Written by Andy Staples at SI.com
It wasn’t shocking that Hugh Freeze got pushed out at Ole Miss last week. It was shocking why Freeze got pushed out last week. Had someone predicted on July 1 that Freeze wouldn’t last the month, that outcome would have seemed entirely plausible. But we would have expected the reason to be the NCAA investigation into the Rebels’ recruiting tactics—not a “pattern of personal conduct” that was discovered after the attorney for former Ole Miss coach Houston Nutt alerted Ole Miss officials to a call to a Florida-based escort service in Freeze’s phone records.
Things got very weird last week, and now it’s time to gather all the disparate strings in an attempt to figure out what happens next for everyone involved in this soap opera. We’ll start with the Rebels and the NCAA.
OLE MISS VS. THE NCAA
Perhaps the strangest facet of this case is the fact that the Rebels have spent months building a defense around a man they no longer have to defend. The question now is whether this hurts or helps Ole Miss going forward. A former member of the NCAA’s Committee on Infractions (who asked to remain anonymous) told SI.com that the Rebels’ best bet is to use the same defense they spelled out in their response to the NCAA’s second notice of allegations. That means Ole Miss will have to defend Freeze’s efforts at maintaining rules compliance in spite of the fact that Freeze resigned before athletic director Ross Bjork could fire him. The Rebels can’t now suddenly heap everything on Freeze and say “he did it” because he doesn’t work there anymore. (Besides, Ole Miss has already chosen its scapegoat in the form of former high school relations director Barney Farrar.) Any change in tack now probably would not be viewed favorably by the committee, but the former committee member said the attorneys for Ole Miss can adjust the language they use to attempt to tilt this turn of events in the Rebels’ favor.
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