Arkansas Sports 360 - ArkansasSports360.com

12/5/2011 at 8:31am

Image by Stephanie Dunn

Hugh Freeze led ASU to its first winning season since 1995 and is now poised to become the next head football coach at Ole Miss.

Arkansas State University’s celebration of an outright Sun Belt Conference championship Saturday in Jonesboro was bigger than Coach Hugh Freeze.

But the emotions were no doubt a mixed bag, with tears of elation over the Red Wolves’ best season in 25 years mixed with tears over knowing that Freeze and his staff had earned the opportunity to move to a bigger assignment.

Freeze is headed home to Mississippi, where he will take over an Ole Miss program left in shambles by Houston Nutt. Just as ASU made a gutsy hire with Freeze a year ago that paid off, the Rebels are making the right choice. Freeze’s biggest challenge in Oxford won’t be coaching know-how or recruiting, but lack of patience by Ole Miss fans who still don’t accept what a difficult situation they have in the Southeastern Conference.

ASU should be thanking Freeze and his staff for an amazing year, wishing him well, hoping that a handful of assistants will stay on board and planning to get behind the next head coach. It’s impossible to fault Freeze for accepting an opportunity to coach at the flagship university of his home state in the SEC for three times the compensation. He handled the past two weeks of speculation as well as he could.

While serving as head coach just one year, Freeze impacted ASU positively in a way no other coach has done since Larry Lacewell. The players and fans now know the success that is possible, and so do potential head coaches. There’s not a sports fan in the state who ever imagined that an ASU head football coach could make a leap to an SEC job. If the ASU job can now be one that attracts rising young talent and rewards them for regularly competing for conference championships with BCS team promotions, then Freeze will have left an amazing mark on the Red Wolves.

(Above: The Red Wolves celebrate the Sun Belt Conference Championship on Saturday.)

It was interesting to hear all the talk about Freeze possibly leaving ASU for Memphis and Southern Mississippi, with the assumption that those were big moves up. Memphis would be a step down from ASU at this point, and Southern Miss is a lateral move. Freeze was being offered a package in the $500,000 range, plus more compensation for assistants, as an appropriate reward for his success. When referring to Freeze being the lowest paid coach in the FBS, no one points out that that ASU didn’t have to pay top dollar to the unproven Freeze last year — the school gave him an opportunity to be a head coach at the FBS level.

I endorsed Freeze for the ASU job last year after watching him as offensive coordinator and hearing him speak to the Little Rock Touchdown Club. But I couldn’t have imagined the level of success the Red Wolves enjoyed this season. His departure is a painful sting for the Red Wolves not only because of the success and attitude he brought to the program, but also because he’s a really personable, good guy that the players and fans grew to love quickly.

Now ASU’s head coach search begins. The Red Wolves have a solid team returning and are off to a strong start with recruiting commitments if they can keep them in light of Freeze’s departure. No clear frontrunners immediately emerge, but the bar has been raised for what can be.

Tagged: Sun Belt Conference, Larry Lacewell, Houston Nutt, Ole Miss Rebels, Hugh Freeze, ASU Red Wolves, video