favor of continuing to share the wealth with players. But, he said, he’s hoping that under the new model that all schools will be operating under the same guidelines rather that the free-for-all that exists now.

“What our hope is as coaches is that it will bring some equity and structure to it,” Freeze said. “The trouble right now that we all have is there is no structure, and it’s just kind of all over the place. It would be sure nice if it followed after somewhat like the NFL model where … ‘here it is, and here’s [how much money] you have, and here’s what [players] have, and you all have the same thing. It’s revenue sharing, is what I think the settlement’s going to take it to.

“And we operate like that where, man, you turn it into the league office, and you know what facts are, and you know how to deal with it. I think all of us are for the athletes getting something. (Coaches have) been very blessed, and they should be blessed too. We just wish it had structure and guardrails around it where everybody kind of operated in the same space.”

Auburn (2-4 overall, 0-2 SEC) returns to action on Oct. 19 at Missouri.