And the people who uncovered it, including a Little Rock attorney.
<LINK_TEXT text=“http://www.espn.com/college-football/st … ogs-writer”>http://www.espn.com/college-football/story/_/id/20145148/ole-miss-rebels-hugh-freeze-ouster-result-odd-pairing-houston-nutt-attorney-mississippi-state-bulldogs-writer</LINK_TEXT>
I can’t get the article to open. Maybe it requires a subscription. Can you give a Cliff Notes synopsis, Swine?
It worked just fine for me. Try it again. Note: I have no ESPN subscriptions.
It was on ESPN’s home page earlier today.
Cliffs Notes: Nutt’s attorney (who is from LR) and a Moo U fan who has been a longtime thorn in the Rebnecks’ side are collaborating. The Moo U guy is the one who figured out that one call was to an escort service, and notified Nutt’s attorney. Schlabach goes into a lot of background on the OM/MSU rivalry, how it differs from Bama-Auburn or other similar rivalries, and about the history of this particular MSU fan. Then after Nutt’s attorney contacted the OM folks, the OM people went over 39,000 of Bucky’s phone calls dating back to when he was hired and found the pattern of “troubling” behavior.
This was the most interesting segment of the article, IMO:
"“It’s very Mississippi,” Bruse Loyd, a Houston-based attorney, told ESPN last month. “It’s very William Faulkner.”
Loyd, who represents former Ole Miss staffer Barney Farrar, and who said he played junior college football with Mississippi State president Mark Keenum, all but predicted Freeze’s ouster a month ago. “There’s just so much drama and it involves a lot of tragedy,” Loyd said. “It’s going to get worse and there’s going to be a lot more that’s coming.”
–This is why I keep saying that anyone who is accepting OM’s and Freeze’s denials (regarding a link:connection between the calls and recruiting or the NCAA investigation) at face value are taking a big, premature leap of faith regarding lots of people who have earned a healthy dose of skepticism.
But, but, but, Ole Miss wouldn’t lie about the situation would they?
I just don’t see how they benefit from lying at this point. NCAA has plenty of ammunition against them anyway with 21 violations. If they caught Bucky downright cheatin’ and boot his butt out the door, it should get them some brownie points with the COI that they finally cut ties with him. They cut ties, all right, but it’s not due to violations of NCAA rules, it’s violations of the thou-shalt-not-lie-with-shady-ladies rulebook. Indeed it seems their defense is still mostly Nutt did it, Freeze didn’t know.
Wow
A related note, from an Andy Staples piece today:
Ole Miss already facing lack of institutional control charges. The fact that their HC was dialing up hookers on his university phone for five years without anyone in Oxford figuring it out does not speak well for their institutional control of their head coach.
Also from Andy:
You can expect Freeze to show up anyway at the COI hearing, whenever it takes place. Failure to do so pretty much makes certain he gets a show cause order, which takes him out of coaching for 3 to 5 years, possibly permanently (Jim Tressel is now a university president, for instance). But he won’t be at the OM table. Could be fun watching Freeze and the OM people lob accusations back and forth at each other. But even if the NCAA goes relatively light on Freeze, he’ll have some work to do to convince future employers that recruits and parents are going to listen to someone who was thumping his Bible with one hand and dialing hookers with the other.
OM has Shea Patterson, a new OC and some offensive weapons. And not much back on D. We could be looking at some Big 12 type scores in Vaught-Hemingway this year.
They are trapped by their lies of the last 2 years when they thought they had everyone fooled. Do you admit you’ve been lying now after all this time or do you dig in and hope for miracles? Bjork is as dirty as anyone in this mess and he has a history of looking the other way in their other NCAA issues.
Schadenfreude carried to infinity.
I agree with you a 100% on that. Nothing coming from OM or Freeze should be taken at face value. My skepticism about hookers/recruiting is based entirely on the fact that no word of such a thing leaked long before now. It’s possible there have been whispers & I’m just not aware of them, but I think it’d be too hard to keep that secret. Too many recruits would talk. At least I believe they would. I will not be shocked to be proved wrong, but right now I still think these were personal perks Freeze kept to himself. (Besides, I am sure it’d go against his Christian faith to pimp. :lol: )
I only know what I have read like most others on this site, but I also believe the calls were of a “Personal” nature and not recruiting. It is obvious that Ole Miss was pretty sophisticated in what they were doing recruiting wise and really only got caught with the major violations because someone hacked into Tunsil’s phone and released texts and pictures. I say this to say Bucky would not have been making the calls himself for recruits to set up escorts. But he did not think anything about doing it for himself. Why these coaches still use University issued phones for this type of thing is beyond me…
Here’s what I want to know: Who is paying the hush money to the escorts? CHF or someone in the program? And what media outlet is willing to pay more to get the story?
That would blow the lid off of this. I am kinda hoping it happens. It would be great entertainment leading up to the football season. 
Well, let’s not totally discount the possibility the hookers will keep quiet. I’m sure most of them are more honorable than Bucky.
Easily. They’re paid for two things: Getting physical, and keeping their mouths shut (I think their buzzword is “discreet”). The Louisville situation notwithstanding (although Pitino is a lot better known nationally than Freeze will ever be).
Really, unless Bucky has some really weird fetish, what would one of the hookers say that we don’t already know? He likes paying to play, marriage vows and Bible thumping or not.
How many hookers kept quiet when they had the opportunity to make more money by selling their story? Look at Charlie Sheen, Tiger Woods, and those are just the two easiest that rolled off my head.
Charlie had prostitutes, porn stars, you name it. Tiger rented a few ladies for the evening but mostly was busy with girls he picked up on tour. Which isn’t difficult to do. I recall attending a pro-am at Southern Hills in Tulsa in the mid-'80s. A pro-am is a lot more low-key than a regular Tour event and you can get closer to the golfers. I’m not going to identify the pro I was following that afternoon (he has Arkansas connections), but among the few others following him was a very attractive young woman wearing a dress that covered virtually nothing. I’m pretty sure her intention was to be a notch on his bedpost, no payment required. And given his reputation, I don’t suspect he turned down the opportunity.