Marshall coach Charles Huff was named head coach at conference rival Southern Miss one day after leading the Thundering Herd to a Sun Belt championship win, an announcement that capped a bizarre coaching carousel saga.
Huff, 41, led Marshall to a 10-3 record this season, including a resounding 31-3 win at Louisiana on Saturday in the Herd’s first Sun Belt title game. He went 32-20 in four seasons at Marshall, but he did not have a contract beyond this season. Coaching out the final year of a contract is highly unusual, with recruits and current players looking for some assurance that their coach will be around as long as they are. Even though Marshall had its best season under Huff, winning 10 games for the first time since 2015, the two sides never appeared close to getting a deal done.
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Speculation about Huff and the Southern Miss job surfaced more than a week ago and grew so loud that Huff addressed it publicly, telling media outlets he had not accepted any other offers and his sole focus was on the conference title game.
To replace Huff, Marshall quickly turned to NC State defensive coordinator Tony Gibson, who had been with the Wolfpack since 2019. Gibson, a West Virginia native, previously spent 15 years on West Virginia’s staff over multiple stints.
“He is a proud Boone County native with an enormous wealth of coaching experience that will continue to elevate and honor the tradition of success of Marshall Football,” athletic director Christian Spears said in a release. “We have recruited a proven coach that aspires to be at Marshall and to sustain the success we have come to appreciate and expect. We can’t wait to get started with him and his staff.”
Gibson takes over a team that just won the conference championship, though it’s yet to be seen how much the roster could turnover in the transfer portal.
Marshall was Huff’s first head coaching job after a steady rise up the career ladder. The Maryland native spent four years (2014-17) at Penn State as running backs and special teams coach, then one at Mississippi State as assistant head coach and running game coordinator under Joe Moorhead.
He spent two seasons as an assistant at Alabama, winning a national championship in 2020, before taking the Marshall job.
The Herd went 7-6 with a bowl loss in Huff’s first season. In the second game of Year 2, Marshall upset Notre Dame in South Bend, Ind., then proceeded to lose four of its next five games. Still, the Herd finished 9-4 with a bowl victory over UConn, and Huff drew some interest from other schools.
After the Herd slipped back to 6-7 in 2023, and with only one year left on Huff’s contract, it seemed coach and program were heading for a split. Even a championship run couldn’t change that trajectory.
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At Southern Miss, Huff will replace Will Hall, who was fired seven games into his fourth season. The Golden Eagles, once a giant killer and one of the top programs outside the traditional power conferences, have been in decline for more than a decade.
USM moved from Conference USA to the Sun Belt — along with Marshall — in 2022. The Golden Eagles are 20-35 over the past four seasons, mostly under Hall, and went 31-29 in the five seasons before that, mostly under coach Jay Hopson, who was fired one game into the 2020 season.
(Photo: Jason Mowry / Getty Images)