**Editor’s Note: Time to take the 6-0 Challenge and make your Week 12 picks against “Joe vs. the Pro and the Hero.” Joseph Goodman’s popular college football picks feature, “Joe vs. the Pro and the Hero,” is adding readers to the action this season. Pick your Week 12 games here, and sign up for Joe’s newsletter to see how your picks compare to the experts (and Joe) as well as other readers.

This is an opinion column.

___________________________

Hugh Freeze did a great job of managing expectations this season at Auburn, and he’s going to go into the Iron Bowl with momentum.

Plenty of Auburn fans had their doubts about Freeze in the beginning, but wins against Mississippi State, Vanderbilt and Arkansas — not exactly murderers’ row — have quieted everyone down for now. Freeze is a quality coach and he’s pretty clever, too. Shifting the blame onto his offensive coordinator early in the season and then crafting a narrative as the offense’s savior was genius-level stuff.

Part of the job for Freeze in Year One at Auburn always had to be controlling the message. At Auburn, some would say that’s the most important skill of all. Freeze has done a great job, and he’s bringing in quality recruits who can line up against Alabama and Georgia and win a fight in the fourth quarter. If he can keep it up, Freeze’s work as a tireless, dogged recruiter will end up being his biggest strength.

Here’s the thing, though. I’m always going to wonder what if.

What if Auburn had hired Deion Sanders?

Nothing against Freeze, but Auburn’s administration did the university a disservice by not first identifying the unique ability of Coach Prime to transform a university into a cultural phenomenon. There’s no other coach like him, and he instantly turned Colorado into a national brand.

Now the big question is this. Will Mississippi State, Texas A&M and whoever else fires a coach this cycle in the SEC make the same mistake as Auburn even after we’ve seen Sanders’ impact at Colorado?

IRON BOWL: Where is the ball from Kick Six?

IRON BOWL: Kick Six sent a woman into labor

IRON BOWL: Kick Six as told by the officials

CASAGRANDE: What makes this CFB playoff season unique

Auburn at least has a good excuse. Sanders had never coached at the FBS level before Colorado. Colorado’s first two victories of the season against TCU and Nebraska immediately validated Sanders and proved that his extensive use of the transfer portal was a groundbreaking piece of roster management. Those two victories are better than any of Auburn’s this season.

During his news conference on Sunday, Texas A&M athletics director Ross Bjork laid out his criteria for the Aggies’ next coach.

Bjork says he he wants a “coach that has a program identity, great interpersonal skills, track record of player development, commitment to academics, recruiting machine, supreme organizational skills, culture of discipline, passion for the game, proven winners, strong leadership skills, involved in the community, of course knowledge of Xs and Os, and someone who understands and can capitalize in today’s modern-day college athletics.”

Bjork should say less.

Texas A&M is the laughingstock of college football after firing Jimbo Fisher and paying him a $76 million buyout. Here’s the reality in College Station, Texas. The Aggies are little brothers to Texas because that’s how they view themselves. If Texas A&M wanted to headline the rivalry next season and dominate the entire SEC then it would hire Sanders as soon as possible. The SEC would be the Aggies and everyone else.

The Prime Effect would even make Texas A&M’s yell leaders seem cool.

Any white coach with the gravitas carried by Sanders would already be in the SEC. Here’s the problem with SEC football and why schools are initially resisting Sanders’ obvious appeal as a national brand.

It’s not because those schools are inherently racist, and it’s not because they don’t want to align themselves with the image that Coach Prime represents. The reason is because the boosters with all the money are old white men who can’t relate to Coach Prime’s universal appeal and don’t want to put in the work to understand it.

Sanders makes a point to identity as a powerful and outspoken Black coach. That’s an extremely positive image for a university to project, and it needs to be in the SEC. At this point, hiring Sanders in the SEC wouldn’t be taking a chance. It would be changing the game, and it’s obvious for anyone not blinded by their own biases.

For every day Americans, there isn’t a bigger name in college football than Colorado’s Coach Prime, and that includes Alabama coach Nick Saban. I’m not saying Coach Prime is better than Saban. He just transcends the sport in a way that Saban cannot. Given Sanders’ appeal, you’d think SEC schools would be lining up to offer him a contract.

If Arkansas had any guts at all, then it would put Sam Pittman on the Polar Express before Thanksgiving and go after Coach Prime.

Pittman is done at Arkansas. As much as I love the guy’s positive spirit and attitude, it’s time for the Hogs to move on. He can’t compete. With the additions of Texas and Oklahoma in the conference, the western corridor of the SEC is morphing into a recruiting war zone like the league has never seen. It’s going to take something extraordinary for the scales to tip in the Hogs’ favor.

We already know that Coach Prime would do that in an instant.

If Mississippi State football wanted to be relevant in the SEC, and create buzz nationally for the first time in school history, then representatives of Hail State would already be in Boulder, Colo., trying to convince Coach Prime to bring his brand back to the Deep South.

What’s it going to take for Mississippi State to compete in a wide-open SEC that will include Texas and Oklahoma beginning next season? Are people seriously going to compare potential coaching candidates Mike Elko and Willie Fritz to Coach Prime? It’s no contest.

Mississippi State went rogue when it hired Mike Leach, and that was a huge success for the Bulldogs. Mississippi State hired Leach to be a cult of personality counterbalance to Lane Kiffin at Ole Miss. Coach Prime in Starkville, Miss., would dwarf Kiffin’s whole meme-persona thing by a factor of 10.

Coach Prime at Mississippi State would be the biggest thing in the Magnolia State since Elvis. For the first time in SEC history, the University of Alabama would lose football recruits to the afterthought school down the road.

As Saban knows, the SEC will always be about recruiting.

Joseph Goodman is the lead sports columnist for the Alabama Media Group, and author of “We Want Bama”, a book about togetherness, wild times and rum.