Hugh Freeze spoke with reporters in Auburn on Monday, and I’m hoping he’s going to be a great coach on the Plains, but I was more interested in the face of the program on the first day of spring practice.

That’d be Carnell Williams, the assistant coach like no other in the SEC.

I keep thinking about those four weeks in November last year, and I know that I’m not alone in that fact. They were so special, Auburn’s month with Williams serving as interim head coach, and I hope that the transformational magic that Williams conjured remains with the Tigers into this new era of football. Auburn needs a permanent, iconic symbol marking the union of Freeze and Williams, though.

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Like, hear me out on this, OK? The new football mansion at Auburn is nice, but how the Tigers don’t have a classic drop-top Cadillac permanently parked outside its gleaming practice facility is beyond me. An ice-cold Caddy feels like a metaphorical opportunity missed for a place leaning into puns like “Freeze warning.”

It’s the best of both themes. Combine them. Ride it all the way to the top of the SEC. Could someone please make this happen already? Freeze is the new head coach, but Auburn’s heart is Williams. The combination of both, potentially, could be what allows Auburn to stand out in an already crowded SEC that’s adding Texas and Oklahoma in 2024.

Maybe I’m expecting too much from an assistant coach, but there aren’t many figures in college football today more beloved than the former Auburn running back who served his school with such distinction at the end of the 2022 season as interim head coach. Two of those coaches are at Auburn’s principal rivals, which explains a lot about where the Tigers find themselves going into 2023. Practice for the fall is already here, and Auburn is at an important crossroads for its future. This time, the Tigers have to get it right, or the traditional SEC power could find itself permanently slipping down the pecking order of the league.

Getting it right at Auburn means bringing in players who can compete against Alabama and Georgia. It’s as simple as that, but there isn’t a greater challenge in college football today. The bar doesn’t get any higher than trying to recruit against Kirby Smart’s Georgia, the back-to-back reigning national champ, and Nick Saban’s Alabama, which just pulled in one of the stronger recruiting classes in college football history.

We know what happens when Auburn gets it wrong. Things go bad in a hurry, and a lot of reporters on the Auburn beat still have the hats to prove it.

Former Auburn coach Bryan Harsin, who, yes, once threw hats to reporters covering his team, was a disaster in every way, but there was a silver lining to come out of his firing last October. It was Williams, who so unexpectedly captured the attention of everyone in the SEC with his ability to make us all so quickly forget about the Bum From Boise.

Auburn wanted to fire Harsin before the spring of 2022, but we all know how badly that went down. Half the fan base defended Harsin, half the fan base understood he needed to go and everyone on the outside looking in knew that Harsin had no chance before his first practice of the fall.

Harsin couldn’t recruit in the Deep South, and he didn’t want to put in the work to learn. When NIL came around, he rejected it as some kind of plague. Now look at Auburn. They’re doing it right. Everywhere you look, the athletics department is advertising the NIL collective “On To Victory.”

There is hope again, and it started with Williams.

It’s going to take something different at Auburn to win in this new SEC, and Williams certainly represents a drastic change in positivity and unity for the Tigers compared to this time last year. Harsin split Auburn down the middle, but Williams put Auburn back together. I’ll never forget what he did for Auburn, and I don’t think anyone else will either.

Anyone would have been better than Harsin, but only one person in the world could have brought Auburn together with such talent and grace, and that was Cadillac. I think the wins are coming with Freeze, who understands the heartbeat of the SEC better than anyone. Having a celebrity assistant sets Auburn apart from its rivals, and so that should give Auburn a unique edge in recruiting.

Everything Williams touched in November 2022 turned to gold, and the new energy that he pumped into Auburn can be a major springboard going into the brave new world that will be college football in 2024. It’s not that I’m looking past the 2023 season for Auburn, it’s just that I know Freeze and the Tigers are already preparing for the future. Auburn needs a top 10 recruiting class in 2024 and the framework is being put into place for that to happen.

Auburn’s practice was open to the media for 20 minutes on Monday. They let reporters watch individual drills, and so I camped out with the running backs and watched Williams teach his position players the fundamentals of lining up properly and preparing their feet for blocks. In the 2022 Iron Bowl, Auburn rushed for more yards (318) against Alabama than any other team since Nick Saban has been with the Crimson Tide.

Something tells me that Auburn will be running a lot more in 2023.

The ride with this ice-cold Cadillac is just beginning. Please park it at the front door.

Joseph Goodman is the lead sports columnist for the Alabama Media Group, and author of “We Want Bama: A season of hope and the making of Nick Saban’s ‘ultimate team’”. You can find him on Twitter @JoeGoodmanJr.