Blake Anderson is the University of Southern Mississippi’s new head football coach. HATTIESBURG – Brand new Southern Miss head football coach Blake Anderson, introduced to a ballroom-full of enthused Golden Eagle fans here Monday afternoon, faces extremely difficult tasks, both immediate and long-term. The immediate: His Eagles, who lost three of their final four regular season games, have little more than a week to prepare a date with the Western Kentucky Hilltoppers in the Dec. 23 New Orleans Bowl.  Rick Cleveland Long-term: As it stands now, Anderson must replace 32 seniors – including 18 of 22 starters – before the 2026 season in which USM faces Auburn and Tulane in September road games.  The good news at Southern Miss: Anderson, a 56-year-old Texan, has been there and done that before. What’s more, he has done it twice. Athletic director Jeremy McClain was absolutely correct when he called Anderson “the most accomplished head football coach we’ve ever hired at Southern Miss.” And, yes, that includes Charles Huff, who recently departed Hattiesburg for Memphis. Huff had won one NCAA Division I conference championship before taking the job here. Anderson has won three. “I am the right guy for this job,” Anderson said. “I am supposed to be here, We will not waste this opportunity.” For the most successful coaches in Southern Miss history – Thad “Pie” Vann, Bobby Collins and Jeff Bower – the job here was their first crack at being a head coach. Anderson has 10 seasons as a Division I head coach under his belt – seven at Arkansas State and three at Utah State. Nine of those 10 seasons ended with bowl games. Three ended with conference championships. The first goal for any Southern Miss coach is to win the Sun Belt Conference championship. Anderson, at Arkansas State, already has won two, plus another division championship. He also won the Mountain West Conference championship at Utah State.  Dive deeper his two previous head coaching jobs and you find in each case Anderson inherited less than ideal situations. Arkansas State had five coaches in the previous five seasons before Anderson took over. In his second year there, Anderson won nine games and the Sun Belt title. At Utah State, Anderson produced one of the most dramatic turn-arounds in college football history. He inherited a team that had won one game the previous season. Anderson’s first Utah State team won 11 games, including a 24-23 win over Oregon State in the LA Bowl. Anderson was no stranger to Southern Miss when he joined Huff’s staff as offensive coordinator before this past season. He had served four seasons (2008-2011) as first the quarterbacks coach and the offensive coordinator. In fact, he was the play-caller on the last Southern Miss team to win a conference title in 2011, serving under Larry Fedora. Those Golden Eagles won a school-record 12 games, averaged 36 points a game and stunned undefeated and seventh-ranked Houston at Houston 49-28 for the Conference USA championship. That Houston team would go on to trounce Penn State in the Cotton Bowl. That USM team would beat Nevada in the Hawaii Bowl. Those four previous years in Hattiesburg were a primary reason Anderson joined Huff’s staff last year, he said. “There’s a sense of family here that you don’t have everywhere,” Anderson said. “This is a place I loved and really enjoyed my time here.” Anderson said he has learned from his two Hattiesburg experiences, both under Fedora and Huff. Indeed, he had nothing but praise for Huff. He called Huff as “meticulous and detail-oriented” as anyone he had ever been around and added, “I wouldn’t be surprised to see him coaching for a national championship somewhere down the line.” As for Anderson, 24 hours in a day aren’t enough currently, between recruiting, hiring assistants, preparing for a bowl game and getting ready for the two-week transfer portal window that begins Jan. 2. He talked like a man who relishes the task. “Nobody is gonna out-work us, I promise,” he said. “I’ve done this before.” ...read more read less