When Jim Tressel resigned on Memorial Day 2011 amid an NCAA investigation, Luke Fickell was suddenly handed the keys of an Ohio State program five months removed from a Sugar Bowl win.

How would Fickell handle himself as a head coach? Tressel had built the Buckeyes back into a national powerhouse, so Fickell decided to just keep things running the same. That was a mistake, he conceded, and Ohio State posted its first losing season since 1988.

“I tried to take over in a short amount of time and keep it as similar as I can, and that was probably the worst thing I could have done,” Fickell told The All-American. “Because I couldn’t be consistent as a leader every single day trying to be like Jim Tressel.”

An interim head coach taking over for a coach fired in the summer has become a nearly annual event in college football, with Ole Miss the latest program in the predicament. Hugh Freeze’s July 20 resignation amid personal conduct issues thrust offensive line coach Matt Luke into the Rebels’ head-coaching job. It’s the first head-coaching job for Luke, a Mississippi native who has spent 15 years at Ole Miss as a player and coach.

Luke follows in the recent footsteps of other coaches put in the challenging position: Fickell (Ohio State, 2011), Everett Withers (North Carolina, 2011), John L. Smith (Arkansas, 2012), Bill Cubit (Illinois, 2015) and Jim Grobe (Baylor, 2016).

None of those five coaches posted a better record than the year before. Luke takes the reins of an Ole Miss program coming off a 5-7 season, with an SEC-low 11 returning starters and a typically tough SEC West schedule.

To help himself and the Rebels, Luke has reached out to coaching mentors like David Cutcliffe, Phil Fulmer and Mike MacIntyre about how to handle the situation, and their feedback is the same: Be yourself, not someone you are not.

“You pull all the good stuff you saw from them, and that’s how you’re built as a coach,” Luke said this week. “You also learn some things that you didn’t quite like and you put your own spin on it, and that’s your coaching philosophy.”

‘His voice was a little different’

Cutcliffe is one of Luke’s main mentors. Luke’s first coaching job was as a student assistant at Ole Miss under Cutcliffe, and after becoming the Rebels’ offensive line coach, he followed Cutcliffe to Tennessee (under Fulmer) and then to Duke. As soon as the Freeze news went down, Luke was on the phone with Cutcliffe.

“We’ve talked a good deal. He called me that night, and his voice was a little different,” Cutcliffe said as Duke camp opened. “The first night, he was just different, almost in shock, I think. Because he found out at about 4 or 5 o’clock that afternoon. He had no idea when the sun rose that, when the sun set, he’d be Ole Miss’ head coach.”

Coach School Year Pvs season Interim record Luke Fickell Ohio State 2011 12-1 6-7 Everett Withers North Carolina 2011 8-5 7-6 John L. Smith Arkansas 2012 11-2 4-8 Bill Cubit Illinois 2015 6-7 5-7 Jim Grobe Baylor 2016 10-3 7-6

Cutcliffe knows “Be yourself” is a cliché piece of advice to give, but what does it mean?

“It’s hard to define,” he said. “I realized many years ago, when we lay our head on our pillows, and I reminded Matt, it’s the most private time we have in a day, even if you have a spouse. You think about who you are, what you’ve done. At the end of every day, lay your head on that pillow and know you’ve been true to who Matt Luke is. He’s a great person, an optimistic person. The reason I hired him so quick, he’s a good football man. … He’ll be fine. He’s going to be Ole Miss’ head football coach, and he’s going to be fine in the process of doing that.”

Like Luke, Everett Withers’ promotion came on the eve of fall camp in 2011. At North Carolina, Butch Davis was fired amid an NCAA investigation. Withers had been the defensive coordinator on three consecutive 8-5 teams.

In his first team meeting, Withers emphasized to players that the remaining coaches would not change much about the program. Under Withers, UNC started 5-1, but finished 2-4.

“I don’t envy that position at all,” Withers, now the coach at Texas State, told The All-American. “The one thing you do get is the players know you, and they know what you’re about. If you’ve done a good job, the team knows about you. Not just the offense or defense. If you’ve done a good job as a coach, the team respects you, because you’ve got relationships with everybody, not just your position or side.

“The things I learned more than anything else is not trying to come in and blow it up, and bring your total beliefs.”

‘We didn’t talk a lot about the situation’

Withers said there wasn’t much talk about Davis after he took over. It was about moving forward. It was the same thing for John L. Smith at Arkansas.

Smith spent three years as an assistant under Bobby Petrino at Arkansas and took the head-coaching job at Weber State in December 2011, his fifth head-coaching job. But Petrino’s motorcycle crash the following April led to the discovery of an inappropriate relationship with a staffer, and Petrino was fired. Smith had gone through spring ball with Weber State, but returned to be the head coach of the Hogs.

Smith knew his chances of winning the full-time job at Arkansas were not great, but he was taking over a program that won the Cotton Bowl and went 11-2 the season before. He was instructed by athletic director Jeff Long to just keep the ship afloat.

“They knew the situation. We didn’t talk a lot about the situation,” Smith, now the coach at Kentucky State, told The All-American. “This is what happened, let’s not talk about it. I’m back, and we’re going to try to do the best we can from here on out and keep the staff in place. When I met with Jeff, that was his marching orders to me. Keep the staff in place, do everything you can do, keep the boat from sinking.”

But the boat sank.

In Week 2, the No. 8 Hogs lost to Louisiana-Monroe in overtime. That was followed by losses to No. 1 Alabama, Rutgers and Texas A&M. The Hogs finished 4-8. Smith says he never secured the full buy-in of the team.

“Once Bobby didn’t come back, some of our good players, it seemed to me like they kind of were saving themselves,” Smith said. “I’m not saying that’s good or bad. A lot of those kids were going to get a chance to go on and play later. That’s kind of the way it seemed to me. Some played their hearts out. Some said ‘Coach Petrino’s gone, and even though Coach Smith is here, I want to move on to other things.’ ”

Looking back, Smith said, he would have made more changes upon taking over instead of keeping things going as they were. Fickell, now Cincinnati’s head coach, expressed similar sentiments. Once he was promoted from defensive coordinator to head coach at Ohio State, he tried to be too much like Tressel instead of what he was comfortable doing.

Fickell took over a team coming off a 12-1 season, but it was one that had seen quarterback Terrell Pryor depart in the wake of the investigation. The Buckeyes started 6-3 under Fickell but lost their final three games and then their bowl, after Urban Meyer had been hired. Fickell knew the emotional toll of everything would weigh on his team during the year, and it would eventually catch up to them.

“You have to have a plan for that,” he said. “I thought we did, and I knew we had to be good early in the year, because at that time, I knew it was going to hit our guys late in the year. They’d be drained emotionally, because of the stuff flying around us. I was right. We didn’t handle it great, but I was right.”

‘It’s going to be emotional’

Fulmer has said believes Luke’s long history with the school and relationship with the Rebels’ players will help keep things on track in Oxford.

To fill his previous role, Luke hired Jack Bicknell Jr. as offensive line coach. Bicknell was the head coach at Louisiana Tech from 1999-2006, and along with new offensive coordinator Phil Longo and new special teams coordinator Bradley Dale Peveto, Luke has three assistants with Division I head-coaching experience. He can lean on that in some aspects of the job.

The Rebels open the season Saturday night against South Alabama. Recent history says the chances of a summer interim head coach succeeding in the fall are not good, but Luke’s job is to make the most of it. A Mississippi kid has his dream job, even if it’s not the way he expected.

“It’s going to be emotional. This is something I’ve been thinking about for a long time,” Luke said. “I’m just excited about the opportunity, excited about walking through The Grove, and excited about locking the Vaught and representing my university and trying to put a team on the field that everybody’s proud of. I’m very, very excited. That’s going to be one of my biggest challenges this game, controlling my emotions. To be a very efficient and organized head coach and not let my emotions get to me. But I’m excited and prepared for it.”

Lead photo by The Associated Press

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