Downfall of Hugh Freeze Came Via an Act of Revenge
By Erik Lambert
Ole Miss has become the center of lots of controversy over the past calendar year with Hugh Freeze being the latest bomb drop.
Granted this isn’t Baylor levels of bad but it’s still pretty wild. On the night of the NFL draft in 2016 the program was thrust into the public eye for allegations of academic fraud, illicit booster involvement and other significant benefits in its football program. Former left tackle Laremy Tunsil added fuel to the fire when a screenshot of a conversation with a team official went public. It showed him asking for money to pay for his mother’s electric and water bills.
This isn’t even counting former quarterback Chad Kelly being video taped charging onto a high school football field looking for a fight after his brother received a late hit. Yet the best (or worst) was saved for last as head coach Hugh Freeze was forced to resign due to a scandal involving contact with an escort service. The question becomes how did this information get out?
Ole Miss past demons came back to haunt them
As it turns out the man responsible was none other than Houston Nutt. He was the one Freeze replaced as head coach of the Rebels in 2012. Turns out that the former coach has a significant beef with his ex-employers and the man who succeeded him and waited for the right opportunity to strike back. His reasoning is easy to justify if it’s true according to Alex Kirshner of SB Nation.
"“Nutt is in the process of suing Ole Miss’ athletic department for lost “wages, emotional distress, and embarrassment, as well as legal fees and punitive damages.He alleges that the school defamed him through a “false and defamatory PR campaign” as its NCAA scandal picked up steam last year, with the goal of shielding its current coaching staff.Nutt’s complaint, filed in a U.S. District Court in Mississippi, says that the Rebels and current coach Hugh Freeze wrongly pinned their problems on Nutt. The ex-Rebels coach says Ole Miss did that in part through strategic leaks to reporters covering the team:Coach Freeze had knowingly lied to the journalists and recruiting prospects by saying that the NCAA’s investigation had little, if anything, to do with him or his coaching staff and was instead focused on alleged rules violations by Coach Nutt’s staff.”"
Revenge can be cold and sweet
In layman’s terms he’s saying Ole Miss and Freeze used him as a scapegoat during the recruiting scandal in order to protect themselves. If that’s true then it’s little surprise that when he got a shot at revenge, he gladly took it.
"“A USA Today report stated that Nutt’s attorney, Thomas Mars, contacted Ole Miss the day Nutt spoke at SEC Media Days to inform the school that Nutt’s camp had the morsel.Mars sent an e-mail to Lee Tyner, the school’s general counsel, referencing a “phone call Coach Freeze made that would be highly embarrassing for all of you and extremely difficult to explain.”"
The program had thus been caught with their pants down (pun intended). Freeze was forced to resign amidst the embarrassment. Nutt received some justice for the smear campaign. Where Ole Miss goes from here is the big question now. It’s hard to see their future given all the dust that’s been kicked up over the past 15 months. Time will tell.