Hugh Freeze making Liberty head coaching debut from hospital bed
There’s never a dull moment in the world of college football, but the award for weirdest story on the first Saturday of the 2019 season will probably go to new Liberty coach Hugh Freeze.
Freeze is making his first coaching appearance since resigning in shame at Ole Miss from a hospital bed.
That’s right. Freeze had his staph infection removed, but he’s only two weeks into his 4-6 week recovery, so he wheeled a hospital bed into the coaching booth Saturday night in order to coach against Syracuse.
Liberty head coach Hugh Freeze will work from a hospital bed in the coach's booth tonight, per LU Athletics.
Freeze's staph infection is gone, but he's only two weeks into a 4-6 week recovery from surgery. He's most comfortable when reclined and plans to fly to ULL next week.
— Stephen Bailey (@Stephen_Bailey1) August 31, 2019
Talk about a memorable debut.
In the program’s first season as an FBS program last year, Liberty posted a 6-6 record and then hired Freeze this past offseason. In six seasons at Arkansas State and Ole Miss, Freeze recorded a 49-28 mark, but a lot of his wins at Ole Miss were vacated because of recruiting and academic violations.
Freeze was forced to resign from the Rebels in July 2017 after it became known that there was a pattern of calls to female escorts from Freeze’s cell phone. Add coaching from a hospital bed from the press box to Freeze’s long list of weird career stories.
In Freeze’s first season, Liberty will be trying to win more than six games for the first time since 2014.