Kirk Hebstreit is one of the most recognizable names among the national media in college football today. He’s one of the hosts for ESPN’s flagship program College GameDay and also an analyst for college games on ESPN and ABC. On Wednesday, Hebstreit was a guest on the Fast Lane with Ed Lane to discuss the upcoming 2021 football season. One of the many topics they discussed was the success Hugh Freeze has had at Liberty in such a short period of time.
“He’s an innovative thinker,” Herbstreit told Ed Lane. “He’s a guy that can stand in front of a team and get them to believe. He can recruit. He knows how to get players excited to play in his system. He can get quarterbacks and receivers and running backs that want to be a part of his system. He can get players to buy into, ‘Why not us? Why not us today? Why can’t we go win this game?'”
Freeze’s story is well told. He quickly rose from a very successful high school coach at Briarcrest Christian in Tennessee to competing for an SEC Championship at Ole Miss. In 2014 and 2015, Freeze and the Rebels defeated Nick Saban in consecutive years, becoming only the third head coach to do so joining Les Miles and Steve Spurrier.
“He had Ole Miss thinking every time they were going to play Alabama they were going to win,” Herbstreit continued. “It wasn’t by chance. It wasn’t by luck. He went toe to toe with Nick Saban and lived to tell about it more than once. When you have that kind of success, I think it permeates, not only through your current roster but future rosters.”
Freeze is entering his third season at Liberty, the newest member of the FBS, and he has the Flames reaching unprecedented heights. In Liberty’s first season as a full FBS member and bowl eligible, he helped guide the Flames to 8 wins and the school’s first ever bowl invitation and bowl win, defeating Georgia Southern in the 2019 Cure Bowl. In 2020, Freeze and Liberty took their success to an entirely different level, finishing 10-1 and ranked in the top 25 in both the Associated Press and Coaches final top 25 polls.
“To think he’s doing that at Liberty, I think tells you what he’s capable of doing as a coach,” said Herbstreit. “With all do respect, I think Liberty is a great school, has a lot to offer. They’ve had some decent teams, but probably not to the level that they’re enjoying right now. I think Hugh Freeze deserves a lot of credit for that and the buzz he’s created about this program.”
Liberty is coming off a record campaign in 2020 when the Flames finished 10-1 following the team’s dramatic bowl win over Coastal Carolina in the Cure Bowl. The Flames also picked up the program’s first ever wins over an ACC opponent when Liberty defeated Syracuse and Virginia Tech. Those two wins made Liberty the first non-Power Five team to post a pair of wins over ACC schools in the same season since Houston did so in 2015.
Liberty will open the 2021 season at home on Sept. 4 against Campbell. The Flames will host five more home games throughout the season: Old Dominion (Sept. 18), Middle Tennessee (Oct. 9), UMass (Oct. 30), Louisiana (Nov. 20), and Army (Nov. 27).
“I can’t remember if they are in the preseason rankings, but they’ve got 20 starters back,” Herbstreit said of the 2021 Flames. “You’ve got a quarterback in Malik Willis that is recognized as one of the more high profile quarterbacks in the country. I don’t care if it’s Group of Five, I don’t care what league it is, Power Five, it’s just a fact. This guy has got a chance to get a lot of headlines, a lot of hype, a lot of replays. People are going to want to watch to see what he does and what Hugh Freeze does.”
