The Ole Miss football program once again finds itself at the center of a scandal.
The Rebels’ official football Twitter account announced Thursday night that Hugh Freeze has resigned as head coach, making Matt Luke the interim coach. But that’s just the beginning of the shocking turn of events.
Shortly before the move was announced, Yahoo! Sports’ Pat Forde tweeted that there was “explosive new information” about Freeze. That news, as first reported by USA TODAY Sports’ Dan Wolken, was that a call “to a number associated with a female escort service” was made on Freeze’s Ole Miss cell phone.
The phone call came to light as a result of former coach Houston Nutt’s lawsuit against the school.
Via Wolken:
On July 13 — one day after Nutt filed a federal lawsuit against Ole Miss alleging that the school violated the terms of its severance agreement — Nutt’s attorney, Thomas Mars, sent an e-mail to Lee Tyner, the school’s general counsel, referencing a “phone call Coach Freeze made that would be highly embarrassing for all of you and extremely difficult to explain.”
The call, which was made on the evening of Jan. 19, 2016, to a Detroit (313) area code, lasts just one minute, according to e-mails exchanged between the two parties. But the phone number is associated with several Web sites advertising a female escort based in Tampa, Fla., USA TODAY Sports has independently confirmed. The phone number has been disconnected.
Freeze went on the record about the phone call to Yahoo! Sports.
“I’ve got no idea, to be honest,” Freeze said, via Forde. “It was an 813 area code and that was a 313 number, I think that might have been a misdial. I don’t think there was even a conversation. There’s nothing to it.”
The Rebels, in addition to the Nutt lawsuit, are being investigated by the NCAA for 21 allegations, according to USA TODAY Sports.
Thumbnail photo via Nelson Chenault/USA TODAY Sports Images
