By Harry King
LITTLE ROCK — Mentioned in speculation about the next football coach at Ole Miss weeks before Houston Nutt was officially dispatched, two men with Arkansas ties would do well to think long and hard before pursuing the job in Oxford.
For up-and-comers like Arkansas State University head coach Hugh Freeze or Auburn offensive coordinator Gus Malzahn, Ole Miss can be a dead end.
Ole Miss supporters don’t want to hear it, but whoever signs on will be hard-pressed to win consistently in the Western Division of the SEC.
The Rebels’ opposition is superior; their facilities inferior.
Three of the top four teams in the best football conference in the country are in the division and they are not going to backslide with Les Miles, Nick Saban, and Bobby Petrino in charge. Auburn’s Gene Chizik has won a national championship. Featured on Mississippi State’s “Welcome To Our State” billboards, Dan Mullen has established a beachhead in the athlete-rich state.
Then, there are the facilities.
In August, Ole Miss launched a campaign to raise $150 million for a basketball arena — Tad Smith Coliseum opened in 1966 — to improve the infrastructure of Vaught-Hemingway Stadium, and to eventually expand the 60,000-seat stadium. Courting athletes, the ambiance of “The Grove” only goes so far.
Long gone are the glory days of Johnny Vaught. Ole Miss has topped .500 in the SEC three times since the league expanded in 1992 and the only time the Rebels did better than 5-3 was in 2003, Eli Manning’s senior year. Ole Miss has never been to Atlanta for the SEC title game.
Above all else, the new coach will be shorthanded when it comes to athletes.
ESPN’s ranking of recruiting classes proclaims the uphill climb:
2011 — Ole Miss, No. 25. The SEC had seven schools in the top 15, including LSU, Alabama, and Auburn in the top 10.
2010 — Ole Miss, No. 25. Alabama, Auburn, and LSU were in the top eight. Three other SEC schools were in the top dozen.
2009 — Ole Miss, No. 22. LSU and Alabama were one-two. Four other SEC schools were among the top 15.
Money is not everything and it would be a surprise if Ole Miss pays its next coach the $2.7 million that Nutt received. Malzahn already makes $1.3 million, more than dozens of head coaches.
An expert on the hurry-up, no-huddle offense, Malzahn is mentioned almost every time there is a coaching search. Now 46, he will get better job offers. Besides, he can live nicely on $100,000 per month in eastern Alabama.
Freeze could be had much cheaper — he makes about $1 million less than Malzahn — but he would be much more difficult to sell to the Mississippi faithful. He has worked wonders in his first year at Jonesboro, getting ASU (7-2) bowl eligible earlier than ever before, but skeptics would say he did it with Steve Roberts’ players and Mississippi fans went through a spike in success with Nutt and Ed Orgeron’s recruits.
Before doing a year as ASU’s offensive coordinator, the 42-year-old Freeze was 20-5 as head coach at Lambuth.
On the plus side, Freeze is a favorite of Sean Tuohy, a restaurateur and adopted dad of Michael Oher, and he is familiar with the Mississippi situation. Freeze, Oher’s high school coach depicted in the movie “The Blind Side,” was an Ole Miss assistant in 2005-07 and interim head coach in November 2007.
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Harry King is sports columnist for Stephens Media’s Arkansas News Bureau. His e-mail address is hking@arkansasnews.com.
