We couldn’t even get to the first game of Liberty’s 2020 football season without Hugh Freeze being mentioned as a possible head coach replacement at another school.
Last year, he was mentioned for openings at several stops including Florida State, Ole Miss, Mississippi State, and Arkansas, and on Labor Day another job opened up with some intriguing ties to Freeze when Southern Miss head coach Jay Hopson resigned.
The 2020 season was Hopson’s 5th at USM, and after the team’s 32-21 season opening loss to South Alabama, the noise surrounding Hopson’s job status began heating up. Co-offensive coordinator Scotty Walden was immediately tapped as the interim head coach.
Immediately after Hopson’s resignation, one of the first names mentioned nationally for the opening was Liberty’s Hugh Freeze and understandably so. First, Freeze is a Southern Miss alum. He grew up in Mississippi and was head coach at Ole Miss for 5 seasons.
Hopson’s reported base salary was $500,000 annually, the smallest in Conference USA, and considerably lower than Freeze’s reported $2M base salary following his contract extension following the 2019 season.
If Freeze were to leave Liberty anytime soon, it would be for a Power Five head coaching job, not one of the lowest paying jobs in the Conference-USA despite the obvious ties.
Still, it makes the Oct. 24 game at Williams Stadium between the Flames and Southern Miss all the more interesting.
