Auburn football can blame itself for this hole Hugh Freeze is in | Toppmeyer

Auburn checked out of what it considered Hotel Mediocrity when it fired Gus Malzahn three years ago. Its eye for greatness proved bigger than its stomach, though, and Auburn promptly checked in to Hotel Misery.

Hotel Mediocrity would look plush right now.

Auburn paid a $21.5 million buyout to fire a coach who achieved eight consecutive winning seasons, beat Nick Saban three times and went 6-4 against an SEC-only schedule in the midst of the worst pandemic our nation experienced in a century.

I thought Auburn’s 2020 decision to fire Gus Malzahn was foolish then. The past three seasons have shown that Malzahn is fine without Auburn, but the Tigers are lost without Malzahn.

The window probably had closed on the idea of Malzahn winning a national championship at Auburn, a program with national championship ambition even though it has won just two titles in its history.

With its eyes set on glory, Auburn tumbled rump over teakettle before ever getting out of the starting blocks.

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Disaster doesn’t even begin to describe the Bryan Harsin era. My early read on the Hugh Freeze era: He’ll succeed more than Harsin, but not as much as Malzahn, who won 66% of his games at AU.

Malzahn called Freeze on Monday to wish him luck in the Iron Bowl. Freeze certainly will need good fortune Saturday, and he’ll need a rock-solid plan with a top-tier staff to restore the program to where Malzahn had it, at his peak.

Hugh Freeze needs a quarterback and a recruiting boost

Imagine if Auburn had retained Malzahn and quarterback Bo Nix. What would its record be these past three seasons? Certainly, it would be better than the 17-19 record it’s achieved under Harsin and now Freeze.

And with Malzahn on the sideline, I doubt Auburn (6-5, 3-4 SEC) would be a 15-point home underdog like it is against No. 8 Alabama (10-1, 7-0). Saban beat Malzahn once in four tries on the Plains.

Harsin couldn’t carry Malzahn’s visor, and he was as old school as he was unlikable – a bad combination in this era of NIL and transfers, where players enjoy some power and voice. The Idaho native failed to make inroads recruiting Alabama. Some would say he never even tried.

By this point in Harsin’s tenure, it had become clear that his union with Auburn would fail.

I’m not out on Freeze yet. He’ll be better than Harsin, but will Freeze exceed Malzahn's winning percentage? Doubt it.

Auburn’s recruiting class ranks No. 17 nationally in the 247Sports Composite, with less than a month remaining before the early signing period. Freeze already is better recruiting the state than Harsin was, but that's a low bar. Auburn can’t hope to catch Georgia, Alabama and LSU with 17th-ranked signing classes, and Freeze’s inability last offseason to land a transfer quarterback better than Payton Thorne is concerning.

Malzahn regularly signed top-10 classes.

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Auburn football job is becoming tougher in the SEC

In defense of Freeze, he inherited a program in need of reinvigoration, and his résumé earns him some runway. But, he faces a daunting task of restoring Auburn to national prominence while being squeezed in all directions by Alabama, Georgia and Florida State.

Those three programs reside within 200 miles of Auburn, and they cast a shadow, especially considering each is in play for the College Football Playoff and each projects to be a perennial contender for a 12-team playoff.

In the SEC’s current 14-team iteration, the Auburn job ranks somewhere between Nos. 5 and 7. After Oklahoma and Texas join next year, that ranking will slip to somewhere from Nos. 7 and 9.

This is the point where I’m supposed to go beyond pointing out the flaw – Auburn’s imprudent firing of Malzahn in a race to the bottom – and suggest a solution, but I struggle to see a readymade escape hatch to deliver the Tigers from this hole they threw themselves into three years ago.

AU suffered its most humbling defeat in years on Saturday, a 31-10 whipping at Jordan-Hare Stadium delivered by New Mexico State.

“We're in a rebuild. That's not an excuse to what happened Saturday,” Freeze said Monday, an assessment that sounded strangely similar to an excuse.

Auburn can’t turn back the clock and fight on with Malzahn, whose floor never reached the depths of these past three seasons.

The best it can do is afford Freeze some patience, support his recruiting efforts and resist the urge to throw him overboard if he wins 60% of his conference games in a season, like Malzahn did in his finale.

Auburn learned the hard way that the elevator usually descends more easily than it ascends.

Blake Toppmeyer is the USA TODAY Network's SEC Columnist. Email him at BToppmeyer@gannett.com and follow him on Twitter @btoppmeyer.

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This article originally appeared on Knoxville News Sentinel: Iron Bowl: Auburn football can blame itself for hole Hugh Freeze is in