Tommy Tuberville knows what Hugh Freeze is walking into, and the former Auburn coach and current U.S. Senator from Alabama has reacted to Freeze being the new Auburn coach.

Tuberville was Auburn’s coach from 1999-2008 and has known Freeze since Freeze was a high school coach at Briarcrest Christian in Tennessee. Perhaps the biggest name connected to the 2 coaches is that Tuberville recruited one of Freeze’s players, Michael Oher, to Auburn during the 2005 recruiting cycle.

However, Tuberville is well ware of Freeze’s past, from personal and professional issues at Ole Miss, to social media missteps at Liberty involving a Title IX and sexual assault topic.

“There’s been some problems,” Tuberville said of Freeze. “…He had some problems while he was at Ole Miss, but sometimes you have to give people a second chance. Now, there will be a short leash, I’m sure, from the administration at Auburn and the people at Auburn. They’re going to expect things from Hugh Freeze that he’s going to have to show, that he’s going to have to give forward to the Auburn family and to the administration.”

Freeze apologized for those mistakes earlier this week in an interview with ESPN, and Tuberville outlined what he has to do next.

“Obviously, he’s going to have to win games, but he’s also going to have to prove that he’s over his past, that he’s a family man and that anything that would happen in the future would be a very, very short rope,” Tuberville said. “So, hopefully, we can get through this and get Auburn football back to where it should be. But I think Hugh is a very excellent coach, but there’s a lot of things that go along with being a head coach, and Hugh knows that. He’s had some success in the last few years, and he’ll be judged not really by anything from the past now that he’s the head coach at Auburn; he’ll be judged by what he does at Auburn in a lot of different areas.”