It is sad but not surprising that Hugh Freeze is out as the head football coach at Ole Miss, just a year and a half after leading the Rebels to a Sugar Bowl victory and being rewarded with a salary boost that put him at $5 million a year.
Soon after those high points, his program fell under the cloud of an NCAA investigation that has alleged serious recruiting violations. It was easy to forecast that this would one day end with a coaching change.
What was surprising is that last Thursday became that one day, and that the reason given was not the NCAA probe but what the athletic director called a “pattern of personal misconduct” discovered in a search of Freeze’s calls on a university-issued cellphone.
Ross Bjork, Freeze’s boss, didn’t give further details, although it doesn’t take much sleuthing to figure out his misbehavior was probably related to what had already been reported — a suspicious one-minute call to an escort service. Freeze’s misconduct, whatever it was, will be quite costly, as he had to give up any multimillion-dollar buyout that high-profile coaches typically get when forced to leave.
As college scandals go, this one won’t register too prominently for very long. A coach’s personal indiscretions just don’t compare with some of the things that have happened at other schools. Penn State and Baylor come to mind.
As for Ole Miss, the Rebels will try to rebuild while facing potentially far bigger problems, depending on how the ongoing NCAA investigation is resolved.
But there are a couple of points worth mentioning.
Freeze, first off, set himself up for this steep fall from grace with his self-portrayal as a righteous, deeply religious man. That simply doesn’t square with last week’s revelations.
Finally, there is a pretty good reason that Freeze was able to improve recruiting at Ole Miss beyond what shortcuts he or his staff might have taken. He runs an exciting, creative offense, and the results showed it, including back-to-back wins over football juggernaut Alabama.
If Freeze wishes to get back into the maelstrom that is college athletics, there will be schools willing to take a chance on him, provided he dodges NCAA sanctions.
