Even Ole Miss.
If the NCAA slaps a two-year penalty on the program, I wonder how many of those same kids are going to hightail it for greener pastures.
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Category Archives: Freeze!
Today, in why we need the media
As far as Dan Wolken’s advice goes about coach-worship, I can take it or leave it, because that’s not the world we live in, but his think-piece is totally worth reading just to find this out:
Whatever Freeze was doing to make enemies across the Southeast, it was often hard to distinguish what rival coaches saw as the greater transgression — the program’s loose relationship with the NCAA rulebook or his in-your-face piety.
Coaches who recruited against Freeze didn’t merely roll their eyes at him, and they certainly didn’t laugh, except when it came to the nickname a few called him behind his back: Jimmy Swag.
Jimmy Swag is an awesome enough tag that I wish its creator would step forward and claim every accolade due him.
Filed under Freeze!, Media Punditry/Foibles
The question still left for Ole Miss to answer
If you’re Ross Bjork, when you next deal with NCAA investigators, exactly how do you go about defending the propriety of a man whom you were prepared to can by invoking “the termination clause in our contract for moral turpitude” had he not resigned first?
That’s one helluva needle to thread, brother.
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UPDATE: I guess Bjork can try to start with this.
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UPDATE #2: This is an even better short take than mine.
Even Thursday, Bjork tried to explain what had happened and why you heard him defending Freeze’s record of NCAA compliance. Ole Miss made the decision to tie its fate to Freeze’s years ago, and that has not changed one little bit.
They’re going to have to go in front of the Committee on Infractions and, for the sake of the university, argue that former staffer Barney Farrar was a renegade, but the guy whose personal life was deceitful and a sham acted honorably professionally. Good luck with that.
“We call the wrong numbers all the time.”
As stunned as I was by the cosmically ironic revelation that Houston Nutt was able to wield the same instrument of his downfall at Arkansas to bring down Hugh Freeze, Freeze’s hubris is almost as stunning to me.
Forget about that obnoxious tweet about reporting recruiting infractions by his staff for a minute and concentrate on the here and now with this story:
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.
Bjork said six days of Freeze’s phone records from early January 2016 were turned over to Nutt’s attorney, and Freeze was allowed to redact personal phone calls before the records were released. Freeze failed to redact the 313 area code number in question, according to Bjork.
ESPN asked Freeze about the alleged phone call last week, and he denied purposely calling an escort service.
“We call the wrong numbers all the time,” Freeze said.
According to emails obtained by USA Today, Nutt’s attorney, Thomas Mars, sent an email to Ole Miss general counsel Lee Tyner, which referenced a “phone call Coach Freeze made that would be highly embarrassing for all of you and extremely difficult to explain.”
… At SEC media days, Freeze chose not to comment on Nutt but said that he was “disappointed by the timing of it” coming one day before he and his players arrived in Hoover, Alabama, for the event.
“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. [Emphasis added.]
To recap, then, the NCAA’s been shining a flashlight up your ass for more than a year, you tried to throw the Nuttster under the bus to deflect attention from your own actions, you wouldn’t back down when he asked for an apology, you received a pointed warning from Nutt’s attorney about your own behavior… and your response is to double down on Houston Nutt at SEC Media Days.
Remind me again why these guys think they’re so smart.
Filed under Freeze!
The hottest of hot takes on the Freeze fallout
Everything in the SEC always comes back to one man.
Filed under Freeze!, Media Punditry/Foibles, Nick Saban Rules
The next time Houston Nutt asks you for an apology…
… give it to him, for chrissakes.
In a stunning turn of events, Hugh Freeze has resigned from Ole Miss on Thursday. The move comes after the school found at least one call from the coach to an escort service on his school-issued cell phone.
Yahoo Sports inquired with Freeze and athletic director Ross Bjork about a call at 8:34 p.m. on Jan. 21, 2016, to a Detroit number that is linked via various websites to a Florida-based escort service. Freeze told Yahoo last Friday that the call had been brought to Ole Miss administrators’ attention by former coach Houston Nutt’s attorney, Thomas Mars, and that they had questioned him about it. Freeze told Yahoo he had no idea why the call was on his phone records.
“I’ve got no idea, to be honest,” Freeze said. “I was in an 813 area code and that was a 313 number, I think that might have been a misdial. I don’t think there was even a conversation. There’s nothing to it.”
Yahoo Sports obtained Freeze’s phone records from Mars, whose client is suing Ole Miss for breach of contract. The call only lasted one minute, raising the possibility that it was a wrong number.
I cannot even begin to wrap my head around the level of irony it takes to fully appreciate that Houston Nutt brought down Hugh Freeze — something the NCAA hadn’t done — with his friggin’ cellphone records.
And you thought the football gods didn’t have a sense of humor.
By the way, I don’t think his dismissal has anything to do with a one-minute wrong number to an escort service. That’s just the bridge to some deep, deep shit that’s being dredged up.
Bjork told Yahoo on Friday that after receiving the information from Mars, the school had pulled records of Freeze’s cell calls and plowed through 39,000 calls without finding another instance of a call to the 313 number. However, the school kept digging through the records and must have found additional troubling information.
Now there’s an understatement. Speaking of the NCAA, think anybody there has spoken with Mars yet?
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UPDATE: Looks like the dismissal isn’t over NCAA compliance stuff.
The blind sided jokes write themselves, don’t they?
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UPDATE #2: Aaaand, the topper is:
Freeze had and used a second non-university phone, paid for privately, a source told Godfrey.
It also sounds like Ole Miss was bracing for the worst for a while.
As far as Matt Luke is concerned, multiple sources told SB Nation that he entertained an offer from South Carolina to take the vacant OL position in the offseason. Ole Miss officials retained Luke with an aggressive offer specifically as a fallback interim coach if Freeze didn’t survive.
Filed under Freeze!, Sometimes You Feel Like A Nutt
