Hugh Freese, who enjoyed success with Liberty the past four seasons, was signed Monday by the Tigers after a successful five-year stint with Mississippi State. He was fired for his second season in October. He will replace Brian Hershin. ..
Hugh was the best fit for the athletic director position because of his experience in football, recruiting, and SEC experience.
Freese triumphed 34-15 at Liberty in a game in which he competed at his subdivision’s highest level in 2018. In each of his three seasons, he led the Flames to a 10-1 record, a top-20 finish and their first bowl win. Under Halshin, the Tigers lost four straight games, while Freese lost just one game in his final 12 seasons as head coach. The Tigers also lost their final two seasons overall.
Alabama’s coach, Nick Saban, has a 103-47 record in his career, including his 2011 season with Arkansas and his 2008-09 NAIA-level Rumbus campaign.
This record matches Freese’s performance on the field, but in NCAA terms, he was 12-25 at Mississippi instead of 39-25. The Governing Body wiped out 33 Rebel wins from 2010 to 2016 in 2019. This includes the 27 occasions he was scrutinized by Freese for using a player who was deemed ineligible due to academic, recruiting or reinforcement misconduct.
In 2017, Freeze was accused of calling a number connected to an escort service using a card issued by the school. The school’s athletic director stated that the investigation revealed “a pattern of personal wrongdoing inconsistent with the values we expect from the head of our football team.” In response to this news, Houston Nutt filed a lawsuit against Mississippi. This lawsuit is in response to an NCAA inquiry, which in turn generated news in 2017. It is alleged that Freeze had called a number connected to an escort service using a card issued by the school.
On October 15, USA Today published an article alleging that former Memphis Christian School students had made false accusations against coach Freeze. The article stated that three former students had made allegations of inappropriate behavior by Freeze while he was a coach and administrator at the school in the 1990s. The statement from USA Today was absolutely false.
Freeze, the university’s president, was accused this summer of sending an unsolicited direct message to Chelsea Andrews, a former Liberty class president who was named in a lawsuit filed by women alleging the university inappropriately handled cases of sexual assault and harassment. Andrews is one of several women who have come forward with allegations against the school. ..
Andrews criticized Liberty for selecting Freeze and McCaw, who resigned as athletic director at Baylor in 2016 as a result of a sexual assault scandal that also led to the firing of head football coach Art Briles and school president Kenneth Starr. In a message Andrews posted online in July that appeared to be from Freeze, the coach claimed to not “even know” McCaw before praising AD as a “Jesus-like leader.”
