Hugh Freeze to Liberty lmao

Liberty University, which will hire anyone, is hiring Hugh Freeze, a person in need of an institution that would hire anyone.

Freeze, previously fired by Ole Miss amid a scandal that superseded another scandal (the latter of which he was far more responsible for than he’d let on), will be the next head football coach employed by the athletic director who previously oversaw Baylor during its many scandals.

The former Ole Miss head coach had gotten his name into various rumors throughout this coaching cycle, having spent a year and a half off following his firing for phone records that detailed he’d taken his Holy Roller act into some situations not exactly permitted in the guidebook.

Why a man calls an escort service is one thing.

Why he does so on a university-issued phone subject to public records requests is another. In that framework, Freeze is an inexplicable failure. Hubris? Sloppiness? Self-sabotage? It doesn’t really matter.

The listed cause of firing is the escort service: “a failure of character standards for a head coach.” It’s not the NCAA. Of course, Ole Miss is invested in emphasizing the former, as the latter still looms.

Maybe Freeze could’ve maneuvered past the escort service call(s). Hell, probably! This is college football! If it occurred in a vacuum, I think he survives. (“Common” doesn’t begin to quantify the infidelity rumors I hear among coaches.)

But not alongside an NCAA investigation.

And not transposed against his public persona of the archetypical Evangelical Christian, which drove his critics in the industry and the media absolutely mad. His ceaseless proselytizing in defense of his character was at times such a gratuitous, repetitive tic that it invited other Christians, myself included, to sin by doubting its validity. Such is the failing of faith as a commodity.

Oh, and Freeze just missed being suspended for his first two games at Liberty due to that NCAA thing. That penalty expired in 2018.

It remains to be seen how Freeze can recruit at Liberty with multiple, interweaving scandals in his background. Lots of coaches have a scandal or even two, but how many have scandals that directly contrast with the entire public image those coaches presented of themselves?

Then again, it’s Liberty, where the school president once said the ex-Baylor AD “fits perfectly.” I don’t think the image that the rest of us see from the outside matters at all, compared to the image the school chooses to see of itself.