WSJ: Hugh Freeze’s Ouster at Ole Miss Linked to Multiple Recruiting Trips

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On the morning of Jan. 19, 2016, University of Mississippi football coach Hugh Freeze tweeted a quote: “Look not back on yesterday—so full of failure & regret; Look ahead & seek God’s way—all sin confessed u must forget.”

Later that day, the coach flew to Tampa, Fla., as part of a recruiting trip using the school plane, according to documents reviewed by The Wall Street Journal. A few hours after the plane touched down at 5:30 p.m. in Tampa, his school phone registered a call to a number linked to a female escort service in that city, according to phone records reviewed by the Journal.

The call that day was part of a “pattern of misconduct” Ole Miss officials said they uncovered last month. Freeze, the high-profile coach who in the last five seasons turned the program around by bringing in highly sought-after recruits, resigned July 20 after the school confronted him with its findings stemming from that Jan. 19, 2016, call. The university said he would have been fired for violating a “moral turpitude” clause in his contract if he had not resigned.

Although school officials had previously declined to characterize the alleged misconduct, Ole Miss athletic director Ross Bjork said in response to questions from the Journal about Freeze’s travel that the university’s investigation uncovered “calls of a similar nature” over the course of several years, often matching up with travel logs showing the coach’s use of the school plane. The school said it examined his travel logs from peak recruiting times—often November, December and January—when Freeze would travel out of state, using the school plane and other public resources.

“When we say pattern, we are describing other phone numbers that when you Google them pull up similar type websites, services, however you would describe them,” Bjork said. “We took action swiftly.”

When the school presented its findings to Freeze, the coach admitted his misconduct and agreed to resign, school officials said.

W.G. Watkins, Freeze’s lawyer, declined to comment. Freeze couldn’t be reached for comment and has not publicly addressed the circumstances of his resignation.

Freeze’s stunning departure ended a roller-coaster tenure as coach that included as many wins on the field as questions off the field. The Ole Miss football program has been under investigation by the NCAA for a litany of alleged rules violations related to recruiting, and the school had already imposed a ban on postseason play for this season.

Throughout the NCAA’s investigation, Ole Miss officials stood by Freeze, who endeared himself within Oxford, Miss., as a pious man who restored the program to glory. He beat Alabama twice in the last three years, giving the sport’s superpower its only losses in those regular seasons.

Even before Freeze got the head post at a big-time, SEC program, Freeze was a national figure. While coaching in high school, one of his players was Michael Oher, star of the best-selling book turned hit movie “The Blind Side.” Oher went to play at Ole Miss, where Freeze became an assistant. Later, Freeze became head coach at Arkansas State and then Ole Miss.

The conduct that led to Freeze’s sudden departure was unrelated to the NCAA investigation, the school said, though the circumstances that brought the phone call to light intertwine the situations. School officials were first notified of the Jan. 19, 2016, call by Thomas Mars, the attorney for former Ole Miss football coach Houston Nutt, who has been embroiled in a legal battle with the school. Nutt alleged in a civil lawsuit last month that Freeze and other Ole Miss officials wrongfully blamed him for the alleged NCAA violations. In trying to prove that there was an orchestrated campaign against Nutt, the lawyer filed a public-records request for Freeze’s phone logs, which turned up the call to the escort service from his phone.

Nutt’s lawsuit was dismissed by a federal judge last week on jurisdictional grounds. Mars said in a statement that he plans to refile the lawsuit in state court, and that the revised complaint may add additional defendants and includes “recently-discovered evidence that should put to rest any question about the merits of Houston Nutt’s case.” Ole Miss has said Nutt’s lawsuit is without merit.

The flight records reviewed by the Journal show Freeze crisscrossing the country on recruiting trips and other business on the school plane, at a rate of $1,375 per hour. The records show Freeze took at least 103 trips on the plane over about five and a half years.

On the night of the Jan. 19 call to the number linked to the escort service, Freeze was in Tampa on a five-day, 13-stop recruiting trip, according to the flight records. The flights for the trip cost more than $26,000, which was paid by the state university. Six members of the Ole Miss football staff accompanied Freeze on the plane at points in the trip.

The trip came just two weeks before National Signing Day, when Freeze inked one of the country’s most heralded recruiting classes. Two weeks earlier, on Jan. 1, 2016, the Rebels walloped Oklahoma State in the Sugar Bowl to cap off their best season in more than a decade.

The travels began on Jan. 17 and took Freeze through parts of Texas, then back to Mississippi before continuing to Louisiana and Florida. On Jan. 19, according to the flight manifests, Freeze and staff members flew from New Orleans to Orlando and then Melbourne, Fla.

After that, the plane landed in Tampa at 5:30 p.m. and was the last flight of the day. The call that cost Freeze his job—the number is listed on multiple websites advertising a female escort service—lasted about a minute. The number has since been disconnected.

When Mars confronted Ole Miss about the call after reviewing Freeze’s phone records, school officials said, they initially attributed it to a misdial because it was the only call to that specific number on his university-issued phone among the batch Mars requested. The school said its investigation--which included the assistance of outside counsel and members in the athletic department—uncovered the similar calls on other trips.

In those instances, the records inspected by the school showed multiple calls to and from Freeze’s phone from each of the “services” that raised red flags, Bjork said.

The alleged behavior “did not meet our expectations,” Bjork said. “He could not be our coach.”

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