Some of you might remember that before he was the head coach at a college established by a family of televangelists, otherwise known as Liberty University, Hugh Freeze was actually the head coach at Ole Miss from 2012 to 2017.
Freeze achieved quite a bit of success (though much of it no longer counts after the school was slammed with sanctions for recruiting violations under his watch and that of Texas A&M’s current athletic director Ross Bjork and forced to vacate 33 wins).
However, despite the on-field success, Freeze’s tenure is best remembered for what happened off the field, including an odd comment to a recruit comparing the NCAA’s investigation into the Rebels to the persecution of Jesus Christ, as well as the scandal that ultimately led to his dismissal in which he placed calls to a Tampa-based escort service from his university-issued phone.
With Freeze’s Liberty Flames heading to Vaught-Hemingway Stadium Saturday to take on his former team, everyone expected that there would be some awkwardness and a lot of jokes.
The folks running social media at Ole Miss didn’t disappoint as it defeated the Fighting Jerry Falwells 27-14.
This is a reference to a (since-deleted) tweet Freeze sent in 2013, in which he invited anyone with evidence of a recruiting violation to report it to the Mississippi compliance office. Of course, the Rebels were ultimately found to have committed numerous violations resulting in some of the most severe NCAA punishments in recent years.
But the Rebels’ account wasn’t done. Not yet.
For those who might not be sure what exactly they’re looking at here, it’s a picture from Liberty’s game against Syracuse in 2019 when Freeze, who had suffered a herniated disk leading to a staph infection that required emergency surgery, had to coach the Flames from a hospital bed.
This is some top-tier trolling from Ole Miss, and the Rebels communications team showed the school’s former coach no mercy on Saturday. (Until they deleted the tweets. Cowards.)
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