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Auburn head coach Hugh Freeze is taking a unique approach to evaluating players and assessing how he wants to coach them.

The third-year Tigers coach revealed at SEC Media Days that he and the team took personality tests, which helped him and the players learn more about themselves.

“It helped me a lot understand how Jackson [Arnold] and Deuce [Knight] and Ashton [Daniels], how do they need to be coached by me,” Freeze said. “I can be that Michael Jordan side of, ‘you gotta get this right. Why didn’t you get it right?’ Instead, I probably need to be more of the Scottie Pippen sometimes.”

Freeze said the tests have helped him communicate with all the different types of players on the team. The results allowed him to group the players into different categories that would influence how Freeze coaches and communicates with them.

For a player like Arnold, Freeze found understanding his personality to be important in an effort to instill confidence in him after a shaky 2024 season at Oklahoma. So far, Freeze believes that effort is working.

“I feel really good about that right now,” Freeze said. “Ultimately, I don’t think there’s any way you’re going to really judge it until we hit the field, but he’s got the swagger right now and the respect of this football team and a great understanding of our offense.”

Not only are the tests a way for Freeze and the staff to assess the current roster and how to coach them, they’ve become a tool to evaluate potential transfers.

Arnold said he took one when he was on his visit at Auburn, adding that he liked the idea for coaching.

“He wants to see what personalities fit him and his coaching style,” Arnold said. “If that fit’s not good, then don’t grab that guy out of the portal. I completely understand him doing it.”

Freeze said he likes using the tests for players they recruit out of the portal. He described the portal recruiting process as speed dating, with a decision sometimes having to be made within 24 hours.

It’s not as important for high school recruits, Freeze said, but he still gives those players the option of taking it.

“It’s not as important because you’re going to have time when they get there,” Freeze said, “And you’ve had a window of a year or two that you kind of have an idea of knowing them.”

Auburn signed 19 transfers this offseason, meaning the reliability of those tests could be determined on the field this season. While it’s hard to tell how those personalities will work in a game until it’s time to take the field, Freeze is confident in the approach.

“My first thought today when I saw Jackson was, ‘say to him this,’” Freeze said. “That really comes from just the discussions that we’ve had with people over these profiles, which I think are going to be very helpful to us.”

Peter Rauterkus covers Auburn sports for AL.com. You can follow him on X at @peter_rauterkus or email him at [email protected]m

Hugh Freeze hasn’t beaten Alabama football while head coach at Auburn. The Tigers haven’t pulled off an Iron Bowl win since 2019.

However, Freeze brought in someone experienced in taking down the Crimson Tide to play quarterback. Jackson Arnold transferred in from Oklahoma, where he and the Sooners upset Kalen DeBoer’s squad in Norman last season, effectively crushing Alabama’s College Football Playoff hopes.

Speaking to reporters Tuesday at SEC media days in Atlanta, Arnold was asked what made OU so successful against the Crimson Tide.

“I think for us the biggest success was with the run game,” Arnold said. “Whether it was me running the ball or our running backs running the ball and being effective. I thought we had a really good game plan that week and caught them off guard by running it so much. But I thought we were very aggressive that game, very efficient decision-making.”

Auburn has every chance in the Iron Bowl this season. After a 2025 drubbing in Bryant-Denny Stadium, the game is back in Jordan-Hare, a place the Tigers seem to always be in the game.

It took minor miracles for the Crimson Tide to escape with wins in 2021 and 2023, with the 4th-and-31 prayer from Jalen Milroe to Isaiah Bond securing victory most recently on the Plains. With Arnold in the quarterback spot vacated by Peyton Thorne, he spoke of the importance of winning the Alabama game.

“That’d be awesome,” Arnold said of the chance to break the Crimson Tide’s streak. “All the dudes on the team talked about, even the old fifth-year senior guys still haven’t beaten Alabama. They came close twice but they haven’t beaten them yet, so for those guys, I want to get a win.”

Arnold compared the game to the Texas-Oklahoma rivalry he was previously part of.

“OU-Texas, it’s very similar,” Arnold said. “Honestly, it’s not far off. I feel those two rivalries are probably the two best rivalries in college football. But I feel like if you mention Alabama here, somebody would look at you funny. We even have a rule in our facility, you can’t wear red in our facility at all. If you do, you lose points and you have to do up-downs.”

Alabama and Auburn will renew hostilities on Nov. 29 at Jordan-Hare Stadium.

KLAMATH, Calif. (AP) — As bright-colored kayaks push through a thick wall of fog, voices and the beats of drums build as kayakers approach a crowd that has formed on the beach. Applause erupts as the boats land on the sandy spit that partially separates the Klamath River from the Pacific Ocean in northern California.

Native American teenagers from tribes across the river basin push themselves up and out of the kayaks and begin to cross the sand, some breaking into a sprint. They kick playfully at the cold waves of the ocean they’ve been paddling toward over the last month — the ocean that’s seen fewer and fewer salmon return to it over the last century as four hydropower dams blocked their ideal spawning grounds upstream.

“I think our ancestors would be proud because this is what they’ve been fighting for,” said Tasia Linwood, a 15-year-old member of the Karuk Tribe, on Thursday night, ahead of the group’s final push to the end on Friday.

The Klamath River is newly navigable after a decades-long effort to remove its four hydropower dams to help restore the salmon run — an ancient source of life, food and culture for these paddlers’ tribes who have lived alongside the river for millennia. Youth primarily from the Yurok, Klamath, Hoopa Valley, Karuk, Quartz Valley and Warm Springs tribes paddled 310 miles (499 kilometers) over a month from the headwaters of the Wood River, a tributary to the Klamath that some tribes consider sacred, to the Pacific Ocean.

The teens spent several years learning to navigate white water through Paddle Tribal Waters, a program set up by the nonprofit Rios to Rivers, to prepare local Native youth for the day this would be possible.

During their last days on the water, the group of several dozen swelled to more than 100, joined by some family members and Indigenous people from Bolivia, Chile and New Zealand who face similar challenges on their home rivers.

Dams built decades ago for electricity

Starting in the early 1900s, power company PacifiCorp built the dams over several decades to generate electricity. But the structures, which provided 2% of the utility’s power, halted the natural flow of a waterway that was once known as the third-largest salmon-producing river on the West Coast.

With the dams in place, tribes lost access to a reliable source of food. The dams blocked the path to hundreds of miles of cool freshwater streams, ideal for salmon returning from the ocean to lay their eggs. Salmon numbers declined dramatically along with the water quality.

In 2002, a bacterial outbreak caused by low water and warm temperatures killed more than 34,000 fish, mostly Chinook salmon. That galvanized decades of advocacy by tribes and environmental groups, culminating in 2022 when federal regulators approved a plan to remove the dams.

Through protests, testimony and lawsuits, the tribes showcased the environmental devastation caused by the dams, especially to salmon. From 2023 to 2024, the four dams were dynamited and removed, freeing hundreds of miles of the Klamath.

The renewable electricity lost by removing the hydropower dams was enough to power the equivalent of 70,000 homes, although PacifiCorp has since expanded its renewable sources through wind and solar projects.

Two dams used for irrigation and flood control remain on the upper stretch of the river. They have “ladders” that allow some fish to pass through, although their efficacy for adult salmon is questionable. On the journey, the paddlers got out of the river and carried their kayaks around the dams.

For teens, a month of paddling and making memories

The journey began June 12 with ceremonial blessings and kayaks gathered in a circle above a natural pool of springs where fresh water bubbles to the surface at the headwater of the Wood River, just upstream of the Klamath River.

The youth camped in tents as they made their way across Upper Klamath Lake and down the Klamath River, jumping in the water or doing flips in their kayaks to cool down in the summer heat. A few kayakers came down with swimmer’s ear, but overall everybody on the trip remained healthy.

Nearly everyone had a story to share of a family’s fishing cabin or a favorite swimming hole while passing through ancestral territory of the Klamath, Modoc, Shasta, Karuk and Yurok.

More than 2,200 dams were removed from rivers in the United States from 1912 through 2024, most in the last couple of decades as momentum grows to restore the natural flow of rivers and the wildlife they support, according to the conservation group American Rivers.

“I believe that it was kind of symbolic of a bigger issue,” said John Acuna, member of the Hoopa Valley Tribe and a leader on the trip.

Removal of dams represents end of long fight with federal government

The federal government signed treaties with these tribes outlining their right to govern themselves, which is violated when they can’t rely on their traditional food from the river. Acuna said these violations are familiar to many tribal communities, and included when his great-grandmother was sent to boarding school as part of a national strategy to strip culture and language from Native Americans.

That history “comes with generational trauma,” he said.

Their treaty-enshrined right to fish was also blatantly disregarded by regional authorities in the 1970s but later upheld by various court decisions, said Yurok council member Phillip Williams.

Standing on a fog-shrouded boat ramp in the town of Requa awaiting the arrival of the youth, Williams recounted the time when it was illegal to fish here using the tribes’ traditional nets. As a child, his elders were arrested and even killed for daring to defy authorities and fish in broad daylight.

Fifty years later, with the hydropower dams now gone, large numbers of salmon are beginning to return and youth are paddling the length of the Klamath.

“If there’s a heaviness that I feel it’s because there’s a lot of people that lived all in these places, all these little houses here that are no longer here no more,” said Williams. “They don’t get to see what’s happening today. And that’s a heavy, heavy, feeling.”

Even as a teen, Linwood says she feels both the pleasure of a month-long river trip with her friends and the weight of the past.

“I kind of feel guilty, like I haven’t done enough to be fighting,” she said. “I gotta remember that’s what our ancestors fought for. They fought for that — so that we could feel this joy with the river.”

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The Associated Press receives support from the Walton Family Foundation for coverage of water and environmental policy. The AP is solely responsible for all content. For all of AP’s environmental coverage, visit https://apnews.com/hub/climate-and-environment

Not many people can say they’ve been on both sides of the Third Saturday in October rivalry.

Tight end Miles Kitselman is on the short list. And he’s experienced both the highs and lows of it.

He was part of the 2022 Alabama team that lost to Tennessee in Knoxville. Then, he was part of the 2023 Alabama team that beat Tennessee in Tuscaloosa. After that, Kitselman transferred to Tennessee. Then, he became the starting tight end for the Vols on a team that beat Alabama in Knoxville again.

“They’re both great programs,” Kitselman said. “I love where I’m at right now. I learned a lot from when I was there as a man and as a player, but we’ve moved on and I love Tennessee.”

Kitselman started his college career at Hutchinson Community College in Kansas. Then Alabama signed him before the 2022 season. He played in 19 games over his time with Alabama, primarily working as a reserve.

Then, Kitselman left, transferring out before Nick Saban announced his decision to retire.

“I want to thank coach (Nick) Saban and coach (Joe) Cox for giving me the opportunity of a lifetime, Kitselman wrote on social media. “I will forever be grateful for my time at the University of Alabama. After talking with family and close friends, I have decided to enter into the transfer portal with 1 year of eligibility remaining.”

Kitselman went on to start in 13 games, finishing with 301 receiving yards and five total touchdowns (receiving and rushing).

“Elite competitor,” Tennessee coach Josh Heupel said of Kitselman. “You know exactlywhat you’re going to get, which is everything that he has every single day. He’s got great football IQ and understanding as of what we’re doing offensively, the fundamentals and the technique, but also understanding the scheme we’re going against on the other side of the football. He’s really developed as a leader during the course of this offseason.”

Nick Kelly is an Alabama beat writer for AL.com and the Alabama Media Group. Follow him on X and Instagram.

Stevie Wonder has squashed rumors that have followed him for years.

The R&B legend has confirmed he is, indeed, blind during his “Love, Light and Song” U.K. tour.

“I must say to all of you, something that I was thinking, ‘When did I want to let the world know this?’ But I wanted to say it right now,” the 75-year-old legend told the audience from the stage during a July 10 concert. “You know there have been rumors about me seeing and all that? But seriously, you know the truth.

“Truth is, shortly after my birth, I became blind,” Stevie continued. “Now, that was a blessing because it’s allowed me to see the world in the vision of truth, of sight. See people in the spirit of them, not how they look. Not what color they are, but what color is their spirit?”

Mark Heim is a reporter for The Alabama Media Group. Follow him on Twitter @Mark_Heim. He can be heard on “The Opening Kickoff” on WNSP-FM 105.5 FM in Mobile or on the free Sound of Mobile App from 6 to 9 a.m. daily.

Josh Heupel was trying not to think about Tennessee’s rivalry with Alabama football.

“That game’s a long way away from where we are today,” Heupel told reporter at SEC media days in Atlanta, when asked about the Third Saturday in October.

Heupel has had far more success against the Crimson Tide than most other recent Tennessee head coaches. In 2022, he and the Volunteers snapped a losing streak that dated back to 2007, prompting a legendary field rush in Knoxville.

Nick Saban won his last game in the rivalry, back in Tuscaloosa for the 2023 edition. However, Kalen DeBoer dropped his first, losing the return trip to Neyland Stadium in the most recent edition.

Heupel discussed how important the game is to him and his players, but noted the Volunteers need to control what they can and take the season a day at a time.

“If this football team is focused on that journey , day-in and day-out, we’ll have a chance to grow to be a team that can go down to Tuscaloosa, compete, and hopefully find a way to win,” Heupel said. “It’s one of the greatest rivalries I’ve ever been involved in. It’s a really unique game and a really unique setting. And a couple of years a go, we weren’t on the right side of it, but I’m looking forward to going down there and competing with this group.”

The rivalry could be in jeopardy moving forward. The SEC hasn’t made a call as to whether it’s moving to a nine-game league schedule in the long-term, or sticking at eight.

If it keeps an eight-game slate, the conference might just hold onto one yearly rival for each school. For Alabama, that would likely be Auburn, relegating the Tennessee game to non-yearly status.

Heupel was asked about the prospect in Atlanta. He spoke of how important the game is to him.

“I think the rivalries, the special games, different for each fan base, are a huge part of what fan bases look for and those experience that they know they’re going to have,” Heupel said. Whether it be a home game, road game or neutral site game. I think those are special things that make college football, are part of what college football is.”

Alabama and Tennessee’s next game is scheduled for Oct. 18 in Tuscaloosa. The Crimson Tide opens the campaign Aug. 30 at Florida State.

SEC media days will continue through Thursday in Atlanta.

As some people described the worst days of their lives and others begged for forgiveness, Hal Nash sat quietly throughout his first day of parole hearings in Montgomery.

Nash, who most recently worked as the former chief corrections deputy for Jackson County Sheriff’s Office, didn’t vote on any of the eight parole and pardon hearings on Tuesday morning. But, as he sat on the right side of the dais, he listened to people both advocating and opposing parole and watched his colleagues work.

After listening to testimony in the first set of cases, Nash spoke to the crowded room.

“I’ve not had an opportunity to review any of these cases,” he said softly. “And therefore, I’m not voting on any of these cases because of that. It would be extremely unfair to not be prepared,” he said.

Nash added that he would spend the week observing and getting familiar with the job.

When asked by AL.com, Nash said he strived to be a fair leader.

“It would be totally unfair to inject myself into a voting process that I have no background on the individuals coming up before us,” he said.

“And to me that’s not fair. And this board’s going to strive to be very fair.”

Gov. Kay Ivey appointed Nash to the seat last week, replacing controversial chairperson Leigh Gwathney.

The governor wanted a “tough-on-crime, fair and pro-law enforcement candidate with leadership experience” to ensure public safety, according to a press release from Ivey’s office last week.

“Hal Nash is well-equipped to maintain the Board’s effectiveness in performing that task,” said Ivey. “He has a law enforcement perspective, and he has assured me he will approach each decision fairly and with that top goal in mind, which is to keep the people of Alabama safe.”

The announcement came via email after Gwathney’s seat expired on June 30. Alabama Attorney General Steve Marshall publicly supported Gwathney, a former prosecutor, and had asked the governor to reappoint her despite “unprecedented and unwarranted criticism by the liberal media.”

Gwathney was the most frequent ‘no’ vote on the board. She had been the focus for questions from both sides of the political aisle about why Alabama’s parole rate dropped so low in the past few years, and why the board was only letting out a fraction of people that their own guidelines recommended for release.

In 2023, the board granted parole for just 8% of eligible inmates as Alabama all but stopped releasing eligible prisoners. Under public scrutiny, the board ended 2024 with a 20% grant rate and is on track for a 21% grant rate this year.

On Tuesday morning, Nash was silent throughout the hearings with one exception, when he asked a single question to a woman seeking a pardon for a 1996 murder conviction.

The woman, who was currently on parole, shook as she admitted guilt and sought remorse for suffocating a woman nearly 20 years ago. She talked about her current job at a ministry and her daily routine.

When it was his turn, Nash asked the woman what she did on her last off day.

She bought clothes for the hearing, the woman explained. And then she bathed her dog, called her friends and prayed.

“The way people spend their free time says a lot about them,” Nash said.

Ultimately, she wasn’t pardoned. The board recommended she reapply in two years.

Overall, the morning of eight hearings ended with six denials. One man was granted medical parole, and one woman was pardoned for a manslaughter conviction.

Huntsville Hospital Health System leaders announced they are interested in building new emergency departments across Huntsville.

According to WHNT News, the hospital system needs approvals from the State of Alabama to build the free-standing centers. Hospital leaders want to build them in Hampton Cove and North Huntsville.

The plans are prompted by rapid growth in the metro area, President and CEO of Huntsville Hospital Health Systems, Jeff Samz, said. The stand-alone centers could accommodate current growth while preparing for the future.

The hospital is also expanding Madison Hospital’s existing emergency department by six beds. That will increase capacity by 25%.

Samz says he plans to fast-track the process for the new free-standing emergency centers. He submitted a letter of intent to the state and plans to formally apply for a Certificate of Need later in the summer.

His team plans on completing the design by the winter and beginning construction in 2026.

The total cost is approximately $60 million. Each free-standing emergency department is $30 million, including the costs of construction and equipment.

The exact locations have not been released.

Hugh Freeze came to Atlanta for SEC Media Days armed with confidence.

During his press conference on the main stage, he was asked about how Auburn can leverage its roster improvements to go from bowl game contender to playoff contender.

In his answer, Freeze didn’t hold back.

“I truly believe that in the playoff run we’re going to be in this discussion because I love this team,” Freeze said. “Now, we’ve got to stay healthy, and we need the ball to bounce our way a couple times this year instead of against us, I’m sure, but that’s our full expectation.”

Those are bold expectations for a program that hasn’t won more than six games in a season since 2019. A bowl game contender would be the best way to describe Auburn in recent years, but in two of the last three seasons, the Tigers failed to even reach that mark.

However, Auburn’s roster did take a step forward this offseason. The Tigers have stacked back-to-back top recruiting classes, and this year, added the eighth-best transfer portal class in the country, according to 247Sports.

It included Oklahoma transfer Jackson Arnold to fill the hole at quarterback, Georgia Tech transfer Eric Singleton Jr. — the top-ranked receiver in the portal –and a handful of other experienced pieces that will join a roster fraught with young talent.

“Our roster is just better,” Freeze said. “We’re bigger, we’re faster, we’re stronger. Our culture is strong. Our chemistry and carryover in coaching is here for a second consecutive year, and most of our locker room is bought into the standard to which we think it will take for us to win football games.”

Another part of Freeze’s confidence comes from the context of Auburn’s losses in 2024. The Tigers lost three one-possession games and two more games by 10 that Freeze believes Auburn could have won.

He also said that building a winner takes time and Auburn’s stacking of top 10 recruiting classes puts them closer this season than in years past to raise expectations.

“Certainly, I wish we would have won more games a few times, but the future is very bright in my eyes,” Freeze said. “We’ve been blessed everywhere we’ve been to win, and I expect nothing less than that at Auburn.”

Peter Rauterkus covers Auburn sports for AL.com. You can follow him on X at @peter_rauterkus or email him at [email protected]m