Perhaps it’s a bit unfair to former Ole Miss football coach Hugh Freeze to label him Hypocrite Hugh. We all fall short of perfection in the eyes of our maker, regardless of who we consider that maker to be.
But we also don’t all wear our faith on our sleeve. We don’t turn to it to shape our public image. We don’t arrogantly and callously throw it out there as some force field against criticism for the rather unscrupulous way we’ve appeared to do our very public job the past four or five years.
So when Freeze resigned from Ole Miss on Thursday rather than have the school fire him for, in the words of chancellor Jeffrey Vitter, “a pattern of personal conduct inconsistent with the standard of expectations for the leader of our football team,” ears perked up and cynics smiled.
That was especially true after it was revealed Freeze’s university-issued cellphone had been used to dial a Florida-based female escort service in January 2016.
Talk about being blindsided. While Freeze played a prominent role in the real-life story that inspired “The Blind Side,” the movie about former Briarcrest Christian and Ole Miss football player Michael Oher (having coached Oher at Briarcrest), the coach’s ouster was the ultimate “blind-side” termination, if only because it is not related to serious NCAA charges regarding the Rebels’ football program, university officials said.