Hugh Freeze Caught in the Middle of Michael Oher/Tuohy Family Dispute

Auburn head football coach Hugh Freeze spoke like a man caught in the middle on Thursday when discussing his perspective on the ongoing legal saga of Michael Oher vs. Sean and Leigh Anne Tuohy.

"I love Michael Oher," Freeze told reporters in Auburn when asked about Oher's lawsuit against the Tuohys. "He's like part of our family. I love the Tuohys. I think it's sad."

Freeze's current players, recruits and their parents are listening to see what side he takes. It could turn off current and future players if he doesn't stick up for Oher. If he doesn't acknowledge the Tuohys, it could send a message to boosters that he won't stand up for them.

"I know if Michael called Sean right now and said, 'Let's work this out,' Sean and Leigh Anne would be there in a hurry to hug his neck and tell him he's loved," Freeze said to reporters. "I hope he feels that ... I don't claim to have all the answers to anything."

The attempt at neutral comments from Freeze speaks to the role the Oher-Tuohy relationship played in forming his own career. Freeze's sojourn from high school coach to Auburn is long, with lots of twists and turns. But his entry into the college ranks came when he followed the star offensive lineman within days of Oher's commitment to play college football at Ole Miss.

Without Oher or the Tuohys, Freeze's career path that led him to coaching at Auburn likely looks dramatically different.

Freeze's relationship with the Tuohys goes back decades and continued well after Oher headed to the NFL. In 2013, he baptized Sean "SJ" Tuohy Jr., whom in 2021 Freeze hired at Liberty as assistant athletic director of football operations.

"It's a special connection with that entire family," Freeze said via ESPN on hiring SJ at Liberty. "It's always a great feeling to hire somebody that you know and somebody that cares about you and believes in what we're doing and how we're doing it."

The relationship with Oher also extended off the field. A 2014 Bleacher Report profile by Lars Anderson notes that Oher spent nights at the Freeze home, where Freeze's wife tutored him. On the field, they won a state championship together.

"In 2001, Freeze met Michael Oher, a Memphis teenager who bounced around homes and even had been homeless for stretches in his life," Anderson wrote in the profile on Freeze. "The Freeze family embraced him—Oher spent one to two nights a week at their house—and Jill tutored him. Oher became especially close to the Freezes' three young daughters: Jordan, Madison and Ragan."

Oher, a Super Bowl champion with the Baltimore Ravens, is suing Sean and Leigh Anne Tuohy, saying he believes the Tuohys tricked him into signing a conservatorship by claiming they were adopting him. He signed the pact in 2004 as an 18-year-old on his way to play college football at Ole Miss.

Oher asserts he was under the impression the document made him a member of the Tuohy family. The family stated last week through its legal team that NCAA compliance was a primary factor.

"It is our intent to offer to enter into a consent order as it relates to the conservatorship, and then if they have other issues, we'll deal with them," Tuohy attorney Randall Fishman told reporters. "There was one thing to accomplish, and that was to make him part of the family so that the NCAA would be satisfied because Sean would have been a booster of the university."

With the relationship that helped propel his career strained, how does the first-year Auburn head coach respond? Does he side with Oher, whom he coached in high school and college?

Does Freeze side with the Tuohys, who made it possible for Oher to attend the high school where he coached? He walks the verbal tightrope.

"The facts will come out. But, you know, I love both sides of it," Freeze told reporters. "Sean and Leigh Anne Tuohy did something that most families ... a lot of us talk about doing things, but they actually put the shoes on and pulled the boots up and got in the arena and did something. I think that's admirable."

Newsweek reached out to Freeze for comment via email on Monday.