Auburn athletic director John Cohen will sign the contract for new football coach Hugh Freeze with both eyes open.
If anyone knows the upside and the risk involved in hiring the former Ole Miss coach, it's the former Mississippi State athletic director. They didn't just share a state for five years, they shared a conference. Cohen would have attended AD-level meetings and heard all about why Freeze left Oxford under a dark cloud in the summer of 2017. (At Tuesday's introductory press conference, Cohen expressed confidence in both Freeze and the thoroughness of Auburn's vetting procedures but declined to take any questions that would have shed more light on that process.