In the coming weeks, SDS will grade each team’s current state of recruiting based upon the factors listed below. We begin the series with one of the SEC’s recent recruiting titans, the Ole Miss Rebels.

OLE MISS REBELS

HOME STATE TALENT: B – In a five-year window from 2011-15, the state of Mississippi has produced three five-star prospects and 34 four-star prospects from the high school ranks. Many of those prospects lived up to their star rating, including current Ole Miss safety Tony Conner, but where Ole Miss finds its best value from within its home state is at the junior college level. The MACJC, Mississippi’s junior college league, claimed five of the nation’s top 10 juco talents from the past recruiting cycle, and its produced a number of stars through the years that we’ll discuss below.

RECENT SUCCESS:  A – Hugh Freeze now has four recruiting cycles behind him since taking over at Ole Miss, and each of the last three has ranked in the top 20 in the nation. Freeze pieced together one of Ole Miss’ greatest classes ever in 2013 when he added four five-star prospects that may all turn into first-round NFL draft choices next spring, and he’s maintained Ole Miss’ high standing on the recruiting trail in the two years since. Again, Freeze has done much of his best work at the juco level. He’s added the top juco cornerback in the nation for two straight years, nabbed the top juco defensive tackle this year as well as top juco quarterback Chad Kelly. If Freeze continues to roll top 20 classes to Oxford on an annual basis, the Rebels will bring as much roster talent to the table as any team in the conference.

FAN SATISFACTION: A  – Freeze is not a coach facing a ton of pressure in the grueling SEC West in 2015, and he’s certainly done more than enough to appease the fans in his first three seasons. He took over a program coming off a 2-10 season and took it bowling in his first season on the job. He’s raised the Rebels win total in each of his three seasons, and last year brought College GameDay to the Grove for the first time ever to give the gang a front row seat for Ole Miss’ upset of unbeaten Alabama. And did we mention he took Ole Miss to a New Year’s Six bowl last year when all was said and done? Ole Miss fans aren’t just satisfied, their enthusiastic about where the program is heading in the coming years. Recruits can sense the excitement of the fan base, especially in the Twitterverse, and considering Ole Miss has the best tailgating setup in the nation there’s a lot for fans and future prospects to be excited about.

COACHING STABILITY: A – Freeze gets an A here for all the reasons listed above. He’s won 24 games in three seasons, and Ole Miss has been ranked for most of the past two seasons. He even elevated Ole Miss into the top 3 of the national polls during last season, if you want to add to his long list of accomplishments in a short amount of time. For what it’s worth, Houston Nutt won 22 games in his first three seasons at Ole Miss, Ed Orgeron won only 10 and David Cutcliffe won 22 as well. So if you wanted to compare Freeze to the last three Ole Miss head coaches, he’s outperforming all of them. His job is definitely safe, which should be reassuring to future recruits.

SUM IT UP: Ole Miss is a program with a wealth of tradition but a lack of results in the last 50 years. There have been flashes of excellence here and there, but at the end of the day Ole Miss hasn’t won an SEC title since the early 1960s, and even a school like Kentucky has won the conference in the years since. So for Freeze to bring this program back to national relevancy though his stellar recruiting and impressive player development is a testament to his abilities as a coach as well as the advantages that come with playing in the SEC (better competition, more national exposure, money from the new network, etc.). Ole Miss is now established in the national media as a program on the rise, and if Freeze can cash in on his 2013 recruiting class in its collective junior year this season, it’ll only make selling his program that much easier.

Editor’s note: Any reference to recruiting ratings in this series–team or individual–are to 247Sports.com’s industry composite ranking.

At the end of the series we will rank the SEC’s recruiting situations from 1-14 based on the grades we assign each program. Here are last year’s recruiting situation rankings: