With a new season to start in arguably the premier college football conference in all of sports, Ole Miss Rebels football coach, Hugh Freeze resigned suddenly and abruptly.
Per media reports, Freeze, who helped build Ole Miss from a middling and mediocre college football power into one of the perennial contenders in the SEC, made a one-minute phone call from an Ole Miss-issued phone in January of 2016 to a female escort service in the ongoing back-and-forth fight between the university’s legal counsel and the attorney for former Ole Miss football coach Houston Nutt, according to records and correspondence obtained by USA TODAY Sports.
Prior to his arrival in Oxford in 2012, Ole Miss went 27-35, gone to two bowl games and had a win-loss record of 5-15 vs. the AP Top 25. During his tenure, Freeze compiled a 39-25 mark with a winning percentage of .609, a 12-16 record vs the AP Top 25 and four bowl game appearances.
To say that this is a bit of a shock in the college football landscape south of the Mason-Dixon line is an understatement, as Freeze was just recently at the recent SEC Media Day down in Birmingham, Alabama facing questions about his future in thanks to rumors of the direction of the program and notable off the field incidents.
Per Ole Miss athletic director, Ross Bjork, Freeze’s resignation had nothing to do with the on-going legal battle vs. Nutt stating, “This matter is not related to the NCAA case,” despite Ole Miss getting a notice from the NCAA in February alleging Freeze’s failure to monitor his own coaching staff.
Effectively immediately, assistant head coach/co-offensive coordinator Matt Luke will serve as interim head coach for the 2017-18 season.