Hugh Freeze learns hard lesson: Coaches at old-line SEC powers can’t lose to UK
AI-generated summary reviewed by our newsroom.
- Auburn fired Hugh Freeze a day after Kentucky upset, reflecting fast firings.
- Old-line SEC jobs often end quickly after losses to Kentucky, trend persists.
- Program instability, not a single loss, drives these post-Kentucky coaching exits.
After the final seconds of Kentucky’s 10-3 upset over Auburn on Saturday night had ticked off the Jordan-Hare Stadium game clocks, a faction of what was a frustrated crowd of 88,043 fired up a chant.
“Fire, Hugh! Fire, Hugh!” rang out as Auburn head man Hugh Freeze exited the playing field.
On Sunday, Freeze was in fact given the pink slip, shown the door after the ninth game of his third season as Auburn coach with an overall record of 15-19, 6-16 in Southeastern Conference games.
Freeze is the latest example of a recurrent coaching phenomenon that unfolds at the six old-line SEC football powers — Alabama, Auburn, Florida, Georgia, LSU and Tennessee.
At those schools, it’s uncanny how often a loss to traditionally pigskin-challenged Kentucky seems to lead, in very short order, to a head coach’s unemployment.
In getting the ax one day after losing to UK, Freeze seems to have set a record for quickest such ouster.
Barely.
In 2021, LSU head man Ed Orgeron and the Tigers took a 42-21 throttling from UK at Kroger Field. Orgeron coached one more game, a 49-42 win over Florida, before his firing (to be enacted at the end of the 2021 season) was announced by LSU.
Four years earlier, Tennessee head man Butch Jones presided over a 29-26 loss to Kentucky on Oct. 28, 2017, in Lexington. Jones lasted only two more games leading the Rocky Toppers, his firing being announced by UT on Nov. 12, 2017.
In at least one notable case, losses to Kentucky seemed to play a role in one of the iconic coaches in SEC history essentially exiling himself from college football.
At Florida, Steve Spurrier went 12-0 against Kentucky from 1990 through 2001.
After a failed venture coaching the NFL team now known as the Washington Commanders, Spurrier returned to college football as head man at South Carolina in 2005.
The Head Ball Coach went 8-1 vs. UK in his first nine seasons leading the Gamecocks’ program.
However, in 2014 and 2015, Mark Stoops hung back-to-back defeats on Spurrier, beating South Carolina 45-38 in Lexington in 2014 and 26-22 in Columbia in 2015.
After the infamy of losing to Kentucky in back-to-back seasons, Spurrier lasted only four more games before stepping down, mid-season, as Gamecocks coach.
In alphabetical order by school, this is how many subsequent games were coached by the most recent head man to lose to Kentucky while coaching at each of SEC football’s six “old line powers.”
• Alabama: In 1997, Mike DuBose lost his fifth overall game as Crimson Tide head coach, 40-34 in overtime, to UK at the venue then known as Commonwealth Stadium.
After taking the second of what remains only two Alabama losses ever against the Cats (UK is 2-38-1 vs. the Tide), DuBose coached 42 subsequent contests as Bama head man.
• Auburn: Since 1966, Kentucky is now 2-19 vs. the Tigers.
While Freeze did not survive Saturday night’s loss to the Wildcats, Gene Chizik, who presided over Auburn’s 21-14 defeat to UK in 2009 in what was only his seventh game, coached 45 subsequent contests after falling to the Wildcats.
• Florida: After the Gators beat Kentucky 31 games in a row from 1987 through 2017, the past two full-time Florida head men have each lost twice to UK.
Dan Mullen lasted only six more games after taking his second loss to Kentucky, a 20-13 defeat in 2021.
Billy Napier coached 27 additional contests after he suffered his second loss to the Wildcats, 33-14 in 2023.
• Georgia: The exception to the “can’t lose to Kentucky” rule, Mark Richt went 5-0 vs. UK from 2001 through 2005, then was 2-2 vs. the Wildcats from 2006 through 2009.
However, after falling to the Wildcats 34-27 in Athens in 2009, Richt coached six more years at Georgia and went 6-0 in those seasons vs. Kentucky.
• LSU: In a stunning fall, Oregron coached LSU to the national championship on Jan. 13, 2020, yet his firing was announced on Oct. 17, 2021.
The Tigers’ blowout loss to UK in 2021 appeared to be the final nail for “Coach O.”
• Tennessee: UT has only lost to UK in football three times since 1984. None of the three UT coaches who responsible for those defeats to Kentucky subsequently survived a full season.
While Jones lasted two contests after losing to the Cats in 2017, Jeremy Pruitt made it six games after the 2020 Volunteers took a 34-7 loss to Kentucky at Neyland Stadium.
Derek Dooley survived for 11 additional contests after UT was stunned 10-7 in 2011 by a Wildcats team with no healthy scholarship quarterback — and, therefore, forced to play wide receiver Matt Roark at QB.
The ouster of coaches at the six old-line SEC football powers soon after falling to Kentucky generally reflects program issues that run deeper than merely losing to UK.
Nevertheless, there will be one way to gauge it when and if Kentucky football ever reaches the status of respected Southeastern Conference program:
That moment will have arrived when losing a game to the Wildcats no longer seems so directly correlated to coaches at the traditional SEC football powers immediately losing their jobs.
