Burner phone could have saved Freeze

Published 5:30 pm Sunday, July 23, 2017

As word spread of Hugh Freeze’s head coaching demise at Ole Miss, the reaction around the SEC — outside of Oxford anyway — was one of concern, sympathy, empathy and mostly uncontrollable, side-splitting laughter.

You know the SEC motto. It just means more … especially when “it” happens to somebody else.

So it was with great glee and a firm grip on the moral high ground that the Rebels’ conference brethren didn’t even wait for the official news conference before piling on Freeze and Ole Miss.

You can bet cowbells were ringing ecstatically in the great state of Mississippi. Other schools put their own twist on the merriment.

It is, after all, the SEC.

It’s easy to feel smug in such situations, and in the SEC nothing outside of beating Alabama makes a fan feel better about himself than enjoying another school twisting and turning in the wind.

They should know better, of course.

While giggling and wagging a school-marm finger at the Rebels’ woes, it might be wiser to remember this:

There but for the grace of …

Speaking of the Almighty, this incident was all the juicier because Freeze had never been shy about wearing his religion on his sleeve, even — especially — while the NCAA gumshoes were snooping about on campus.

As recently as last week at SEC Media Days, Freeze was navigating a tough day on the podium with several reminders of his devoutness.

That’s fine, and generally plays well in the South. But when the whole thing goes off the rails due to a phone call to what is known as an “escort service,” you better have a better explanation than an inadvertent butt dial.

One of the big story lines during those media days appearance was how Ole Miss did appear to be all in while standing by their man through whatever the NCAA might dish out. The school had even shown its good faith with a contract extension amidst the investigation.

One uncovered phone call later and the school couldn’t show him the door fast enough, even pointing out emphatically that Ole Miss would not owe him a thin dime of the $12 million left on his contract.

Freeze resigned (in a manner of speaking), but Athletic Director Ross Bjork said if he hadn’t, the school would have invoked the dreaded “moral turpitude” clause to fire him for cause (and no buyout).

The rest of the SEC loved it.

But the other schools should remember that they’ll never be immune as long as coaches are as human as they are ambitious.

There are varying degrees of good, bad and downright ruthless in the profession.

But rest assured that none of them get to be a head football coach at a Power Five school without stepping over a few bodies along the way.

Still, the hope is that Freeze will not have butt dialed in vain, that his missteps along the way will serve as a how-NOT-to guide for future generations of ambitious coaches.

We know it won’t, of course, any more than the players of these coaches will use teammates’ indiscretions — “I’ll learn from this” — in plotting their own adventures after 3 a.m.

But, for sure, there have been a few chapters added to the coaching handbook. How much they glean from it is up to them.

It would be easiest, perhaps, just to follow all the rules, live life in a manner resembling your public persona and maybe even doing unto others as you would have them do unto you. But that is probably being overly simplistic.

So let’s be realistic. What did we learn from this?

Well …

This being the Deep South, this whole thing could probably have been avoided with a simple apology, albeit a public one.

Ole Miss, of all schools, should know about Southern manners. It’s what decent folk do — apologize.

That’s all the former Ole Miss coach, Houston Nutt, originally asked for when it came to light that Freeze (and, supposedly, others in the athletic department) were conveniently trying to throw the bulk of 21 NCAA allegations into Nutt’s lap.

There was, however, a complication. Ole Miss, according to Nutt, had been telling prospects the same thing in an effort to salvage the recruiting class.

But Ole Miss already had the allegations in hand, presumably knew what was said — Nutt was named in four of the 21 allegations, it turned out — and was eventually going to have to make them public. Apologizing to Nutt might be admitting dishonesty to the next batch of Rebels.

So when the apology was not forthcoming, Nutt did what any red-blooded American would do — he sued the school, with a high-profile attorney at his side, no less.

Freeze’s days were numbered.

Still, he might have survived if not for an uncharacteristic (for a coach) lack of attention to detail.

Freeze could have redacted any of the personal calls from the list of his phone records that Nutt’s attorney’s requested.

The one to a Tampa escort service via a Detroit area code slipped through his notice — and Bjork was quick to point out that the offending call was of a “personal” nature and not related to recruiting (at least not to the recruitment of football players).

But if there’s a moral here that coaches will probably never learn it is the question of why he was using a school-issued cellphone (which makes it state property and its contents subject to public records laws)?

He’s not the first coach to get burned.

These coaches are making millions. Couldn’t they afford their own personal cellphones for such delicate adventures?

Maybe it’s a lesson learned.

But I doubt it.

l

Scooter Hobbs covers LSU

athletics. Email him at

shobbs@americanpress.com