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New Southern Miss head football coach Charles Huff had about as bizarre a year as you’ll see in college football. Huff, a rising prospect in the coaching world, led the Marshall Thundering Herd to a 10-3 record and a Sun Belt championship, the first since it won Conference USA under Doc Holliday in 2014.
But despite the success, Marshall did little to retain Huff and he eventually ended up leaving for the in-conference rival Golden Eagles after the season. Huff didn’t open up much about why he left the Thundering Herd, but he did give a look into of the biggest issues he faced as a coach in 2024.
Coach Charles Huff tells coaches at AFCA the biggest issue he ran into last season in the locker room wasn’t NIL or social media. No, it was players complaining about their ratings on College Football 25. Some even came to his office to complain about their “low” rating.
— Brandon Marcello (@bmarcello) January 13, 2025
Speaking at the annual AFCA coaches conference, Huff told fellow coaches that the biggest issue he had in the locker room had nothing to do with academics, NIL or social media. Instead, Huff said that players routinely came to him complaining about their rating in the EA Sports NCAA College Football 25 video game.
Of course, Huff has no control of the CFB 25 ratings. So we’re not exactly sure what players want him to do about it. But it’s an absolutely hilarious problem to run into. It may also be one that Huff runs into again next season when you consider the fact that Southern Miss finished on the opposite end of the conference with an 0-8 Sun Belt record and a 1-11 record overall.
“People will stop scheduling Southern Miss— period,” Huff said of turning around his new program. Of course, he said the exact same thing when he took over at Marshall. He made good on that promise the first time around. Now we wait and see if he can repeat the feat.