For those of you who regularly listen to my podcasts, you know that over the last couple weeks I’ve talked a lot about Ole Miss head coach Hugh Freeze. You also know that regardless of the topic or guest, or whatever the subject of the interview might be, whenever Freeze’s name has come up, I’ve repeatedly said the same thing about the guy: “That dude has a couple screws loose.”

Coach Freeze, if you’re reading this article please understand: That statement is a compliment. And when I say those words, I mean them in the most sincere way possible.

After all, don’t you have to have a couple of screws loose to go from high school coach to SEC head man in just seven years? Don’t you have to be a little “off” to take the Ole Miss job not only thinking you can compete for SEC Championships, but knowing it with every fiber of your being? Don’t you have to be a crazy person to look Nick Saban and Les Miles, Mark Richt and Will Muschamp square in the eye, and not flinch?

And really, don’t you have to be truly maniacal mad-man to not only talk the talk, but walk the walk and put together a game-plan to back it all up?

As a general rule, I don't like to link my stuff from other websites/outlets here at Aaron Torres Sports, but on this day I think it's important. With Signing Day tomorrow, my primary focus has been on writing for the college football website I run- Crystal Ball Run- and it has taken my time away from what I do here.

At the same time, for you college football fans, I have written a handful of articles which I believe will pique your interest.

The first, and most important is a major feature story I posted on Ohio State recruit Mike Mitchell. I've gotten to know Mike's family pretty well over the previous few months, and his path to signing with the Buckeyes tomorrow is one of the most unusual and unique you'll ever read. You can find the link here.

In addition, I couldn't help but do a quick take on the commitment of linebacker Reuben Foster to Alabama as well. As most of you know, Foster is the top rated inside linebacker in high school football and most believed he'd end up at Georgia, or more likely Auburn, in large part, because, well, he has an Auburn tattoo. No, seriously. He has an Auburn tattoo. Except he committed to Alabama last night, and I wondered: Did Foster's commitment hurt Auburn and Georgia more than it helped Alabama?

Finally, if you missed it last week, I also had a couple of big Signing Day-themed podcasts. One featured ESPN ace recruiting analyst Tom Luginbill breaking down all the big stories. The other was with Ole Miss beat writer Hugh Kellenberger, who spoke with me about the sudden surge in the Rebels' recruiting status.

Also, be sure to look out over the coming days, when I will have a couple more articles here at Aaron Torres Sports centered around Signing Day.

Thanks again for the support, and good luck to your team tomorrow!

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While the college football world was caught up in Manti Te’o fake-girlfriend-hysteria on Wednesday, the real story (no pun intended) in the sport came 2,000 miles in Eugene, Ore., where one of the best coaches in the game walked out the back door on an emerging dynasty. In the least surprising news of the off-season, which just so happened to come at the most surprising of times, Chip Kelly is now the head coach of the Philadelphia Eagles. And the strangest thing to me is that no one seems to care.

Well, ok, so “no one seems to care” is a bit of an overstatement, but in terms of great college coaches leaving the game, it barely registers as a 2.0 on the Mark Richter scale. Understand that it was just a few short years ago that we spent weeks wrestling with the idea that Jim Harbaugh would coach anywhere other than Stanford, fully expecting him to return to his alma mater at Michigan before he eventually pulled a 180 and headed off into the NFL sunset instead. Same with Pete Carroll, who had a multi-year song-and-dance with the NFL before eventually he too eventually took the plunge with Seattle in early 2010. This off-season we speculated on Bill O’Brien and Brian Kelly, Doug Marrone and for a minute, David Shaw as well.

Although the 2012 college football season just ended a short time ago, it’s never too early to look ahead to 2013...which is exactly what I did on Thursday, when I welcomed SEC columnist Barrett Sallee to the show.

If you’re looking for your off-season college football fix you’ll get it here, as Barrett and I recapped 2012 and looked ahead to the major story lines entering 2013. Amongst the topics we discussed included the following:

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- Reflecting back on 2012, what were the biggest surprises to Barrett? Who overachieved, who underachieved and overall, did the season go as he expected?

It was at this time last year, on the morning following Alabama’s 21-0 beat down of LSU in the 2012 BCS National Championship when I wrote a column proclaiming the win “Nick Saban’s Masterpiece.” That morning I explained how the victory was a beautiful convergence of a brilliant coach and talented team, executing a flawless game-plan that was as close to college football perfection as we’ll ever see.

Here is part of what I wrote following that victory:

And as I watched last night’s BCS National Championship, I couldn’t help but think back to that quote.

Because really, reflecting on Alabama’s 21-0 win, it wasn’t just about the victory itself. It wasn’t just about the Tide dominating one of the best teams we’ve seen in recent college football history. It wasn’t about sucking the life out of LSU one tackle for loss at a time. It wasn’t about Jeremy Shelley’s field goals or A.J. McCarron’s emergence. It wasn’t even about one of the best defenses of all-time finally getting their proper due.

Nope, Monday night was bigger than that. It wasn’t just about a championship, but about a team and coach achieving something that is as close to perfection on the football field as we've ever seen.

In every sense of the word, Monday night's BCS National Championship Game was Nick Saban’s masterpiece.

Well if last year’s win over LSU was a masterpiece, what does that make Monday night’s 42-14 beat down of Notre Dame? Sure Saban had a heavy hand in the victory, but he didn’t do it alone. No, no, he got plenty of supporting help from A.J. McCarron and Eddie Lacy, Barrett Jones and 11 members of a defense that made Monday night a living hell for Everett Golson and all his Notre Dame teammates.

Oh, you thought you read it all into the lead-up to Monday night’s title game between Alabama and Notre Dame? Well you had, until now.

Let’s skip the small-talk and get straight to 13 Keys to Decide the 2013 BCS National Championship.

1. Notre Dame’s Front Seven:

It’s the biggest story line entering this game, and quite arguably the biggest story line in all of 2013 outside of Kim Kardashian becoming Kanye West’s new baby momma. It is Alabama’s offensive line going head-to-head with Notre Dame’s defensive line, a battle which is quite literally the immaculate force against the immovable object.

We’ll get to ‘Bama’s offensive line in a second, but before we do, let’s start with Notre Dame, which has inarguably the best defensive front seven that Alabama has seen all year. No, the Irish aren’t quite as athletic as LSU was and don’t have a truly great pass rusher like Texas A&M’s Damontre Moore or Georgia’s Jarvis Jones. But they do have three future pros along the defensive line (you probably have heard of Kapron Lewis-Moore, Stephon Tuitt and Louis Nix) and some guy named Manti Te’o filling in behind them. Not to mention that no one plays better as a unit than the Irish do. Their sum truly is greater than its parts.

“Dad, I’m telling you, if we ever make it back to the Rose Bowl, you’ve got to come. I will fly you out, I don’t care. No, no, no, I can’t explain it. Just trust me. The Rose Bowl is just...different.”

Those words were spoken by Craig, a Palo Alto native and Stanford season-ticket who sat next to me at the Rose Bowl on Tuesday afternoon. Granted, Craig’s words might have been a bit more slurred than they appear in print (he was easily 12 beers deep) and quite possibly just a tiny bit more angry as well (Craig told me prior to kick-off “If my wife knew how much money I had riding on this game, she might literally kill me”). Still, his point remains salient on this morning, a few days after the Cardinal beat Wisconsin 20-14 on Tuesday: There really is nothing like the Rose Bowl. It’s just... different.

I can now say definitively agree with Craig, since after years of watching the game on TV, I was lucky enough to witness it in person on Tuesday afternoon. I live in California now, got tickets the day of the game (I didn’t cover the game as a member of the media but went as a fan) and made my way down to the stadium just moments before kick-off of the “Grand Daddy of Them All.” And now, with a few days to reflect on the experience, I’m ready to give all a little insight into the experience of it all.

And ultimately, that’s what this article is about: The experience of being there on game day. By now the game has long since gone final, meaning that there really is no reason for me to provide any analysis or insight into the game. If you’re looking for that, I’m sorry, but you’ll probably have to go somewhere else.

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During the course of Auburn’s disastrous 2012 season, the cliché tagline that got thrown around about former Auburn head coach Gene Chizik was as follows: The man never did a damn thing as a head coach without Cam Newton as his quarterback. Between stops at Iowa State and Auburn, Chizik has a record of just 24-33 with anyone other than Newton playing quarterback for him. He was 14-0 with a National Championship when Killa Cam was under center.  

Honestly though, I never really thought that argument was very fair. To say that Chizik never had success without Cam would be to imply that the 2009 and 2011 seasons never happened. They did. Auburn improved by three wins in Chizik’s first year on the Plains (from 5-7 before he got there to 8-5 in 2009) and won eight more games against college football’s toughest schedule in 2011 (all five of the Tigers’ losses were to teams which won at least nine games). That is a credit to Chizik and his staff.  

And it’s that last part- where I mention his “staff”- which is why we are here today, and what I find most interesting about Chizik’s time at Auburn. Because while his ultimate legacy was defined by Cam Newton, his ultimate successes was defined by the three years from 2009-2011. And while the players changed and the coaches changed too during those three years and 30 wins, one thing was consistent: During the only point in Gene Chizik’s career where he had any success, Gus Malzahn was calling plays on offense. Chizik went 30-10 with Malzahn by his side. In two seasons at Iowa State and one at Auburn without him, Chizik went 8-28.