My picks were almost as bad as the Razorbacks’ play on the field last week.

I went 3-4, the worst week here on the Southern Fried blog in several years.

After the win over Ole Miss, I had climbed back aboard the Razorback bandwagon and foolishly selected Arkansas to beat Auburn despite the deficiencies in the Razorback offensive and defensive lines that had been so glaring in one-sided losses to Alabama and Texas A&M.

Arkansas finds itself 1-3 in Southeastern Conference play with none of the three losses having been close.

Yes, I’ll pull out the old joke: I’m picking Arkansas to slip past B.Y.E. this Saturday.

I also was done in by a trio of upsets in the Great American Conference as Southern Arkansas defeated Henderson a week after losing to Ouachita, Ouachita lost to UAM a week after upsetting the Muleriders and Arkansas Tech lost to Southeastern Oklahoma following convincing victories the previous two weeks.

The only consistent team in the GAC this year is Harding. I expect the Bisons to finish the regular season with an 11-0 record.

The record for the season is now 43-20.

Let’s get to the picks for Week 9 and see if we can recover from the prognosticating disaster that was Week 8:

Arkansas State 34, Louisiana-Monroe 31: When he spoke to the Little Rock Touchdown Club last week, Red Wolf head coach Blake Anderson chastised me (with a smile on his face, mind you) for picking against his team in the first two Sun Belt Conference games. Arkansas State had gone 0-4 in nonconference play, including that loss in Jonesboro to an FCS team (UCA from the Southland Conference). Can you blame me? But the Red Wolves are 2-0 in conference action after wins in Jonesboro over Georgia Southern and South Alabama. And they’re back in Jonesboro this Saturday for a fourth consecutive home game as Louisiana-Monroe comes to town. We’ll step out there and pick ASU against a Louisiana-Monroe squad that’s 2-5 overall and 2-1 in the Sun Belt. The victories have been by scores of 38-21 over Southern University and 40-34 over Texas State. The losses have been by scores of 59-17 to Oklahoma, 23-21 to Georgia Southern, 58-7 to Auburn, 34-31 to Idaho and 59-17 to New Mexico. Don’t let me down, Coach Anderson.

UCA 30, Southeastern Louisiana 22 — The Bears remain on a roll. UCA moved to 6-1 overall and 5-0 in the Southland Conference with a 22-12 victory over Lamar in Conway last Saturday night. This is a Bear team that seems to get better each week. UCA now must head south to take on Southeastern Louisiana in an afternoon game Saturday at Hammond, La. This one won’t be easy. The Lions are just 4-3 overall but find themselves 4-1 in conference play following three consecutive victories. The losses were by scores of 61-7 to Oklahoma State, 28-23 to Southern Utah and 38-14 to Lamar. The four conference victories for Southeastern have come by scores of 34-24 over Northwestern State, 31-24 over McNeese State, 58-34 over Stephen F. Austin and 37-3 over Houston Baptist.

Grambling State 50, UAPB 23 — This UAPB team seems to get worse with each passing week. Last week saw a 49-17 loss to Southern University in Baton Rouge, the fourth consecutive defeat for a Golden Lion squad that’s now 1-6 overall and 1-4 in the SWAC. The assignment this week is to go back on the road against a 5-1 Grambling team whose only defeat was a close 31-21 loss to Arizona at Tucson during the second week of the season. The Tigers are 4-0 in SWAC play with victories of 35-14 over Jackson State, 43-18 over Alcorn State, 36-16 over Praivie View A&M, and 59-10 over Mississippi Valley State. You can make it 5-0 in SWAC action after this week.

Harding 38, Southwestern Oklahoma 21 — The Bisons improved to 8-0 on Thursday night of last week with a 35-7 win at Ada, Okla., against an East Central Oklahoma team that’s now a disappointing 1-7 on the season. This week’s opponent, Southwestern Oklahoma, started the season 0-4 and seemed to be in for a season just as dismal as that being experienced by East Central. But the Bulldogs have turned their season around with four consecutive victories, including a 37-35 come-from-behind win over Oklahoma Baptist last week. Expect the Bulldogs to hang around for three quarters or so in Searcy on Saturday afternoon before Harding pulls away.

Henderson 32, Oklahoma Baptist 24 — The Reddies won three of the first five Great American Conference championships (Ouachita won the other two) and were the overwhelming favorite to take home another GAC title in 2016. Henderson started the season 5-0 but was blown out in Arkadelphia two weeks ago by Harding. The Reddies rebounded for a 45-17 victory at Arkadelphia the next Saturday against UAM, but then they went to El Dorado for the Murphy USA Classic. Their defense gave up half a hundred to Southern Arkansas in a 50-24 defeat. Barrett Renner threw for 318 yards and two touchdowns against the Reddies. It was SAU’s first victory over Henderson since 2005. Expect the 6-2 Reddies to rebound somewhat for a homecoming triumph in Arkadelphia on Saturday afternoon against a 2-6 Oklahoma Baptist team.

Ouachita 29, Southern Nazarene 18 — Injury-depleted Ouachita — missing its quarterback, top running back, top receiver and others — somehow managed to win its homecoming game in four overtimes against Southern Arkansas on Oct. 15. Then the magic ran out in Monticello last Saturday afternoon as the Boll Weevils of UAM moved to 3-5 with a 34-26 victory over Ouachita. The loss dropped the Tigers to 4-4 following a 3-1 start. Ouachita had won the previous five games against UAM, but Cole Sears completed 18 of 27 passes on Saturday for 254 yards and three Boll Weevil touchdowns. Ouachita returns home Thursday night to Cliff Harris Stadium, where the Tigers are 13-3 since the stadium opened in 2014. Expect Ouachita to get a win over 1-7 Southern Nazarene, but even this one won’t be easy due to all of the freshmen who are having to play.

UAM 37, East Central Oklahoma 26 — The Boll Weevils are home again this week. What the heck. Let’s call for a second consecutive victory for a program that has struggled in recent years. Sears looked sharp in the win over Ouachita and the Boll Weevils, who already have matched their combined victory total of the previous two seasons, are feeling good about themselves. The Weevils have a talented redshirt freshman running back named Deountario Brown and a fine freshman kicker named Josh Marini. Better days are ahead for Hud Jackson’s program.

Southern Arkansas 35, Southeastern Oklahoma 28 — The Muleriders are 6-2 and hopeful that three victories and a 9-2 record will earn them a spot in the NCAA Division II playoffs. A 5-3 Southeastern Oklahoma team that defeated Arkansas Tech 36-31 last Saturday should present quite a challenge in Magnolia this Saturday afternoon. Renner, who completed 21 of 33 passes in the win over Henderson, will need to have another good day. Michael Nunnery, who scored three touchdowns on the ground against the Reddies, also must have a productive afternoon. This has the makings of one of the most entertaining games in the GAC this week.

Arkansas Tech 41, Northwestern Oklahoma 36 — I’ve picked all Arkansas schools against the Oklahoma schools so far. I might as well continue the trend. Tech, which is now 4-4, was disappointed in the loss at Southeastern Oklahoma since it came on the heels of victories of 49-17 over Ouachita and 55-14 over East Central Oklahoma. Durant, Okla., is a tough place to win. Ouachita’s lone loss in its first four games, for instance, came at Durant. The Wonder Boys are back in Russellville on Saturday afternoon against a 4-4 Northwestern Oklahoma squad that defeated Southern Nazarene 42-9 in its previous outing.

Gus Malzahn’s Auburn Tigers take on the Arkansas Razorbacks late Saturday afternoon at Auburn.

Much like Hugh Freeze (whose Ole Miss Rebels lost to Arkansas last week in Fayetteville), Malzahn can thank Arkansas State for opening the door for what quickly became a job as a head coach in the Southeastern Conference.

Football fans across the country were stunned when the news leaked out in December 2011 that Malzahn — one of the most highly paid and innovative offensive coordinators in college football at the time — had accepted an offer to be the next head coach at Arkansas State in Jonesboro.

After all, Malzahn reportedly had turned down an offer a year earlier to be the head coach at Vanderbilt and was strongly considered for the job of head coach at Maryland.

By the end of the 2011, it was rumored that he was in the running for head coaching jobs at Kansas and North Carolina.

To understand Malzahn, you must drive through the soybean, rice and cotton fields of east Arkansas to the poor farming community of Hughes. The population in the 2010 census was 1,441 (it’s even smaller now), down from a high of 1,919 in the 1980 census.

The Hughes entry in the Encyclopedia of Arkansas History & Culture admits that the second largest town in St. Francis County is “typical of the towns in this part of the state, although it is not known for any major historical events or as the home of any significantly famous peple.”

That translates to “not much happens here.”

But it was at Hughes where Malzahn’s career as a coach began.

It was at Hughes where he first became a hot coaching commodity, albeit at the high school level.

It was at Hughes where Malzahn started to refine his coaching philosophies, further growing to love the sport and its challenges.

George Schroeder, a former Arkansas Democrat-Gazette sportswriter who went on to national acclaim as a college football reporter, was in Arizona in January 2011 as Auburn prepared to play Oregon for the national championship (a game the Tigers would win).

In a piece for the Sports Illustrated website, Schroeder remembered the time in 1994 when Malzahn brought his Hughes football team to War Memorial Stadium in Little Rock for the Class 4A title game.

“They’d arrived a few minutes late, and as they were about to take their seats high in the stands, the coach turned around, pointed to the state championship game unfolding below and addressed the stunning reality. The next day, his bunch would play for a title, too. ‘This,’ Gus Malzahn told the Hughes Blue Devils, ‘is the big time, guys.’ For those wide-eyed kids from a tiny farming community in the Mississippi River Delta, there was nothing bigger. For their 29-year-old, third-year head coach, too.”

Hughes lost to Lonoke the next day, 17-13.

“I thought I’d never be back,” Malzahn told Schroeder. “I thought I’d never get a chance again.”

He’s a man who still describes himself as “a high school coach who just happens to be coaching college.”

When asked to name the coaches he looked up to when he was getting started in the business, Malzahn doesn’t list college head coaches. He lists men such as Don Campbell of Wynne High School, Frank McClellan of Barton High School and Barry Lunney Sr., whose final two high school coaching stops were at Fort Smith Southside and Bentonville.

Malzahn was born in Irving, Texas, in October 1965. His parents divorced when he was 6. After a year in Little Rock and a year in Tulsa, his mother wound up in Fort Smith, where Malzahn lived from the fourth grade until his graduation from Fort Smith Christian High School in 1984. He loved sports and had decided by junior high that he wanted to coach for a living. He was a wide receiver and safety in football while also playing basketball and baseball.

“That’s just what I did,” Malzahn says. “I played everything.”

Malzahn also enjoyed coaching younger kids at the Evans Boys Club in Fort Smith. He coached soccer, baseball and football — basically anything that gave him a chance to be in a gym or on a playing field.

Malzahn was offered a football scholarship to Henderson State University in Arkadelphia after high school but decided to walk on as a football player for head coach Ken Hatfield at the University of Arkansas.

“It took me about two practices to figure out I wasn’t good enough to play at that level,” he says. “But I stuck with it for a year and a half.”

Malzahn transferred to Ouachita Baptist University in Arkadelphia, where his best friend from Fort Smith Christian, David Little, was on the baseball team.

After a semester, Malzahn moved to the other side of U.S. Highway 67 in Arkadelphia to play football at Henderson. Malzahn played during the 1988 and 1989 seasons for Coach Ralph “Sporty” Carpenter. Those were the final two seasons of a long coaching career for Carpenter, a colorful Hamburg native who died in 1990.

“Coach Carpenter was kind of a legend when I got to Henderson,” Malzahn says. “Everyone knew him or knew about him. It was one of those special deals to be a part of that group.”

Malzahn had married his girlfriend from Fort Smith, Kristi Otwell. Carpenter, known for taking care of his players both during and after college (it was Carpenter who gave a graduate assistant named Charlie Strong his first big break by getting him a job at Florida), eased the transition.

“I had just gotten married to Kristi, and he was really concerned about helping her, helping us and seeing that we had what we needed to succeed,” Malzahn says of Carpenter.

In 1991, Malzahn applied for a position as an assistant coach at West Memphis High School. That job went instead to a coach named Bobby Crockett, who left his job as an assistant coach at Hughes. Malzahn was hired to take his place.

“I didn’t even know there was a Hughes,” Malzahn admits. “It turned out to be a great place for a young coach. I could make mistakes and then learn from those mistakes.”

Hughes represented a bit of culture shock for a man who had grown up in Fort Smith and attended college at Fayetteville and Arkadelphia. He and his young wife lived in a mobile home with Gus teaching everything from geography to health. After one season as an assistant coach, Malzahn was promoted to head coach for the Blue Devils.

One of the most popular books in the country among high school coaches is a book Malzahn wrote. It’s titled “The Hurry Up No-Huddle: An Offensive Philosophy” and came out in 2003. Eleven years earlier, as the new head coach at Hughes, Malzahn bought a book titled “The Delaware Wing-T: An Order of Football.” In those early years, his offenses depended on the run.

Schroeder described that 1994 state championship loss to Lonoke: “In the final moments, the Blue Devils drove inside the 10. But a halfback pass misfired. A sure touchdown pass was dropped. Their last chance was intercepted. And the head coach still second-guesses himself. He knows he should have run the ball because there was still time and that was the Blue Devils’ strength. He remembers the awful empty feeling, that this was his one shot at the big time.”

After one more season at Hughes, Malzahn was hired a Shiloh Christian, a private school in Springdale that opened in 1976 as an outgrowth of the First Baptist Church. In 1986, Texas native Ronnie Floyd came to the church as its senor pastor. In addition to growth at the church, the dynamic, driven new minister oversaw growth at the school.

A winning football program was important to Floyd, especially since his son Josh was the quarterback.

The athletic director at Shiloh was Jimmy Dykes, now the head women’s basketball coach at Arkansas. When Malzahn saw a note asking him to call Dykes, he knew what it was about.

Gus and Kristi Malzahn headed from the Delta to the Ozarks.

It was at Shiloh that Malzahn moved from a run-oriented offense to the wide-open passing attack for which he would become known. He was the Saints’ head coach from 1996-2000. His 1998 team set what at the time was a national record with 66 passing touchdowns, and Josh Floyd almost set a national record with 5,878 yards of offense (5,221 passing yards and 657 rushing yards).

Malzahn, the man who had feared he would never get back to War Memorial Stadium for a state championship game, led the Saints to four consecutive title appearances. They lost 54-30 to Frank McClellan’s Barton Bears in 1997, defeated Hector 49-14 in 1998, defeated Carlisle 47-35 in 1999 and lost 30-29 in overtime to Rison in 2000.

Following the 2000 season, Malzahn was Springdale’s choice to replace veteran head coach Jarrell Williams.

“What people don’t remember is there were still a lot of questions about whether I could coach in the state’s largest classification,” Malzahn says. “I guess I was the only one crazy enough to try to fill Coach Williams’ shoes. He was Springdale football.”

Malzahn said the memory of Williams cast a long shadow during the 2001 season.

“The job I did wasn’t good enough for the people of Springdale, and I knew it,” he says.

Across town, Shiloh was winning another state championship without him, defeating Augusta 34-20 in the 2001 title game.

By 2002, though, Malzahn had the Bulldogs in the state championship game, where they lost to Barry Lunney Sr.’s Fort Smith Southside Rebels, 17-10.

Gus Malzahn was well on his way to being an Arkansas high school coaching icon at age 37.

Malzahn’s legend grew at Springdale when his 2005 squad went 14-0, outscored its opponents 664-188 and routed West Memphis 54-20 in the state championship game at War Memorial Stadium in front of the largest crowd to ever watch a high school event in Arkansas.

Gus Malzahn had come a long way from Hughes. Sportswriter Kurt Voigt even wrote a book about that 2005 Springdale team.

Hundreds of thousands of words have been written in Arkansas about what happened next.

Malzahn joined Houston Nutt’s staff at Arkansas in December 2005. Many believed that Frank Broyles, the school’s athletic director at the time, had forced Nutt’s hand.

Nutt mispronounced Malzahn’s name at the news conference that was held to introduce the new coordinator, and Malzahn was never fully accepted by his fellow Razorback coaches (some of whom derisively referred to him as “high school”) even though Arkansas won the Southeastern Conference Western Division championship in 2006.

With the tension evident, it surprised few people inside the state when Malzahn accepted an offer from the new head coach at Tulsa, Todd Graham. The two men had become friends when Graham was coaching a high school powerhouse in Allen, Texas. Graham had purchased a video Malzahn hosted on the hurry-up, no-huddle offense and discovered they had some of the same ideas.

With Malzahn as offensive coordinator, Tulsa ranked first nationally in total yards per game and third in passing in 2007. The Golden Hurricane became the first college team to have a 5,000-yard passer, a 1,000-yard rusher and three 1,000-yard receivers in the same season. In 2008, Tulsa led the nation again in total yards, averaging 570 yards per game while ranking second in scoring.

It didn’t take Auburn’s new head coach, a defensive specialist named Gene Chizik, long to move Malzahn back to the SEC in December 2008. The Tigers finished the 2009 season ranked 16th in total offense and 17th in scoring after having been tied for 110th in the country in scoring the previous season.

In 2010, Auburn won the national championship, quarterback Cam Newton won the Heisman Trophy and Malzahn won the Broyles Award as the top assistant football coach in the country.

No assistant coach in America had a higher profile. Some reports had Vanderbilt offering him as much as $3 million a year to be its head coach.

Malzahn later told me he had no regrets. He believed acceptance of the Vanderbilt job in December 2010 would have taken his focus off preparing for Auburn’s appearance in the national championship game. Auburn increased his annual salary from $500,000 to $1.3 million, making him perhaps the nation’s highest paid assistant football coach.

At Arkansas State, Hugh Freeze had moved up after one season as ASU’s offensive coordinator to replace Steve Roberts. Prior to the 2011 football season, Freeze was best known as the man who had coached Michael Oher at Briarcrest Christian School in Memphis. Oher was the subject of Michael Lewis’ 2006 book “The Blind Side” and the 2009 movie of the same name in which Freeze was portrayed by actor Ray McKinnon.

There was excitement surrounding Freeze’s hiring, but even the most optimistic Red Wolf fan could not have predicted the success that would follow. ASU went 10-2 during the regular season, won the Sun Belt Conference championship and earned a spot in a bowl game at Mobile, Ala. Freeze parlayed his instant success at ASU into the head coaching job at Ole Miss, where he replaced Nutt.

Despair on the part of ASU followers turned to elation when Malzahn made the decision to return home to Arkansas.

In late 2010, Arkansas State athletic director Dean Lee had called Malzahn at Auburn to ask him about Freeze.

At the end of the conversation, Lee joked: “You wouldn’t want to come back to Arkansas, would you?”

When Freeze left for Ole Miss, Lee again talked to Malzahn to pick his brain about possible successors. Once more he joked: “You wouldn’t want to come back to Arkansas, would you?”

This time, there was a long pause.

“I would consider that,” Malzahn finally said.

On Dec. 8, 2011, Malzahn called Lee in his office. They had a second long conversation that Thursday night once Lee had gotten home.

Malzahn had decided he was ready to be a head coach at the college level. He hadn’t been offered the job at either North Carolina or Kansas, and the thought of returning home to Arkansas was appealing. The pay would be much less than he was making at Auburn. He knew that.

On Friday, Dec. 9, 2011, Lee and Malzahn talked three more times by phone.

By 10:30 a.m. that Saturday, Lee was on the way to Auburn in his personal vehicle.

Paranoid that Malzahn’s home was being watched by the media, Lee had taken the ASU license plate off the front of the vehicle and removed the Red Wolf bumper stickers.

For three hours that evening, Lee visited with Malzahn and his wife in their home. He then pulled out late in the evening. Too nervous to sleep, Lee drove straight back to Jonesboro, arriving at 6:45 a.m. Sunday.

By then, ASU President Chuck Welch and Gov. Mike Beebe, an ASU graduate, were in the loop. By the following Wednesday, Malzahn was being introduced as the next ASU head coach before a large crowd at the Convocation Center in Jonesboro.

Things had moved quickly.

“I’m an Arkansas guy,” Malzahn told me soon after arriving in Jonesboro. “I’m still a high school coach at heart, and I’m a firm believer in being able to win at the major college level with high school talent from Arkansas. Kristi and I loved Auburn, but we were 10 hours from our family and friends. This is my chance to come back and build something big, to put it on the national map.”

Little did he realize how soon Auburn would be calling him back to the SEC.

Malzahn led the Red Wolves to a 9-3 record and a Sun Belt Conference championship as quarterback Ryan Aplin thrived in his offense, passing for 3,342 yards and 24 touchdowns.

To the east at Auburn, the alumni had grown weary of Chizik despite that national title just two seasons earlier.

Malzahn got the call. He would never have the chance to build what he had described as the “Boise State of the South” at Arkansas State, but the opportunity to be a head coach in the SEC West was too much to resist.

On Nov. 16, 2013, Auburn faced a fourth-and-18 against Georgia with 36 seconds left. Malzahn called a play named “Little Rock,” and quarterback Nick Marhsall hit Ricardo Louis on a tipped 73-yard pass to give Auburn the win.

Two weeks later in the Iron Bowl, Auburn returned a missed field goal 100 yards for a touchdown on the final play of the game against Alabama in one of the great finishes in college football history.

Auburn beat Missouri in the SEC championship game and led Florida State 21-3 in the national championship game before falling 34-31.

Malzahn seemed to be living a charmed life.

Things have been tougher since then.

Auburn was 8-5 in 2014, losing in the Outback Bowl.

The Tigers were just 7-6 in 2015, needing a victory in the Birmingham Bowl for a winning season.

There was lots of grumbling earlier this year when losses to Clemson and Texas A&M were sandwiched around a win over Arkansas State. Some speculated that Malzahn wouldn’t finish the season. The heat has eased somewhat with three consecutive victories going into the game against the Razorbacks.

Regardless of what happens the rest of the season, it has been quite a ride for the coach who thought “I would never get a chance again” after Hughes lost to Lonoke at War Memorial Stadium in 1994.

It was a good third Saturday in October for the three largest football programs in the state.

Arkansas beat Ole Miss, 34-30.

Arkansas State downed South Alabama, 17-7.

And UCA destroyed McNeese State down in Lake Charles, 35-0.

So those who had fallen off the Razorback bandwagon following one-sided losses to Texas A&M and Alabama are back aboard. For now.

Auburn looms on The Plains late Saturday afternoon in yet another ESPN-televised contest for the Hogs.

One of the loudest crowds in school history seemed to will Arkansas to its victory over Ole Miss, the third consecutive year for the Razorbacks to beat the Rebels. Arkansas dominated in time of possession, 40:38 to 19:22, while outgaining the Rebels 429-403. A big factor in time of possession was Rawleigh Williams’ ability to run on the Rebs. He carried the ball 27 times for a career-high 180 yards against the school to which he initially had committed.

Arkansas has now topped 400 yards of offense in six consecutive games.

Hugh Freeze is 2-3 against the Hogs since leaving Arkansas State in Jonesboro for Ole Miss. Arkansas leads the overall series, 34-27-1.

What to make of Auburn?

It’s hard to tell.

People were falling off the Gus Bus right and left when the Tigers lost two of their first three games at home, losing 19-13 to Clemson and 29-16 to Texas A&M. Those two losses were sandwiched around a 51-14 victory over Arkansas State.

The 18-13 win against LSU that cost Les Miles his job has been followed by victories of 58-7 over Louisiana-Monroe and 38-14 over Mississippi State.

The pressure on Gus Malzahn has eased for now.

We were 5-3 on the picks last week, making the record 40-16 for the season.

Here are our picks for Week 8:

Arkansas 30, Auburn 28 — This has the makings of an entertaining game. Auburn has had two weeks to prepare. The Tigers played their first five games at home, went to Starkville for the win over Mississippi State and now return home for the game against the Hogs. Three of the final four Southeastern Conference games on their schedule — against Ole Miss, Georgia and Alabama — will be on the road. Thus the pressure is on Auburn to win this game. Last week, in picking Ole Miss by two points, we wrote: “Don’t be surprised if Arkansas wins. But, as noted, there’s going to have to be better blocking and better defensive line play for that to happen.” Indeed, Arkansas was better along both the offensive and defensive lines last week. The Razorbacks will have to be better up front again this week in their first true SEC road game.

UCA 29, Lamar 19 — The Bears were impressive at a place where it’s traditionally difficult to win. It was, in fact, the first time McNeese State had been shut out at home since 1987. It was the first time for McNeese to be shut out by another Southland Conference team since 1988. UCA is 5-1 overall and 4-0 in conference play, its best start since joining the Southland Conference in 2006. The Bears took full advantage of five Cowboy turnovers. The visitors from Conway led 14-0 at the half, scored on the first possession of the third quarter and led 28-0 at the end of the third quarter. Now, they return home to Conway to face a Lamar team that lost its first three games and has now won three consecutive contests. The losses were by scores of 38-14 to Coastal Carolina, 42-0 to Houston and 44-31 to Sam Houston State. The wins (all conference games, making Lamar 3-1 in the Southland) have been by scores of 38-14 over Southeastern Louisiana, 38-10 over Abilene Christian and 32-31 over Northwestern State of Louisiana.

Southern University 40, UAPB 20 — These are sad days at UAPB. A disgruntled homecoming crowd of 10,501 looked on at Golden Lion Stadium last Saturday afternoon as the Golden Lions fell 40-7 to an Alabama A&M team that had come in with just a 1-5 record. The Golden Lions dropped to 1-5 overall and 1-3 in SWAC play. This week sees UAPB head south to Baton Rouge to take on a 3-2 Southern University squad in its homecoming game. Southern lost 38-21 to Louisiana-Monroe and 66-21 to Tulane to open the season and has since run off victories of 64-6 over Alabama State, 59-31 over Alabama A&M and 28-24 over Jackson State.

Harding 49, East Central Oklahoma 25 — The Bisons appear to be on their way to their first Great American Conference championship and an 11-0 regular season. A week after destroying nationally ranked Henderson in Arkadelphia, the Bisons went to 7-0 with a 63-17 victory over a Southeastern Oklahoma team that had come into Searcy with a 4-2 record. The lead was only 17-14 at the end of the first quarter, but then the Bisons ran off 35 unanswered points in the second quarter. A Thursday night game will see Harding travel to Ada, Okla., to play a 1-6 East Central Oklahoma team. Harding is one of 10 remaining undefeated teams in NCAA Division II, is ranked seventh nationally in Division II by the American Football Coaches Association and is the only team in Division II to rank in the top five in scoring offense and scoring defense. Harding rushed for 557 yards in last year’s 62-20 victory over East Central. This one should be a lot like that.

Henderson 31, Southern Arkansas 27 — The 6-1 Reddies are ranked 15th nationally in Division II but will receive a strong challenge from a 5-2 Southern Arkansas team that was upset in four overtimes at Ouachita last Saturday. Henderson dismantled UAM, 45-17. The Reddies outrushed the Boll Weevils 295-105 as Jaquan Cole scored three touchdowns on the ground. Henderson and Southern Arkansas meet at a neutral site in El Dorado on Saturday afternoon in the Murphy USA Classic. Last year in Arkadelphia, Henderson drove 94 yards in the final two minutes to post a 29-28 victory over the Muleriders. Expect this to be another close game.

Ouachita 39, UAM 32 — Ouachita has been riddled with injuries, including some of its star players. Its quarterback, best receiver and best running back are all out. Down to their fifth-string tailback (they had to pull the redshirt off a freshman), the Tigers somehow outlasted Southern Arkansas, 40-37. The Muleriders went ahead 27-24 on a field goal with just 1:30 left in regulation. With 2.8 seconds left, a Ouachita receiver was able to get out of bounds at the Mulerider 32. Ouachita’s Cole Antley then kicked a 49-yard field goal to send the contest into overtime. Both teams scored touchdowns in the first overtime. In the second overtime, Antley missed a 21-yard field goal (just a yard more than an extra point) that would have won the game. Both teams had field goals in the third overtime. Southern Arkansas missed a field goal in the fourth overtime, and Antley hit one from 36 yards out to win it. It’s homecoming at UAM as the 4-3 Tigers take on the 2-5 Boll Weevils. Because Ouachita has so many players missing, expect the Boll Weevils to keep it close with a chance to win at the end.

Arkansas Tech 34, Southeastern Oklahoma 23 — Tech started the season 2-3 but has posted stellar back-to-back wins, 49-17 over Ouachita and 55-14 over East Central Oklahoma. The Wonder Boys appear to be hitting their stride as Jabyes Cross, who started the season as a wide receiver, improves weekly at quarterback. Last season, Tech scored 43 points in the first half against Southeastern and wound up winning 57-37. In last week’s win against East Central, the Wonder Boys had 613 yards of offense, tying for the sixth-highest total in school history. Southeastern will counter with the running of Devlon Wortham, who needs just 37 yards to become the GAC’s all-time leading rusher.

Hugh Freeze brings his nationally ranked Ole Miss football team to Fayetteville on Saturday to take on the Arkansas Razorbacks.

If Freeze is honest with himself, he will probably be thinking that he might not have had the chance to be a head coach in the biggest, baddest college football division of them all — the SEC West — if not for the opportunity another Arkansas school provided him.

I’ll always remember the day of Nov. 29, 2010. Freeze had come to the capital city to speak to the Little Rock Touchdown Club, and I was in my usual spot just to the right of the podium at the Embassy Suites as he spoke.

On that late fall day, his life began to change.

The club was meeting for the final time that season. It was the Monday after Thanksgiving, and several hundred people had gathered for lunch to hear the first-year offensive coordinator at Arkansas State University.

Freeze, who does a lot of motivational speaking, was at the top of his game. The crowd was impressed.

Freeze was scheduled to leave the state after the speech and hit the recruiting trail. He never made it.

Things were changing quickly in Jonesboro.

The Jonesboro Sun reported that morning that Steve Roberts’ future as ASU’s head football coach was in doubt. Roberts didn’t participate in the Sun Belt Conference’s weekly teleconference with the other league coaches that day.

At 1 p.m., just as Freeze was finishing his speech in Little Rock, the ASU athletic department announced that a 4 p.m. news conference would be held on campus.

At 2 p.m., ASU wide receiver Dwayne Frampton posted this to his Twitter account: “My head coach is fired.”

Dean Lee, the ASU athletic director at the time, made it official at the 4 p.m. news conference. Roberts, whose final two seasons in a nine-year stint as the Arkansas State head coach had ended with 4-8 records, was out. The killer had been a loss at home to lowly Western Kentucky, which had tied the game on the final play of regulation and then won in overtime with a two-point conversion play.

As news of Roberts’ departure made its way across the state, a cry went up from those who had heard Freeze speak in Little Rock (a crowd that had included some of the state’s most influential business leaders; the Little Rock Touchdown Club is a place to see and be seen): There was no need for a search. The best man for the job was already on the staff.

Lee couldn’t help but hear the outpouring of support for Freeze.

“It was a snowball effect that came out of Little Rock that day,” Freeze told me when I visited with him in Jonesboro on a rainy morning the following spring. “There were great comments, and I was gratified to hear them. I have no doubt they were helpful in the process.”

Three days after the Little Rock Touchdown Club meeting, Freeze was hired as ASU’s new head coach. Among those in attendance at the news conference was an old Freeze friend from Memphis, Sean Tuohy.

“As we began preparing for our search, we knew Hugh was someone we would have to interview,” Lee said. “From the first time I met him, it was evident he’s a man of character and substance. He also happens to have an outstanding football mind.”

Freeze was instructed to cancel his recruiting trip and remain in Jonesboro.

“We had three meetings over those three days,” Lee said. “We came to the conclusion that this was the guy who could take our program to the next level.”

I contacted my friend Brett Norsworthy, a Forrest City native who hosts a daily sports talk show on WHBQ-AM, 560, in Memphis, to ask if Freeze could win at the NCAA Division I level.

Here’s what he told me back then: “Hugh is ready. He distinguished himself at Ole Miss during the not-so-distinguishing era of Ed Orgeron. Hugh was the de facto leader of the coaching staff and of the team by the time the Orgeron years were coming to an end. He had full command of a team that had Michael Oher, Dexter McCluster and Mike Wallace. They all went to the NFL in no small part due to Hugh Freeze.”

Ah, Michael Oher.

Freeze followed Oher to Ole Miss after Orgeron signed the player Freeze had coached at Briarcrest Christian School in Memphis.

In his 2006 book “The Blind Side,” author Michael Lewis described Briarcrest.

“Its founder, Wayne Allen, had long been distressed by the absence of the Bible from public schools; the white outrage over busing was a chance to do something about it,” Lewis wrote. “In the year after the court decision — on Jan. 24, 1973 — that forced the city to deploy 1,000 buses to integrate the public schools, the parents of white children yanked more than 7,000 children out of those schools.

“From the ashes arose an entire, spanking new private school system. The Briarcrest Christian School — originally named the Briarcrest Baptist School — was by far the biggest. It was a system unto itself: 15 different campuses, inside 15 different Baptist churches. Its initial enrollment was just shy of 3,000, and every last one of them was white.”

Freeze, a Mississippi native, spent 13 years there as a coach, teacher and administrator. In football, he was the offensive coordinator and defensive backs coach from 1992-94 as Briarcrest teams reached the state semifinals twice.

He was the head football coach from 1995 through 2004. He led Briarcrest to six consecutive state championship games and won four of those — 1998, 2001, 2004 and 2005.

His record as a girls’ basketball coach was an eye-popping 305-63.

But it took more than that to make Hugh Freeze famous outside of Memphis. It took “The Blind Side” — first the 2006 book and then the 2009 movie.

In the movie, Coach Freeze became Coach Cotton. The coach was portrayed by Ray McKinnon, a Georgia native who later moved to Little Rock. Briarcrest became Wingate Christian School in the movie.

Oher was the poor black boy adopted by prosperous whites, Sean and Leigh Anne Tuohy. In the movie, Sandra Bullock played Leigh Anne and won the Academy Award for best actress. The film, directed by John Lee Hancock, was nominated for best picture.

Freeze urged the school’s principal to admit Oher and first taught Oher the sport of football.

Lewis described the coach this way (based on the period when Oher entered the school in 2002): “Freeze was only 33, and with his white-blond hair and unlined face might have passed for even younger than he was — if he weren’t so shrewd. His shrewdness was right on the surface, so it had an innocent quality to it, but it was there just the same. Slow to speak and quick to notice, Hugh Freeze had the gifts of a machine politician. He was a man of God — if he hadn’t been a football coach, he said, he’d have liked to have been a preacher — but he was also, very obviously, adept at getting his way on earth without any help from the Almighty. He’d coached at Briarcrest for eight years.”

To find the genesis of what became “The Blind Side,” one must go back to the 1970s in New Orleans, where Michael Lewis and Sean Tuohy grew up.

Lewis was the son of a corporate lawyer, J. Thomas Lewis, and a community activist mother, Diana Monroe Lewis. He attended high school at the private Isidore Newman School before going on to college at Princeton.

Tuohy’s father, Edward “Skeets” Tuohy, was the legendary basketball coach at Isidore Newman. The Tuohy Gymnasium there is named in his honor.

Tuohy and Lewis stayed in touch through the years, and Lewis decided there might be a book in the Oher story.

“I enjoyed the time I spent with Michael Lewis, but it didn’t mean much to me at first,” Freeze said. “I was focused on my job. Suddenly, though, the book is on The New York Times bestseller list and people are calling from all over. Let me make clear that Michael Oher was not the first kid I fought for in order to them into Briarcrest. I fought to get a lot of kids in that school. I also want to point out that I took a pay cut when I went to Ole Miss. For the first six months, I basically sat behind a desk as a clerk.”

Freeze’s original title when he first headed to Ole Miss in February 2005 was assistant athletic director for football external affairs. After one season, he wound up on the field as a receivers coach and the recruiting coordinator during the 2006 and 2007 seasons.

When Orgeron was fired at the end of the 2007 campaign, Freeze served briefly as the interim head coach. He was hopeful that the Rebels’ new head coach, Houston Nutt, would leave him on the staff.

Nutt had other plans.

“I had hoped to stay on with Coach Nutt,” Freeze said. “Pete Boone (the Ole Miss athletic director) offered to let me stay there as an assistant athletic director, but I wanted to coach.”

There were a handful of assistant jobs available to him at other Division I schools, but Freeze decided to try his hand at being a college head coach, albeit at a tiny college. The offer came from Lambuth University in Jackson, Tenn., a Methodist college that began in 1843 as the Memphis Conference Female Institute.

Lambuth had fewer than 400 full-time students, but its administrators had big dreams of a football program that would move from the NAIA level to NCAA Division II and maybe eventually to NCAA Division I.

Freeze accepted Lambuth’s offer in January 2008.

“His contacts and knowledge will move our program forward in a positive direction, hopefully making Lambuth an NAIA power once again,” athletic director Ken Brown said at the time.

Looking back on his stint at Lambuth, Freeze said: “I was impressed with the vision they had for their football program. I really wanted to find out if I had what it takes to make it work as a college head coach. It ended up being two of my most enjoyable years in coaching.”

Freeze found success as he used a no-huddle, spread offense. He was 20-5 in his two seasons at Lambuth. He was the American Football Coaches Association Southeast Region Coach of the Year in 2009 when the Eagles went 11-0 during the regular season. They advanced to the second round of the NAIA playoffs and finished 12-1. Lambuth averaged more than 40 points per game that season, ranked ninth nationally in total yards per game (465), ranked first in the nation in fourth-down conversions, fifth in passing offense and eighth in scoring offense.

There was, however, a major problem. The school was almost broke.

At one point, Freeze went three months without pay.

In April 2011, Lambuth’s board of trustees voted to shut the school down.

“I don’t know that I would have left had it not been for those problems,” Freeze said. “I stayed a second season because I felt obligated to the families of the kids I had talked into attending school there.”

He knew that to support his family — Freeze and his wife Jill have three daughters (Ragan, Jordan and Madison) — he would need to move on.

Just after Christmas 2009, Freeze accepted an offer to become the offensive coordinator at San Jose State.

“This gives me a chance to do something I’ve always wanted to do,” he said when he accepted the job. “There are only 119 of these coordinator positions in the nation, and I couldn’t pass it up.”

Freeze had interviewed for jobs at Arkansas State, Arkansas, Louisiana-Monroe and Murray State. He felt a connection to the new San Jose State head coach, Mike McIntyre, who was heading west after two seasons as the defensive coordinator at Duke.

The problem this time was that his Southern family didn’t like California.

Frankly, neither did Hugh Freeze.

“My three kids thought I had moved them to a foreign country,” Freeze said.

Freeze is Southern to the core. He was raised on a farm in north Mississippi. His father was a high school coach for 37 years.

“I knew I didn’t want to milk cows for a living,” Freeze once told me. “I saw the influence my dad had on kids’ lives and decided that’s what I wanted to do.”

When Freeze was about to begin his junior year in high school, his father decided to take two years off from coaching to work for the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers and continue farming on the side.

“He thought it was best that I earn everything on the field,” Freeze said. “I was a quarterback, and he wanted to watch my games rather than coach them. He just thought that would be best.”

Freeze graduated from Senatobia High School in 1988, attended Northwest Mississippi Community College for two years and then transferred to the University of Southern Mississippi. He met his wife at USM, graduated in the spring of 1992, got married in July 1992 and began coaching at Briarcrest that fall.

After two months at San Jose — his first time to live outside the South — Freeze realized he had made a huge mistake. Fortunately for the Freeze family, the coaching carousel began to spin.

Roberts had hired Clay Helton at Arkansas State when the new Memphis head coach, Larry Porter, chose not to retain Helton. After just two months in Jonesboro, Helton jumped at the opportunity to be an assistant at USC, where he’s now the head coch.

Roberts called Freeze, who had spent the first two months of 2010 on the West Coast.

“The moving van had just arrived in San Jose,” Freeze said. “My mom and dad were out there. But I knew working in Jonesboro would be a better fit. Steve was straightforward about his situation. He knew it might be his last season if things didn’t work out. I was willing to take that chance. This was the region of the country in which I wanted to coach, so I walked away from a four-year contract at San Jose State.”

Despite the 4-8 record, the ASU offense that Freeze coached was ranked among the top two teams in the conference in scoring offense, passing offense, total offense, pass efficiency, red zone offense and first downs. ASU ranked 43rd nationally in total offense and 46th in scoring offense out of 120 teams. Sophomore quarterback Ryan Aplin thrived under Freeze’s system as he set school records for total offense, passing yards, passing touchdowns and completions.

The rest is history.

The Red Wolves went 10-2 in 2011, won their first Sun Belt Conference title in six years and averaged 447.8 yards per game on offense to rank 28th nationally and first in the conference.

On Dec. 5, 2011, it was announced that Freeze would be the new head coach at Ole Miss, replacing Nutt.

In 2012, the Rebels were 7-6 and won the BBVA Compass Bowl at Birmingham.

In 2013, Ole Miss was 8-5 and won the Music City Bowl at Nashville.

In 2014, the Rebels were 9-4, upset Alabama and lost in the Peach Bowl.

In 2015, Ole Miss was 10-3, again upset Alabama and moved to third in The Associated Press poll and later beat Oklahoma State by a final score of 48-20 in the Sugar Bowl.

In the movie “The Blind Side,” coaches such as Orgeron, Nutt, Lou Holtz, Nick Saban, Tommy Tuberville and Philip Fulmer played themselves. The scene where the coaches are recruiting Oher was shot in one day in Atlanta.

Freeze was there for a cameo, playing the role of an assistant to Nutt.

His one speaking part: “Wow.”

Wow indeed.

Thanks to the opportunity provided him by Arkansas State, it has been quite a ride the past six seasons for Hugh Freeze.

Alabama is no doubt No. 1.

Right?

Admit it.

The outcome was never really in doubt last Saturday night at Donald W. Reynolds Razorback Stadium in Fayetteville.

Nick Saban is now 10-0 as the Alabama head coach in games against Arkansas. The Tide has won 18 consecutive games, dating back to last year’s loss at home to Ole Miss early in the season.

Yes, Austin Allen passed for 400 yards (the most ever for a Razorback quarterback against an Alabama team), but it wasn’t enough to overcome the three interceptions by Minkah Fitzgerald and his 114 yards in return yardage. Five Razorback turnovers led to 28 Alabama points in the 49-30 loss.

Meanwhile, Alabama’s offensive and defensive lines dominated the line of scrimmage as the Tide outrushed the Hogs 264-73.

Alabama’s defense and special teams are (as Houston Nutt might have said) special. The Crimson Tide leads the country with nine non-offensive touchdowns. Alabama has scored non-offensive touchdowns in eight consecutive games.

Arkansas is going to have to get a lot better on both lines of scrimmage to make it three consecutive victories over Ole Miss.

We were 3-3 on the picks last week, making the season record 35-13.

Here are the picks for Week 7:

Ole Miss 39, Arkansas 37 — It’s safe to call Ole Miss the best 3-2 team in the country. The Rebels’ losses were by scores of 45-34 to Florida State in the opening game of the season and 48-43 to Alabama on Sept. 17. The Rebels were far more competitive against the Crimson Tide than the Hogs were. The Ole Miss wins have come by scores of 38-13 against Wofford, 45-14 against Georgia and 48-28 against Memphis. The game is in Fayetteville (yet again Arkansas has an evening slot on ESPN). Don’t be surprised if Arkansas wins. But, as noted, there’s going to have to be better blocking and better defensive line play for that to happen. One difference could be that Ole Miss has had two weeks to get ready for this game.

South Alabama 29, Arkansas State 25 — These two teams are difficult to figure out. South Alabama has the Sun Belt Conference’s two best nonconference victories — 21-20 over Mississippi State in Starkville to start the season and 42-24 against a San Diego State team that was ranked at the time. Yet the Jaguars are 0-2 in conference play with losses of 24-9 to Georgia Southern and 28-23 to Louisiana-Lafayette. The other game was a 41-40 nonconference victory over Nicholls State. Arkansas State started the year 0-4 with nonconference losses of 31-10 to Toledo, 51-14 to Auburn, 34-20 to Utah State and 28-23 to UCA. Then on Wednesday of last week, the Red Wolves scored in the final seconds to upset Georgia Southern, 27-26. Expect Saturday night’s game in Jonesboro to be close.

UCA 27, McNeese State 24 — The Bears travel Lake Charles, La., a place where it’s always tough for a visiting team to win. This doesn’t appear to be a vintage McNeese State squad, however. The Cowboys are 3-3 overall and 2-2 in the Southland Conference. The victories were by scores of 33-3 against Tarleton State, 42-35 against Incarnate Word and 38-13 against Nicholls State. The losses came by scores of 30-22 to Louisiana-Lafayette, 31-28 to Stephen F. Austin and 31-24 to Southeastern Louisiana. UCA, which is 4-1 overall and 3-0 in the Southland Conference, has had two weeks to prepare for the game. The lone loss was 35-29 to Samford back on Sept. 10. The wins have come by scores of 56-13 over Houston Baptist, 24-10 over Northwestern State of Louisiana, 28-23 over Arkansas State and 58-27 over Abilene Christian.

Alabama A&M 15, UAPB 13 — It’s 1-5 Alabama A&M going to Pine Bluff to take on 1-4 UAPB on Saturday. You tell me who’s going to win because I don’t have a clue. A&M’s lone victory came by a score of 35-16 against Mississippi Valley State in the second game of the season. The losses have been by scores of 55-0 to Middle Tennessee, 41-20 to Prairie View A&M, 59-31 to Southern University, 34-31 to Texas Southern and 42-19 to Alcorn State.

Harding 38, Southeastern Oklahoma 21 — The 6-0 Bisons, ranked eighth nationally by the American Football Coaches Association in NCAA Division II, have an excellent chance now to finish the regular season undefeated. Southeastern Oklahoma comes to Searcy on Saturday night with a 4-2 record. None of the Bisons’ final four opponents have a winning record at this point. Last Saturday, Harding headed to Arkadelphia to take on a Henderson team that was 5-0, the defending Great American Conference champion and No. 5 in the country. The Bisons led 35-0 at the half and didn’t even use star quarterback Park Parish in the second half. Harding had two defensive touchdowns in the first half and scored two times in the last five seconds of the half. The final score was 35-3. Southeastern has victories over Ouachita, Oklahoma Baptist, Southern Nazarene and Northwestern Oklahoma and losses to Henderson and Southwestern Oklahoma. The Savage Storm is good enough this year to keep this one close for three quarters or so.

Henderson 57, UAM 22 — The 5-1 Reddies, who dropped from No. 5 to No. 15 in the AFCA poll, will take out their frustration in Arkadelphia on Saturday afternoon against the 2-4 Boll Weevils from UAM. The Weevils are coming off a 31-17 defeat at the hands of a Southern Nazarene team that had entered the game with an 0-5 record. The other UAM losses have been to Northwestern Oklahoma, Arkansas Tech and Harding. The two Weevil victories were over 2-4 Southwestern Oklahoma and 2-4 Oklahoma Baptist.

Southern Arkansas 40, Ouachita 23 — The 5-1 Muleriders are on a roll. Southern Arkansas went to Oklahoma Baptist last week and returned home with a 52-7 victory. The Muleriders had 289 yards passing compared to just 34 for Oklahoma Baptist. The Ouachita Tigers started the season 3-1 and were receiving votes for the Top 25, but they’ve been decimated by injuries. In its homecoming game at Arkadelphia on Saturday afternoon, Ouachita will be missing its quarterback, two running backs, a tight end, its best wide receiver and its best offensive lineman. And that’s just on the offensive side of the ball. At least three people will be missing from the secondary for the 3-3 Tigers, meaning Mulerider quarterback Barrett Renner should have a field day. SAU’s only loss has been at Harding. In addition to Oklahoma Baptist, there have been Mulerider victories over Southwestern Oklahoma, Northwestern Oklahoma, Arkansas Tech and Southern Nazarene.

Arkansas Tech 30, East Central Oklahoma 26 — The Wonder Boys evened their record at 3-3 with an impressive 49-17 victory at Ouachita last Saturday. It was the worst home loss for Ouachita in nine years. The Wonder Boys have found a quality quarterback in Jabyes Cross, who started the season at wide receiver. Cross was 12 of 15 passing against Ouachita for 265 yards and added 60 yards rushing. East Central has won nine of the past 11 games in the series. Look for an improving Tech team to get it done at home in Russellville against 1-5 East Central, whose only victory has come against Southern Nazarene.