Charles Huff is expected to be named as the next college football coach at Memphis on a five-year deal. He apparently lied to his recruits at Southern Miss just three days prior.
An unnamed athlete committed to the Golden Eagles expected their head coach to stay.
This is the unfortunate byproduct of the current college football calendar. However, Huff did not need to say what he said on his phone call with the recruit or during his press conference if it was not true.
Charles Huff is leaving for Memphis.
There has never been a more chaotic coaching carousel in college football history than the one we are currently riding. 24 different teams (and counting) either fired their head coach or had to replace their head coach because he was poached by another school. Lane Kiffin was the biggest domino to fall but multiple Power-Six programs like Florida, Arkansas, UCLA, Michigan State and Kentucky also made a change, among others. Many of them hired a coach from Group of Four schools like USF or Tulane.
Lets focus only on the Razorbacks.
The University of Arkansas fired sixth-year head football coach Sam Pittman after the first five games of the season. It hired Ryan Silverfield from Memphis as his replacement.
That left the Tigers with an opening. They are expected to hire Charles Huff from Southern Miss.
The deal is not done until the ink is dried but it is obviously trending in that direction.
Huff surprisingly left Marshall for Southern Miss last December. He took over a Golden Eagles team that won just two games in 2024 and won seven games in 2025 to earn $980,000 with bonuses.
And now he’s (probably) off to the Bluff City.
He lied to Southern Miss recruits.
The timing of this coaching change is unfortunate. Southern Miss signed nine high school football recruits in the Class of 2026 on Wednesday but its head coach is going to leave.
One player in particular must be furious.
Charles Huff spoke to the unnamed recruit on Tuesday. A rival conference school told the recruit that his potential future head coach was supposedly in New Orleans to interview for a new job the day prior.
The recruit immediately called Huff. Huff put the recruit on FaceTime to show him the view from his office. How could he travel to a different city to interview for a different job if he was in Hattiesburg?
Here is how Charles Huff told the story during his Early Signing Day press conference:
That was on Wednesday. News broke of Huff’s expected departure for Memphis on Saturday morning.
Maybe he wasn’t in New Orleans to interview for the Tigers job and took all of his interviews over Zoom. Maybe this whole thing came together on Thursday and Friday so what he told the recruit on Tuesday was still true at the time. I doubt it. Either way, the recruit committed to Huff and now Huff is gone.