Hugh Freeze And The Arrival Of Ole Miss’ Dream Class Has Oxford Abuzz

Jan 19, 2013; Oxford, MS, USA; Archie Manning and Eli Manning talk to Ole Miss Rebels head football coach Hugh Freeze during the game against the Arkansas Razorbacks at Tad Smith Coliseum. Mississippi defeated Arkansas 76-64. Mandatory Credit: Nelson Chenault-USA TODAY Sports

For many people there’s an invisible line where desire and ambition ends and reality begins. We all have goals that we’d like to accomplish, but circumstance often relegates us to a lesser fate. For Ole Miss Rebels head coach Hugh Freeze, there appears to be no such ceiling. Not with Ole Miss’ highly-touted “Dream Class”–the 2013 recruiting class–arriving on campus this week.

Less than a decade ago, Hugh Freeze was a respected, yet unheralded, coach at a small private school in West Tennessee. A couple of state championships, a starring role in a book that led to a major motion picture, and three collegiate coaching stops later, and today he’s reached the pinnacle of the college coaching ranks as a head ball coach in the SEC. For most, that would be enough, but it doesn’t look like Freeze is content with sitting at college football’s most prestigious table. He wants to sit at its head.

Ole Miss is far from bereft of history. They have claimed national championships in 1959, 1960 and 1962, and The Grove is the most legendary tailgating experience in the SEC, if not the nation, and should be on every college football fan’s bucket list (it’s still on mine). However, little ole Hugh Freeze has imbued this storied program with a vitality that Oxford, MS hasn’t seen in quite some time.

Ole Miss football has an energy that we’re not familiar with. At least not since current New York Giants quarterback Eli Manning called Vaught-Hemingway Stadium home a decade ago, and maybe even since his daddy, Archie Manning, was the MVP the last time the Rebels won a BCS bowl–the 1970 Sugar Bowl against the Arkansas Razorbacks, then of the Southwest Conference.

It’s not as if Ole Miss football has disappeared in the stretches in between. They won back-to-back Cotton Bowls as recently as 2008 and 2009; however, there always appeared to be a ceiling to Ole Miss’ potential. And while the idea of Ole Miss winning a national title in a loaded SEC West–one that includes the LSU Tigers, Alabama Crimson Tide, the arch-rival Mississippi State Bulldogs and the NKOTB Texas A&M Aggies–still seems far-fetched, the ceiling certainly is rising.

That is thanks in large part to Hugh Freeze and his coaching staff putting together one of the most dynamic recruiting classes in the country in their first full year on campus.

Most of that 27-person class, which ranked No. 7 nationally according to 247Sports and featured the country’s consensus No. 1 prospect Robert Nkemdiche, arrived in Oxford this week to enroll in summer session and begin working out with the team. And while Nkemdiche will certainly draw the most media attention over the coming weeks–the defensive end figures to be an immediate impact off the edge for Hugh Freeze–the class, as a whole, has a number of talented players who could factor into the depth chart from Day One.

Junior college defensive tackle Lavon Hooks, a five-star by 247Sports, is another guy who will factor in immediately on the defensive line, while Illinois wide receiver Laquon Treadwell, Florida offensive tackle Laremy Tunsil and in-state safety Tony Conner round out the five stars for the 2013 Ole Miss recruiting class.

All of those guys will have a chance to factor in on the two-deep and see the field this fall, but the influx of talent doesn’t stop there, specifically at the skill positions. Ole Miss added plenty of talent at running back with players like Jordan Wilkins and Mark Dodson of Tennessee and Kailo Moore, another in-state product. They also added a pair of talented signal-callers in Ryan Buchanon and Devante Kincade and then added five wide receivers outside of Treadwell.

Hugh Freeze gained a certain level of fame when he coached the legendary Michael Oher–the subject of “The Blind Side”–at Briarcrest Christian School, but his system is a little less meat and potatoes than one would imagine with a mauler like Oher and the speed he added this offseason should pay dividends for the Rebels’ spread look. On the other side of the ball, guys like Nkemdiche, Hooks, Conner and the return of former two-way star Nick Brassell give Ole Miss several dynamic new defensive contributors.

Unfortunately, the Ole Miss Rebels and Hugh Freeze are playing the waiting game on several prospects, like Tony Conner and tight end Arshad Jackson. Meanwhile, outside linebacker Marcus Robinson will not qualify and is set to enroll at East Mississippi Community College.

However, despite the uncertainty surrounding that handful of players, the level of excitement surrounding this class and this program is understandably high, and it all comes back to Hugh Freeze.

To call Freeze’s rise through the coaching ranks meteoric would be to insinuate that it will eventually fizzle out, and it very well may. However, the trajectory of his career has been nothing short of spectacular.

I suspect we still have a few years before we figure out whether Hugh Freeze can win anything of consequence at Ole Miss, but in the interim it makes for exciting times in Oxford.

Hopefully, for Freeze’s sake, the “Dream Class” becomes reality.