After resigning from Ole Miss, Hugh Freeze took a moment to glorify God.
“God is good, even in difficult times,” Freeze tells USA Today Sports. “Wonderful wife and family, and that’s my priority.”
The SEC coach resigned last week after phone records revealed Freeze’s university-issued phone called a number associated with a female escort service.
According to Yahoo! Sports:
Athletic director Ross Bjork said the initial phone call originally was “attributed to a misdial.” But further vetting of Freeze’s phone records disclosed a “pattern of conduct” that led the school administration to confront Freeze this week. Bjork said he and school administrators spoke to Freeze Wednesday night.
“Coach Freeze was very transparent, open, honest and admitted the conduct,” Bjork said, without specifying what that conduct was.
Freeze met again with the Ole Miss administration Thursday morning and offered his resignation, which was immediately accepted. Bjork said that if Freeze had not offered his resignation he would have been fired for cause, citing the “moral turpitude” clause in Freeze’s contract. Bjork said there was no buyout of the contract and no settlement.
“He admitted that conduct to us,” Bjork said. “None of us are perfect. Nobody in this room is perfect. I think we need to respect how he resigned and respect his privacy.”
Freeze, an outspoken Christian, says his family is standing by him through the turmoil.
“The girls have volleyball and then I’ll watch them,” he said Wednesday. “I know I’m going to meet with my pastor tonight too.”
“I hurt for him, but he will always be my friend,” pastor and Freeze’s friend Matt Catt says. “True friends are the people who walk into the room when so-called ‘friends’ walk out. All of us stumble; that’s why we need Jesus to pick us up and friends to love us when we do stumble and fall.”
