(TSX / STATS) OXFORD, Miss. — University of Mississippi head football coach Hugh Freeze resigned Thursday night, effective immediately, after school officials questioned him about his personal conduct.
According to multiple media reports, the university found records of phone calls from Freeze to an escort service on his school-issued cell phone.
Rebels assistant coach Matt Luke was announced as the interim head coach.
“While Coach Freeze served our university well in many regards during his tenure, we simply cannot accept the conduct in his personal life that we have discovered,” Ole Miss chancellor Jeffrey Vitter said at a press conference.
ESPN reported that Freeze met with Vitter and athletic director Ross Bjork both Wednesday and Thursday, and he resigned at the second meeting.
According to Bjork, had Freeze not resigned, the university would have “exercised the termination clause in the contract for moral turpitude.”
USA Today previously reported a call to an escort service from Freeze, which was found during discovery related to former Ole Miss coach Houston Nutt’s civil lawsuit against the university and Freeze. The suit was filed in federal court last week.
Bjork told ESPN, “Once we looked at the rest of the phone records, we found a pattern. It was troubling.”
In January 2016, the university received a notice of allegations involving football, women’s basketball and track and field from an investigation that began in 2012. Thirteen of the allegations were connected to football.
Mississippi then implemented a self-imposed one-year bowl ban for the 2017 season after being notified of eight new alleged NCAA rules violations in addition to the 13 pre-existing allegations.
Among the NCAA charges was a lack of institutional control and a charge against Freeze for failing to monitor his staff.
Nutt maintains that Freeze and Bjork violated the university’s 2011 severance agreement.
Nutt’s lawsuit alleges that Freeze and Bjork promoted a false storyline that suggested that most of the ongoing case of NCAA infractions involved violations that occurred under Nutt.
Freeze, 47, had a 39-25 record in five seasons at Mississippi, including a 5-7 record in 2016. He was making more than $5 million a year, and he was under contract through 2019. He will not get any of the remaining money owed him.
Luke most recently was the Rebels’ offensive line coach and co-offensive coordinator. He was a team captain while playing center for Mississippi in the late 1990s. Luke, 40, also served as an assistant coach at Murray State, Tennessee and Duke. He was on the staff at Ole Miss from 2002-05, and he returned in 2012.
