Liberty coach Hugh Freeze, who recently agreed to a new deal with Flames until 2026, said he is “in complete peace” with his current situation and is not interested in job openings like South Carolina.
“I’m not even going to entertain things like that right now,” Freeze, from ESPN College GameDay, Gene Wojciechowski, said in an interview that aired on Saturday. “I am completely at peace in staying here, as long as they accept me.”
South Carolina became the first Power 5 school to change coach this season, dismissing Will Muschamp last Sunday. Meanwhile, Freeze took Liberty to a record 8-0 and a 21st place in the national ranking in the second full season of the program at the FBS level, after being a provisional program in 2018.
Flames has two wins over ACC opponents after defeating Virginia Tech and Syracuse on the road. They face a third ACC opponent on Saturday against NC State.
“There’s always that itch. As a man, I want to prove it, I want to go and I want to do it in the biggest arena I can,” Freeze told Wojciechowski when asked if he has a desire to return to a Power 5 Program. “So, yes, I was made like that. “
Although Liberty did not announce financial details for the new Freeze extension, sources told ESPN that this would place him among the five highest-paid non-Power 5 coaches in college football – which would mean his average salary would be more than $ 3 million a year.
Freeze, 51, was out of training for two years after resigning from Ole Miss before the 2017 season, when school officials discovered what they called a pattern of inappropriate calls to an escort service on the cell phone provided by the university of Freeze. Freeze won nine games in 2014 and 10 games in 2015 at Ole Miss and won Alabama in both seasons. The rebels won the Sugar Bowl to end the 2015 season, but Ole Miss was hit by severe NCAA sanctions, including a two-year ban that came under Freeze’s supervision. Freeze was cited by the NCAA for not monitoring his team.
“That was rock bottom,” Freeze told Wojciechowski. “That was as low as possible professionally. Losing what your name stands for and knowing that you caused it is not easy.”
Chris Low of ESPN contributed to this report.