He has gone and done it, all right. Won too many games, recruited too well and eventually put himself in a corner with only one way out.
“I really believe it’s time for us to be relevant,” says Ole Miss coach Hugh Freeze.
And any casual college football fan knows that hasn’t been the case at Ole Miss since a guy named Manning was running around — and around and around — in Oxford, Miss., nearly five decades ago.
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This is where you are, Ole Miss: your young coach has done so much so fast, the only thing left is to win big games and compete for championships.
The only thing left for Freeze, 44, is to be the one coach who stays and grows and becomes invested in who and what he is building. The one coach who doesn’t leave because another job is bigger or better — or get run off because the rest of the SEC is bigger and better.
The one coach who survives and thrives where Steve Sloan and Billy Brewer and Ed Orgeron and Houston Nutt and everyone in between could not.
The one coach who makes Ole Miss relevant.
“There’s no shame in losing to Ole Miss,” says South Carolina coach and SEC legend Steve Spurrier. And that might just be the biggest indicator of how far things have come in such a short time under Freeze.
Three years ago at SEC Media Days — before Freeze’s first team took the field — it was Spurrier, in the middle of criticizing what he thought was an unbalanced SEC schedule, declaring that Georgia “gets” to play Ole Miss and the Gamecocks “had” to play LSU.
Now Freeze is talking about taking the next step with a team two years removed from a 16-game SEC losing streak. A team that was two gut-wrenching losses (Auburn and Texas A&M) last year from reaching 10 wins in Year 2.
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A team that beat rival and SEC heavyweight LSU, and a team that whipped Texas on the road — the same Texas team that was playing for the Big 12 title (and a BCS bowl) in the last week of the regular season.
“It’s a natural progression for us,” said Ole Miss quarterback Bo Wallace. “There’s no pressure at all.”
That’s exactly how more than a handful of Ole Miss teams of the past acted, and the narrative off the field never matched the output on it. It wasn’t so long ago that Nutt — remember him? — had the Rebels in the top five in the first month of the 2009 season, only to split eight conference games and begin an ugly fall that culminated two years later in his firing after his teams dropped 14 of those 16 straight SEC losses.
It’s not like that should be surprising. It was Nutt who broke a nine-game SEC losing streak when he arrived after Ed Orgeron was fired. You know him, right? He was the ace assistant at USC who couldn’t make it happen in Oxford.
Just like David Cutcliffe before him; the ace assistant at Tennessee who came to Ole Miss and won more than anyone since legendary coach Johnny Vaught, but was summarily pushed out after his first losing season in six years — and one year after he made Ole Miss relevant with a 10-win season and another Manning playing quarterback.
So, yeah, excuse us if we’ve heard this story before. Forgive us for thinking twice when Freeze says he loves Ole Miss and that this is his dream job. Tommy Tuberville once said the only way he’d leave Oxford was in a pine box (see: casket), and then somehow found his way to not only another job, but a bigger and better job in the same conference.
“We’re not naïve, we know the history here,” said Ole Miss safety Cody Prewitt. “You can’t say it and not do it. You have to walk the walk.”
Here’s the unique part of this stated return to relevance: everything lines up for Ole Miss to actually make it happen.
The Rebels have the most experienced quarterback in the league with two game-breaking targets (WR Laquon Treadwell, TE Evan Engram). There’s a strong offensive line with the best tackle in the SEC (Laremy Tunsil), and a resurgent defense led by the best young talent in the SEC (DT Robert Nkemdiche).
Meanwhile, Alabama and Auburn — the favorites in the SEC West Division — come to Oxford. When Wallace was told many believe Ole Miss will break through this fall with at least one win against an SEC heavyweight, he said, “that’s how you become relevant.”
And why not? They built this narrative by playing well and forcing themselves into the conversation.
In that sense, they’re already relevant.