Ole Miss’ Hugh Freeze quits; 8:30 pm ET news conference set
July 21, 2017 by admin
Filed under Lingerie Events
Ole Miss football coach Hugh Freeze resigned effectively immediately on Thursday night, a week after he addressed speculation about his job future at SEC media days and about six weeks before the Rebels kick off the season against South Alabama.
Ole Miss officials didn’t immediately provide a specific reason for Freeze’s resignation. A news conference, to be aired live on ESPNEWS, the SEC Network, the ESPN App and ESPN Radio, is scheduled for 8:30 p.m. ET in Oxford, Mississippi.
Assistant head coach Matt Luke, in his sixth season as co-offensive coordinator and offensive line coach, has been named interim head coach.
USA Today reported Thursday that Freeze made a one-minute call from a university-issued phone to a number associated with a female escort service. The number was found during discovery related to former Ole Miss coach Houston Nutt’s civil lawsuit against Ole Miss and Freeze, which was filed in federal court last week.
ESPN asked Freeze about the alleged phone call last week, and he denied purposely calling an escort service.
According to the complaint, Nutt seeks damages to cover “lost wages, emotional distress, embarrassment, attorney’s fees and punitive damages.”
The suit leveled its harshest allegations at Freeze, alleging that he conducted off-the-record conversations with sports journalists as part of a “smear campaign.”
The lawsuit says that it “is common knowledge among sports journalists that Coach Freeze does not take kindly to criticism.” It also characterizes Freeze as “consistently exhibiting behaviors that are massively defensive,” “going to extraordinary lengths through social media and otherwise to promote his self-image as a deeply spiritual Godly man who’s done nothing wrong and is being persecuted,” and “attempting to cultivate personal relationships with sports journalists for the purpose of promoting his self-image through positive news stories.”
At SEC media days, Freeze chose not to comment on Nutt, who accused him and the university of orchestrating a smear campaign against him, but said that he was “disappointed by the timing of it” coming one day before he and his players arrived in Hoover, Alabama, for SEC media days.
“This is the fifth year in a row I’ve been here and I can’t talk about our players,” Freeze said, wanting to turn the focus away from off-field issues. Freeze said he took responsibility for the ongoing NCAA investigation into the program, pointing out how the school self-imposed scholarship limitations and a bowl ban.
“It’s a lot we inherited and caused in some cases,” Freeze said, alluding to the previous coaching staff.
After inheriting a team that won only two games in 2011 and had lost 14 consecutive SEC contests, Freeze guided the Rebels to four straight bowl games in his first four years — the first Ole Miss coach to do it. Ole Miss was one of only five FBS programs in the country to make consecutive New Year’s Six bowl appearances in the first two years of the College Football Playoff.
Information from ESPN’s Darren Rovell was used in this report.
