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al.com

What are Hugh Freeze’s immediate concerns as college football faces a ‘paradigm shift’?

Updated: May. 30, 2024, 9:12 a.m.|Published: May. 30, 2024, 8:43 a.m.

4–5 minutes

Auburn's Hugh Freeze speaks to reporters at SEC Spring Meetings 2024

Auburn head football coach Hugh Freeze admits he hasn’t been coaching as long as some of those who joined him at he SEC’s spring meetings in Destin, Florida this week. But in his experience, no trip to the spring meetings has been quite like this.

“With these meetings, there’s a lot more questions that we have than normal,” Freeze told reporters Tuesday.

This year’s spring meetings came less than a week after the NCAA and its five biggest conferences agreed to pay just south of $2.8 billion to settle a handful of antitrust claims that were facing college sports. The decision was a monumental one — one that sets the table for a revenue-sharing model that could start funneling money directly into the pockets of student-athletes.

While the settlement still has a way to go and still needs the nod of approval from a federal judge, student-athletes could begin seeing payments as early as the fall semester in 2025.

“It’s a total change. It’s a paradigm shift,” Freeze said, adding that he currently has “no clue” what to tell current recruits who are beginning to ask questions about the new model.

Again, it’s hard to answer other people’s questions as head coaches who still have so many unanswered questions of their own.

“The toughest thing right now is we struggle to even know what questions to ask because we just don’t know everything yet,” Freeze said.

However, after part of a proposed athlete-compensation model featured the idea of a roster cap, which would force programs to significantly cut back on football rosters, Freeze knew that was one question he and other coaches wanted to bring to the table.

While most major college football programs have long operated with roster sizes of 115-plus players, power conference leaders are considering trimming that number and allowing a team to field as few as 85 to 95 players.

And while having a team of 85 players currently aligns with the NCAA’s maximum number permitted scholarships, the concept would likely mean the end for walk-on football players.

“It’s something that’s really concerning to us,” Freeze said of the issue. “We’re only used to practicing a certain way, we’re not the NFL, we’re a physical practice and trying to understand what that looks like uniformly across the nation and how it affects other sports with whatever comes from this settlement, that’s probably up there.”

Freeze was far from alone in his concerns as a majority of the other coaches around the league voiced similar opinions on the issue.

SEC commissioner Greg Sankey says he’s told coaches to “slow down” when they bring up the topic.

“I know other conferences have discussed it, coaches have then texted our coaches, they get fired up and we said just wait. We’re gonna have a conversation, that’s where it is, that’s a concept,” Sankey added.

The other issue weighing heavy on Freeze’s mind isn’t a new one for him.

Earlier this month, Freeze told reporters that he was in the boat of wanting players to sign a contract — just like coaches do.

“I’ve said publicly: You need to bring it to campus, and sign them to a contract just like I sign a contract,” Freeze told local reporters at the Regions Tradition Pro-Am in Birmingham on May 8. “If they want a one-year contract, great. If they want a two-year contract, great. But once you sign it, just like if I leave Auburn, somebody’s got to pay Auburn money. And it should be the same way in my opinion. I think that would bring a lot more sanity to it.”

And Freeze doubled down on that Tuesday in Destin.

“And then obviously the structure that gives us some lock-in to a roster for a period of time and we know this is our roster for this period of time,” Freeze said, continuing his response to a question about what issues are at the forefront of his mind. “Those are the two things, probably, that are on the forefront of my mind and I think most of our coaches.”

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