Obligatory Freeze Takes
I was going to write about Hugh Freeze today, but then I realized I'd already said most of the things I think about this kind of stuff. There's a post from a few months back specifically on the Ole Miss situation, in which the world's worst burglars decided to steal college football's biggest diamonds:
1. Brazen. Ole Miss's problem is that they made it blindingly obvious. People are dumb but they ain't stupid, and when a nobody with one year of college head coaching experience shows up in Oxford and acquires
- the #1 player in the country
- a five-star offensive tackle from Florida, and
- most egregiously, a five-star wide receiver from Chicago
it's just a matter of time before the walls cave in. Nobody in the history of Chicago has ever thought to themselves "Yes! Mississippi! Especially the bit where not having a plantation owner as a mascot is controversial!" …
2. There are only two options for Hugh Freeze. Option A, which is by far the more likely, is that he was fully aware of what was going on from the drop and is a brazen liar. The alternative is that he is so impossibly naïve and delusional that he thought his very presence was sufficient to turn around the history of Ole Miss football. The Machiavellian interpretation is kinder, but this is a guy who compared Ole Miss's struggles to Jesus's trials on the cross so it certainly could be the latter.
Point for the brazen liar theory after an FOIA request from Houston Nutt turned up a call to an escort service. Freeze tried to pass off as a misdial; his athletic director conducted a broader search and turned up a "disturbing pattern." But also points for naiveté and delusion. All theories are correct.
There is no more perfect ending for Freeze's dumbass fake crime spree than calling an escort on a phone subject to FOIA
— mgoblog (@mgoblog) July 21, 2017
Freeze's most laudable trait was his stupidity. Enough guys like him mucking up the works with Wile E. Coyote plots and the amateurism edifice will collapse on itself.
A more general take on folks who are publicly confrontational about their faith or goodness or your lack thereof was written after Penn State's awful scandal ground its principals into dust:
Just lug the damn refrigerator. Stop telling everyone how great of a job you're doing of pulling the refrigerator. Maybe someone will notice, maybe not, but once you start talking about it yourself your self-regard starts chipping away at the core.
If Penn State had not been posited as a Grand Experiment, it's possible that one of the four adult-type substances who could have put Sandusky's second career to a stop a decade before it did would have had more regard for the possibility children would be raped* than for what people would think about them. It's too late for all of them, perpetrator and victims alike, now. But to me the lesson is to shut up about yourself and get on with it. It will help you not make terrible mistakes because you are trying to preserve what people think about you in the face of what you really are.
Freeze spent the entirety of his tenure tweeting out psalms about what a good refrigerator-lugger he was, the best refrigerator-lugger, really. His dissolution is the least surprising public humiliation of a smarmy doofus since Jamie Horowitz a few weeks ago. Horowitz fell prey to the iron "you're doing dirt if you invoke your kids as a shield" law merely by surrounding himself with their photos when it came time for a NYT photographer to capture his inner essence. Freeze straight up used his as a shield so he could get holier than thou about satellite camps, of all things:
"I'll never apologize for wanting to be a father and a husband," Freeze said when asked about vacation time. "I miss enough volleyball games (and other things), that is a priority for me. ... I think we work very hard, I don't think working hard is an issue. If you're asking me if I want to add more nights away from my wife and kids, I do not. That window is closing for me to be a husband and a father and I think the kids that play in our system need to see me in that role an awful lot."
I immediately think "deranged sex criminal" whenever anyone does this and suggest you do the same.
Freeze schadenfreude roundup! Don't act like you're above it. Dan Wetzel:
There was never a concern for an injured party – be it Houston Nutt or all the recruits and their parents who the misdirection was designed to fool. They were the ones conned into sticking with the Rebels, led to believe everything was fine, when in truth bowl bans and sanctions that will crush competitiveness were coming. They were sold a false promise.
Freeze didn’t care about them, let alone Houston Nutt. Pumped up on hubris, he couldn’t do the simplest things – say he was sorry, tell the truth, admit his mistakes. He thought he could lie and preach his way through that one, too.
Geoff Calkins with the ONE SENTENCE PARAGRAPHS OF DOOM:
The record shows Freeze presided over a football program that committed numerous NCAA violations.
The record shows he called at least one escort service and likely more.
The record shows he did all this on his university-issued cell phone.
The record shows he did it while tweeting daily Bible verses.
The record shows that Ole Miss will now be in the awkward position of appearing before the NCAA and defending the integrity of a program whose coach just resigned because of moral turpitude.
The record shows a rise and a fall that will be remembered in these parts for a very long time.
Was Freeze a fraud?
Let's let him answer that.
“Because of Him, you don't need to fear unrighteousness," he recently tweeted. "It’s our delusion of righteousness that we should fear.”
Also:
Some Ole Miss fans think Hugh Freeze is being framed and it's amazing. pic.twitter.com/9NLn6y2Apt
— Charles Evans (@banditref) July 21, 2017
Meanwhile Dennis Dodd manages to go too far:
Let's start with this being the single most embarrassing moment in the history of Ole Miss athletics.
If that history started with Freeze's hire this would still be incorrect. Ole Miss announced they'd stop playing "Dixie" at games last year.
"Hugh, we're going to need your phone to look into an allegation"
They've already begun their Joey Freshwater preparations.
I got halfway through the article and realized I didn't care that much about Ole Miss.
Brian typo'd himself into a pretty solid double entendre here:
written after Penn State's awful scandal ground its principals into dust
University President: Jail.
Athletic Director: Gone.
Iconic Coach: Dead, legacy destroyed, statue removed.
Principals ground to dust, indeed.
That wasn't a typo.
stands as delightful.
No, I'm not a wordplay nerd, why do you ask?
get rid of coaches that cheat.
Don't worry, there will always be new slapdicks waiting to backfill their way into some shortcuts.
That's exactly what I'm thinking. He had to be sitting there upon taking the job and thinking to himself that there was no way in hell he could compete with the LSUs and Alabamas of the world if he played a fair game. Ole Miss just does not have the resources, the alumni backing, or the history those other programs have. Ole Miss has been a loser ever since it started playing football. Maybe a step above being the SCLSU Mud Dogs.
My guess is that he told himself "I've got one of two options: bust my ass and play by the rules, and odds are I probably get fired in 3-4 years when I can't do any better than 7-5. Or, I cheat to get the players I need to compete for titles, do what I need to do to get to the top, and take my chances with getting caught."
Hope he enjoyed his moment in the sun. This will be what he's known for for the rest of his career, as well as his life. "Oh yeah, you're the guy that got fired for hiring hookers."
That's the common mindset of many criminals. The world is just unfair and stacked against them, and to them, crime is the only way to get ahead. They're only going to do this illicit activity for a little while, just to get themselves off the ground. And then once they get to where they want to be, it's straight back to legitimacy. The problem is that either:
a) Once they get where they want to be, they find out they enjoy it (a la Breaking Bad). And they want to stay there. Then the idea of legitimacy just floats away. Or:
b) Even once you try and make your way back to legitimacy, there's too many lies, scandals, and everything in between to try and cover up. Everything you do creates enemies elsewhere and people trying to take you down (a la Godfather).
These stories just never end well. It's like Corleone said. "Just when I thought I was out, they pull me back in."
Requiem for a Dream
but a lot of history show people who yell from the mountain tops about their devotion to whatever higher entity they praise, have some serious demons wihtin them. My opinion, they do this to make them feel better about their misdoings.
Now I know people who I respect and trust who are vocal about their religion, but these type of stories definitley make me/people raise an eyebrow
I suspect, as you seem to, that the man has problems, mentally, emotionally, whatever. For the sake of his family and himself, I hope that he gets help, having hit bottom. I know too many people with mental problems to gloat over the public exposure of this man's problems with sex.
He does not have mental / emotional problems.
He's a cynical opportunist who gamed the system as long as he could get away with it.
He knew exactly what he was doing.
But to me the lesson is to shut up about yourself and get on with it. It will help you not make terrible mistakes because you are trying to preserve what people think about you in the face of what you really are.
Oh, this post is about a college football coach? Then carry on . . . .
that broke the camel's back was an initial call to the 313.
Karma lives inside of 8 Mile...
When Hugh Freeze is over.
The "disturbing pattern" of phone calls they found is interesting. Idk whether the NCAA is just incompetent for not looking into those during the investigation, or they just assumed no one would be stupid enough to use that phone.
Either way, I bet they really start digging into emails and whatnot now. I have a feeling this is just scratching the surface.
I don't think the NCAA has anything comparable to subpoena power which is how Nutt's lawyer (that sounded odd) got the phone records.
I feel bad for God. Big guy lost another one. I'm pretty sure it went down, something like, "Brother Hugh, on one shoulder is a number to an escort; the other is the Ole Miss compliance hotline to report cheating. Please choose wisely, my s . . . D'oh!"
If he did, the story wouldn't have been as interesting, so they nerfed him as a plot device.
God and personal accountability are not mutually exclusive.
Couldn't have happened to a more deserving individual. The facade has been peeled away, and he is revealed to be nothing more than a hypocritical slimeball.
This is not an indictment on Christianity, but isn't it interesting that those of us who are the most holier-than-thou, the most self-righteous and the most in-your-face about why their religion is the right one, are usually the ones with the most to hide? Freeze must've been spouting this crap every day so he could look himself in the mirror each morning and tell himself that he was a good person. These people are all the same. The ends justify the means.
Feel bad for his family, especially his kids, because their father's sins will follow them wherever they go.
Hugh had a chance to redact the phone call as "personal" and didn't. That's an omission a magnitude of order below smart.
Ha, I'm glad you called out that part from Dennis Dodd.
I read that earlier today and thought "Oh, that's the moment you think is most embarrassing for Ole Miss? Not any of the overt racism from recent past or extreme racism from not-as-recent past?"
If you are going to see escorts, you probably should not be posting psalms for the public to digest, throwing stones from your glass house, and analygizing to the times of Jesus.
Just posting this in case this was not clear to you in advance...
The problem here is that the alumni are still going to buy players. They probably framed Hugh Freeze so that they could divert attention.
Hugh Freeze's blatant cheating. I honestly don't care if coaches want to spread the wealth to the players.
Things I don't support:
Using Jesus and family time to prohibit someone else from working hard, cheating on your wife, and being a sanctimonious douchebag. Honestly, I was a Hugh Freeze fan until the satellite camps incident
I understand what you are saying here, but I think the satellite camps incident is when we started to get to know him. Before that, he was kind of a stranger we did not know much about. We thought he had to be cheating, because how else could he get these players?
Turns out he was just another in a rather long line of Southern hypocrits.
Yeah, who would ever associate this guy with slavery?
It's coming sooner than you think!
"That window is closing for me to be a husband..."
As much as I would like to kick a man who's down, I won't in this case.
GO BLUE
So I haven't been following all of this, but evidently Ole Miss tried to pin all of the shennanigans they've been up to on Houston Nutt. Nutt sued and the information leaked out when he file a FOIA. Nutt had an affair with a TV anchor revealed when an FOIA was filed against his phone records. Kudos to Houston for cheating on his wife without paying for it. (cash, I'm assuming he paid for it otherwise.)
The beauty of all of this is that Houston Nutt is still suing. Unless Ole Miss settles out of court, all of Ole Miss' shit is going to hit the fan.
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