C’mon, tell me you can’t see this marriage happening.
Former Ole Miss coach Hugh Freeze was in Tuscaloosa today and was in the football building, The Tuscaloosa News has learned. Saban has always had a healthy respect for Freeze, who gave Alabama fits with his offense. Freeze was given a head coach restriction and two-game suspension but only if he were to become a head coach. He would face no restrictions as an assistant coach.
Barrett Sallee reports that Freeze is in an “I’ll take anything, Nick” mood.
A source tells CBS Sports that former Ole Miss coach Hugh Freeze was in Tuscaloosa, Alabama, on Monday. The Tuscaloosa News first reported Freeze’s presence on campus. Freeze and the Rebels topped Alabama twice (2014 and 2015) and put up 43 points on the typically-stout Tide defense in 2015 and 2016. Freeze’s interest in working with the Tide, according to a source, is not necessarily exclusive to the offensive coordinator position.
You can smell the support staff slot opening a mile away, although I suspect if it happens, the first thing Saban will do is put Freeze in touch with the staffer in charge of burner phones.
The sad thing about this, seriously, will be the inevitable whitewashing of Freeze’s resume after a couple of years in Tuscaloosa. It’s the college football equivalent of laundering money.
Get The Picture 
They’ll do anything to win. In Alabama, #ItJustMeansMore. Freeze is barely a step up from Art Briles. I doubt we’ll see a bunch of people protesting a hiring of Freeze outside the Bammer football offices.
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Disagree ee. Freeze ran a pay to play scheme at Ole Piss. He recruited HS kids using hookers. He’s way dirtier than Briles.
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Briles is at the bottom of the barrel. Looking the other way/enabling multiple sexual assaults should be criminal and that man should never work with students again.
Freeze is pretty sleazy, though.
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Saban’s running a regular rehab clinic.
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I don’t know, EE. I wouldn’t put him in the same class as Briles. Everyone that worked for Freeze got paid, I imagine. Maybe a pious version of Lane Kiffen?
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I agree, he’s not in Briles’ class. But I also think that the coach laundering is maybe not quite so thorough, either…Kiffin is still exiled. He has a ways to go before he gets a decent job.
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doesnt lane have a 10 year contract? I am sure he is hating life in the briarpatch.
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Self-righteous maybe? Pious? No way.
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Po-tay-toh, po-tah-toh, my man. FWIW, I had to google “pious” to be sure I wasn’t misspoken. 😉
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🙂
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Now let’s all sit back and watch Alabama burn.
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That would be a great hire. If I were a Bama fan I would be excited to watch Freeze and that freshman QB for the next 3 years. Their offense has been boring to watch since Kiffin.
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You guys can make fun of this but a diversified offense with Bama level athletes will be quite the challenge. I don’t think we are that far behind Alabama, we just went toe to toe with them and held our own, playing them with their style of play. If you look at the teams that have beaten them recently (Ole Miss, Clemson, AU), or pushed them hard (Miss State, A&M), all required a multi faceted offense/QB.
UGA is the only one that played the Tide head to head, and they blinked in the 2nd half. Forget that Chaney/Smart went into their shell and tried to run the clock out after coming out of the locker room. We let that slide through our fingers. Like him or not, Freeze would make them a much more difficult offense to contend with, one that KS didn’t do well with in Tusky. I don’t see Freeze getting the OC job this year, but him as a consultant or staffer could send Alabama in a direction that could make the SECCG even more difficult in coming years. While UGA is going to be a force, no doubt, the SEC title still goes through Tuscaloosa until Little Nicky leaves. We don’t need the challenge getting tougher.
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Agreed. Scumbag or not, the 2015ish Ole Miss offense with Alabama personnel would devastate more than a few teams.
Yet, Alabama still plays a level of ball control offense to keep a fresh and deep defense. Hugh was known for snapping the ball with 34 seconds on the play clock… i don’t see Nick Saban going that ‘Nascar’ ever.
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Totally agree. I don’t really cherish the thought of Freeze having a hand in Bama’s offense w/ Tua.
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The last time we went against Freeze it didn’t go so well….
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I don’t think it was UGA doing the blinking, Saban was definitely panicking/blinking. He couldn’t control his players for taking swings and shoving the heads of UGA players! He was losing control of his team, but order was restored for him. What more can Smart and Chaney do when things are one sided officiating wise?
Freeze would be a good addition to that staff imo, it would benefit Freeze as well of course. I’m not sure how many more up and coming coordinators Saban can find and sustain his success. I can only see former HCs come in and do so unless it’s ex-NFL coordinators…jus my opinion
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I wasn’t clear enough, I meant by “they” that it was Bama blinking after realizing what we had on defense could control their offense. What we did wasn’t “blink”, we just crapped the bed. Seemed like we could have learned from the mistake Lincoln Riley made against us by changing from what was working. Huge mistake and cost us the game, imo.
Yes, there were three blown calls that did, or likely did cost us the game. But those calls wouldn’t have been enough if we hadn’t gone defensive on offense.
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I’ll turn that around Mac. If any of those three blown calls you referenced (there were others too) don’t happen Georgia wins the game and Smart/Chaney come out looking like geniuses because they didn’t throw the game away (pun intended). I will go to my grave believing somebody made a phone call at the half to the referee and either doubled the payment or suggested certain someones would be without kneecaps after the game unless “changes” in officiating were made….or both.
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We were not conservative enough in my opinion. Fromm should not have been throwing after our interception of Tua up 20-6 with 6 minutes left in the third quarter.
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Great for Alabama…wouldn’t want this guy anywhere near my program. Never forget how he weaseled Tunsil away at the last minute with shady (and illegal) recruiting tactics.
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If shady (and illegal) recruiting tactics=$$$$ then yes he did.
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Really who cares about his coaching. His family isn’t going to whitewash anything.
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So what you’re saying is the NCAA doesn’t exactly have Crockett and Tubbs on the case?
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They have Barney and Gomer on it. NCAA doesn’t hire anyone with intelligence or chutzpah, it make Emmert feels superior.
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That appears to be true. Inept is a kind way to describe them.
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Corrupt is another, but not as nice.
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dont have any issues with this. Freeze got caught giving out money and paying for sex. I dont have any issues with him taking a job out of the spotlight and rehabbing his career. If he can be an asset to Bama, then why not hire him?
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Freeze’s shadiness impacted us hard. He is a self-made outlaw and deserves to be coaching only in Bumafuc, Egypt.
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In most professions, you commit the kind of shady shit Freeze did and you’re all but doomed in that given industry. In college football, Freeze will “rehab” by working for the best college program in existence, and be paid millions of dollars for it.
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You ever heard of Wallstreet. Fuck up the financial system while stealing hundreds of millions, get your golf buddies in Washington to bail you out at taxpayers expense. Then to top it all off get to keep your job and get paid a bonus out of that taxpayers money. At worst you lose your job but get your fat golden parachute. No one went to jail. Those guys make football coaches look like middle class workin stiffs.
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So true.
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Still that way too.
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So, did we get our laptop back, or???
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2nd Chance U: Not just for players anymore.
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ALL IN….they are going to need all the help they can get. 🙂
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Absolutely brilliant. Saban is conceding that he will no longer dominate the SEC recruiting wars, so he is already moving towards an offensive scheme advantage. Wish we were doing the same.
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Whoa, slow down, hoss.
A. Freeze hasn’t been hired yet.
B. Freeze may not be hired as the OC.
C. When has Saban ever given his OC carte blanche?
D. Last time I looked, ‘Bama was 5th overall and second in the SEC in recruiting.
Why don’t you give this whole thing a little time to marinade first?
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Apologies Senator, not trying to start a fight here. The observation is only that Saban is conceding he won’t dominate the recruiting wars anymore, and won’t be walking into every game with a talent advantage. And agree that Hugh isn’t coming on as OC, nor will his expertise be called on as long as Bamas OL can push for 5 ypc. But I still see it as Saban already working on an edge for when our front 7 shows up and dominates. My hope is that Kirby & Cheney are also shopping for guys who can hurt Saban’s system from a scheme angle, in case the talent is even, injured, or tired.
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I think you’re reading way too much into this. Saban’s supposedly talking to several OC candidates, including Jim McElwain. He may also choose to promote from within.
He’s not conceding anything.
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McElwain didn’t do so well on O in Gainesville. Just sayin.’
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He wasn’t the OC. Just sayin’.
He was Saban’s OC and Saban was happy with him.
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So it is between the Land Shark and the Shark Molester?
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“so he is already moving towards an offensive scheme advantage.”
I think Saban already has the QB/Running QB. In fact, he has TWO of them. Not that one was overly effective Monday night against a top flight D. Tua then had 126 yards passing in the half — not great on a game’s worth 13/23 throws, with an additional 40 on the last play (beautifully thrown however!) for 166 on 14/24.
As to: “Wish we were doing the same.”
Is not the number one APQB Fields not enough for you?
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Other than repeatedly victimizing one UGA DB (who I believe was playing injured) and taking advantage of a busted coverage for a 40 yard game winning TD what did Tua really do? I could have thrown that pass and I never played QB. If the Dawgs get a chance to face Tua again with the chance to prepare for him I really like our chances with the depth chart I saw in the thread above.
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Freeze will get an analyst job. Stay there two years until the storm about him being hired blows over while the next OC (probably an analyst on staff now) runs the show until he gets a HC job. Freeze will step in and run the O for two years and get a job in Nevada where what he did is OK.
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If I’m being honest, I don’t understand why some would condemn Hugh Freeze into unemployment in perpetuity other than plain old vengeance. His personal failings are irrelevant to me and are nothing to the level of Art Briles. Unless he was impeding a criminal investigation or messing with underage girls, I say let that be between him, law enforcement (meaning, show me charges) and his wife. On the morality (not legality) scale, traditional infidelity is just as bad, maybe worse, than hiring a hooker. Yet, we always look away when that happens, mainly because it’s not illegal, while preaching about these guys being role models for young men.
His NCAA cheating is what it is and he is paying a price for it, as he should. But I’m not about to have permanent moral outrage about players getting something that they should probably be getting anyway, and I’m generally on the OPPOSITE side of the senator when it comes to the whole paying players thing.
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“But I’m not about to have permanent moral outrage about players getting something that they should probably be getting anyway…”
You’re using false logic. It doesn’t matter where you (or I or my next door neighbor) stand on player payment. Because them’s the rules for now, and Freeze fostered a culture of cheating. He should be banned from college athletics. Not because he’s Robin Hood. But because he proved he is willing to go to any length to win, including the illegal advantage of cheating. If other schools could pay players, he wouldn’t have enjoyed his success. It is only because he cheated that he enjoyed success at Ole Miss. And to boot, he displayed incredible bravado and chutzpah about the whole ordeal, which we now know to be complete bullshit. That is unfair to the teams who play by the rules. He’s only sorry because he got caught.
I do agree with you generally speaking that – lacking cheating on the field/recruiting – his off the field conduct could be forgiven, were we to believe he was truly sorry. I just would harbor serious reservations about someone that reckless and absent of morals representing my university. I’m thinking more along the lines of Bobby Petrino scenario.
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Well, If you want something done right it’s typically best to hire a professional……….
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Carl Lentz will be in charge of haircuts
https://twitter.com/CoachHughFreeze/status/952929092038545409
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Isn’t Dan Werner, Freeze’s former OC, still on bama’s staff as an analyst? It’s gonna start getting a little crowded in Tuscaloosa with former ole miss coaches.
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if you can’t beat’em, join’em
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He just got hired as the QB coach at South Carolina.
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