All Hogs

This Will be Fun ... SEC Gets an Old Family Member Back

Hugh Freeze already gets his welcome social media from Lane Kiffin

Andy Hodges

In this story:

FAYETTEVILLE, Ark. — Arkansas is one of the few spots in the ever-increasingly incestuous SEC family where it's quiet.

You really couldn't make up better stuff for a streaming series.

And it's all going to be Houston Nutt's fault. Keep reading, we'll drag that into this in a minute.

Look at it that way and even a segment of the Razorbacks' Lunatic Fringe can even jump in with both feet.

Houston Nutt-Oklahoma State
Mississippi Rebels coach Houston Nutt during the Cotton Bowl against the Oklahoma State Cowboys at Cowboys Stadium. (Leon Halip / USA TODAY Sports)

This time it's Ole Miss' Lane Kiffin leading the charge, which really shouldn't be that surprising.

By most folks' accounts with some logic thrown in, the Rebels' coach decided to stay in Oxford instead of taking the gig in Auburn where Hugh Freeze is now back in the league.

Yes, Freeze is back and sorta slapped Ole Miss in his very first press conference.

"No offense to another school or anything, but I feel like I've leapfrogged where I was at that time (Ole Miss) by being in this family and this culture here," he said taking the job on The Plains.

Seriously, this stuff is great. Even the emoji irony.

When Alabama's Nick Saban and Texas A&M's Jimbo Fisher had their little go-around back in early summer, another SEC athletics director (LSU's Scott Woodward) said it was just "a couple of West Virginia hillbillies" having a little fit.

The SEC has a long and storied history of this family drama and coaches going from one school to another one.

For the poor Rebels, this is the second time a coach abandoned them for Auburn. We take you back to the whole Tommy Tuberville to The Plains drama that led to David Cutcliffe that led to Ed Orgeron that led to Nutt that led to Freeze.

Now that we've drawn the entire circle we're back to Nutt being mentioned earlier.

Freeze had been on Orgeron's staff in Oxford during those three years of fun and games in Oxford and always said the Ole Miss was one he really wanted, coaching in the Memphis area before.

The situation at Ole Miss with Nutt at the end of his tenure was a disaster throughout the entire athletic department. There were rumors and closed-door accusations flying all over the place.

Hugh Freeze-Liberty
Hugh Freeze celebrates taking down the Arkansas Razorbacks on their Homecoming. (Nelson Chenault / USA TODAY Sports)

When Nutt departed, it didn't take Freeze's name long to come up as a replacement candidate. Freeze, was as connected as connected gets to the Ole Miss fan base and program even before being hired as the coach, thinks he's been misunderstood.

Freeze departed when Ole Miss tried to lay all of the blame for their NCAA trouble at Nutt's feet, he got attorney Tom Mars involved and dug up some stuff that forced him out. The NCAA stuff didn't do it, despite what a lot of folks love for their narrative.

"Please give me a chance to earn your trust," Freeze said. "Give me some time to get to know us, get to know my family, get to know the truth to our story."

If we wins enough games what happened somewhere else years before really doesn't matter.

In the SEC, that's pretty much a family-wide opinion, by the way.

Arkansas divider

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Arkansas divider

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Andy Hodges
ANDY HODGES

Sports columnist, writer, former radio host and television host who has been expressing an opinion on sports in the media for over four decades. He has been at numerous media stops in Arkansas, Texas and Mississippi.