Benjamin Ashford|Opinion: If you think Auburn won't fire Hugh Freeze in Year 2, you haven't been paying attention

The Benjamin Ashfordbest part about it, the absolute best part about this small town, cutthroat bubble of a world, is Auburn really is The Loveliest Village on the Plains.

But slithering beneath that bucolic setting of genuine community and cooperation, that Norman Rockwell painting of Americana, lies the beast of envy.

Always feeding, never satiated.

“You can feel it every single day,” former Auburn coach Terry Bowden once told me.

Hugh Freeze is feeling it now. Just like Bryan Harsin and Gus Malzahn and Gene Chizik and Tommy Tuberville and, do I really need to continue?

There’s a reason envy is one of the seven deadly sins.

Whatever Alabama can do, we can and should do better. Money is no object, nor are self-humiliation and degradation.

Wasn’t that long ago that Auburn ran off Harsin because tailback Tank Bigsby forgot to stay inbounds to help run out the clock on an upset of You Know Who. In Harsin’s first year.

Not long after that self-inflicted and painful loss, Harsin suddenly wasn’t “a fit” – and vicious rumors about off-field improprieties sprung up on the cesspool of Twitter months before Year 2 began.  

Wasn’t that long ago that Auburn ran off the one guy who beat Alabama coach Nick Saban more than any other. Now Malzahn is living the good life in Florida as coach at UCF, or as he says, “living where you vacation.”

Chizik was fired two years after winning a national championship.

Tuberville was fired a year after beating Alabama – the source of Auburn’s never-ending and destructive envy – in six consecutive games.

So if you think Auburn won’t pull the trigger on Freeze after two seasons – or in the middle of Year 2 – you obviously haven’t been following along.

If you think power brokers at Auburn (see: deep-pocket boosters who have run the joint for decades) care about public opinion, or the scorn that comes with so many knee-jerk decisions, you haven’t been following along.

If you think buyout money is an obstacle, let me walk you through a field of green prettier than farmland on the outskirts of the Loveliest Village.

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Auburn paid Tuberville $5.08 million to not coach after the 2008 season.

Auburn paid Chizik $7.5 million to not coach after the 2012 season.

Auburn paid Malzahn $21.45 million to not coach after the 2020 season.

Auburn paid Bryan Harsin $22.25 million to not coach after the 2022 season.

If you think Auburn is going to balk at another $21.125 million to make Freeze go away — according to USA TODAY coaching contract guru Steve Berkowitz — you obviously haven’t been following along.

It's Auburn, where anything that can happen more than likely will.

It really isn’t so much that Freeze has botched the quarterback position (he has), or that he hasn’t been the offensive revelation Auburn expected (he hasn’t). Or that he blamed players, which frankly, I have no problem with ― especially in this age of player earning and free movement.

It’s that once fat-cat boosters believe Alabama is out of reach for (choose your coach), it’s time for change. It doesn’t matter what it costs.

After six wins in Year 1 under Freeze included the unspeakable sin of fourth-and-31 against Alabama, Year 2 began with the joyous departure of Nick Saban from Alabama.

Ding, dong, the witch is dead!  

Then the Auburn quarterbacks couldn’t stop throwing the ball to the other team. The Tigers lost to Cal after Payton Thorne threw four interceptions, lost to Arkansas after Thorne and Hank Brown threw four more and lost to Oklahoma last weekend after Thorne threw a pick-six with Auburn leading by three with four minutes remaining.

All three games, all nine interceptions, played out in the Loveliest Village, in front of a loyal, passionate fan base at Jordan-Hare Stadium that begrudgingly accepts the fat-cat booster mechanisms in place because, son of a gun, they just want to beat Aladamnbama.

In that sense, Auburn is not unlike every other major college football program. We don’t want to know what’s in the tailgate casserole, we just know what it tastes like when everything is clicking.

They also see the hard, cold truth of reality when Alabama, four games into the tenure of new coach Kalen DeBoer, is again playing like the best team in college football.

It’s a carousel of self-destruction at Auburn that never stops, the only constant an uncomfortable phone call every few years to super-agent Jimmy Sexton – who, at this point, should be on retainer.

The beast of envy is alive and well in the Loveliest Village on the Plains.

Always feeding, never satiated.

Matt Hayes is the senior national college football writer for USA TODAY Sports Network. Follow him on X @MattHayesCFB.