A lot’s been said about Auburn’s 2026 recruiting class.
Even more has been written.
It’s been a fascinating study in a major program taking a unique approach to the new world of recruiting and how these shifting rules are being interpreted.
What’s clear, however, is the support third-year coach Hugh Freeze is receiving from athletics director John Cohen.
In an interview with AL.com at SEC Media Days, Cohen’s praise for Freeze’s efforts on the recruiting path was unmistakably effusive.
“I’m gonna be really blunt with you,” Cohen said. “I rode up here in a car with Hugh Freeze and he had seven recruiting calls in those two hours. And many of the recruiting calls were kids calling him. One of the things I really admire about our football coach is there are many coaches out there, many who hand off recruiting to other people on their staff. Hugh Freeze is not one of them.”
Those aren’t the words of an AD who is angry for having a 2026 recruiting class currently ranked among the worst in the Power 4.
“And it doesn’t matter if he’s in a car, it doesn’t matter if he’s in a restaurant, it doesn’t matter if he’s with his family. When a recruit calls, he answers it. We’ve had two top 10 classes in a row because of the tradition of Auburn and because that guy has a personal relationship with our best kids that we recruit. And that matters.”
Those calls, Cohen said, extend to the site of Freeze’s preferred summer sporting pursuit.
“And just for your own information,” Cohen said. “I’ve been on a golf course with Hugh Freeze when a kid called or he called the kid and had a 30-minute conversation with him while he was playing golf.”
Yes, golf.
The sideshow story of the summer.
None of the golf concerns Cohen.
“You know, some people like to drink. Some people like to fish. Some people like to do all sorts of things,” Cohen said. “That’s one of his hobbies. … With what he inherited, why are top-level kids deciding to come to Auburn? It’s because of his personal effort.
“And look, all anybody cares about is winning games. But that’s the root of winning games.”
Those aren’t the words of an AD whose football coach is on the hot seat regardless of the 11-14 record he compiled in two years.
In fact, Cohen invoked the name of Auburn’s basketball coach for another reason he’s sticking by his highest-profile hire since getting the job nearly three years ago. He recalled Bruce Pearl’s record after two seasons was 26-40.
“Look at what the investment in time and understanding how long it takes to build something the right way,” Cohen said. “Look at what that has done for Auburn University. Just imagine if the wrong people had the wrong vision and said, sorry.”
Of course, Pearl went on to lead the Tigers to their first two Final Fours in school history — raising the program to heights that previously felt impossible.
Expectations for Auburn football and basketball are calibrated differently, though.
And Freeze’s predecessor, Bryan Harsin was fired midway through his second season with a 9-12 record. Cohen was hired immediately after, and he made the Freeze hire less than a month later.
While the on-field success hasn’t been consistent in the two seasons that followed, Freeze’s reputation as a top recruiter followed him to Auburn.
He has consecutive top-10 recruiting classes in his first two seasons but the 2026 version has been an uphill battle.
That hasn’t gone unnoticed to the point Cohen made a quick appearance at the media table at a July 2 donor event in Alexander City. There, he defended Auburn’s approach to the revenue sharing/NIL strategy that appears to be differing from peers and leading to a class currently ranked 75th nationally.
It’s also rare to see an AD at SEC Media Days, but that’s where Cohen was Tuesday morning in Atlanta.
He again offered a full defense of Auburn’s unique recruiting strategy, which is contributing to its low ranking for the 2026 class.
“We’ve been told many times that August 1st is the first time that a school can make a written offer to a student athlete,” Cohen told AL.com. “As you know, nothing matters till it’s written. You know that, you’re a writer.
“And we just believe that the market, if you will, for student athletes is a little inflated and that we are being very patient and very deliberative on the way that we handle offering. And it’s just different now.”
He reiterated that Auburn is simply following the SEC guidance on how they’re handing offers.
“And if we at any point in time feel like that we need to pivot because things have changed in the interpretation of policy and rule,” Cohen said, “we’ll pivot immediately and jump in with both feet.”
This is, after all, a completely new world where schools are figuring out how to budget the revenue-sharing and NIL money.
Cohen explained it as filling three different buckets as it relates to the football piece of the pie. He said Auburn helped build its strategy by speaking with NFL front offices about how they spend their personnel money.
The first bucket, Cohen said, is the current roster.
“If you like your team, at the end,” Cohen said, “your team has to be taken care of.”
The next bucket/priority is the transfer market.
“So you have to have money set aside for to hit that moment in December and January,” Cohen said. “You gotta be ready for that moment to fill that need.”
Next is the traditional high school recruiting world.
While “not lessening the high school market,” Cohen said they’re being cautious over promising with those targets when they know big seasons from current players would require an investment to keep them out of the transfer portal.
Essentially, it’s a matter of prioritizing or rewarding the proven talent who have already made an impact on campus.
In reality, it’s a Catch-22 where a good season means investing more in the retention of the current players than the program’s long-term health with the next crop of five-star high school recruits.
These are decisions everyone is having to make as schools adjust to the seismically shifting world of roster management and construction.
“And again, I can’t stress this enough, we want to do it the right way,” Cohen said. “And when I say the right way, we don’t want to make guarantees to 18-year-old high school seniors and their parents and then turn around in December and say, ‘Yeah, sorry, it’s not there anymore.’ We think that’s a really slippery slope. You know, we don’t want to fall into that.”
Instead, Auburn stands on somewhat of an island as it takes a recruiting strategy that appears to differ from its peers and rivals.
The Tigers are doing so with confidence.
Their head football coach and athletics director are aligned, and that’s important since any discussion of job security for either is tied to the other.
But if there’s anything to take away from Cohen’s conversation with AL.com, the Auburn AD is not just standing by Hugh Freeze, he’s offering full-throated support of his coach’s effort and record in the face of struggles and resulting criticism.
Michael Casagrande is a reporter for the Alabama Media Group. Follow him on Twitter @ByCasagrande or on Facebook.
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