Ruby DraayerThe Rebels walked away with a predicted win on Saturday, but what happened afterwards shocked social media everywhere.
As soon as the final whistle blew the Ole Miss team was ready. The Ole Miss football Twitter account has been known to troll other fan bases after a big win, but I don’t think people thought they would post something directly trolling Hugh Freeze.
During Hugh Freeze’s tenure as head coach, he made a very questionable tweet while the NCAA was actively investigating Ole Miss for recruiting violations. While this was going on, Freeze took to his Twitter and said “If you have facts about a violation, send it to compliance@olemiss.edu. If not, please do not slander these young men or insult their family.”
This became a major issue at the time, and now has become a running joke over the years. The Ole Miss social media team used this to their advantage and had a taunting and clever tweet ready to go when the clock hit zero.
“If you have complaints about this result, send it to lufootball@liberty.edu. If not, please do not slander these young men or insult their family.”
Even after that, they weren’t done yet. The next post was a picture from 2019, when Hugh Freeze had suffered a herniated disk leading to a staph infection that required emergency surgery right before the Liberty Flames were taking on Syracuse. Instead of allowing one of his assistants to take over for the game, Freeze showed up to the game in a hospital bed.
After the 27-14 win over Liberty, the Ole Miss social team had a photoshopped image ready to go with the score and a friendly “Won the Day” caption.
These two tweets understandably brought a lot of attention to the page and while there was a lot of positive interaction, there was a lot of negative. The tweets were later deleted after being up for about two hours, and athletic director Keith Carter and head coach Lane Kiffin each issued public apologies.
“These tweets were unfortunate and not who we are in Ole Miss athletics,” Keith Carter told ESPN. “When I found out about them, they were immediately taken down. I have spoken with (Liberty athletic director) Ian McCaw to relay my sincere apology. We will work to do better in the future.”
Kiffin told ESPN that he has no affiliation with the Ole Miss football Twitter site, and he only learned about the tweets after his press conference when Carter told him about them.
“I’m completely embarrassed that anyone would put something out there like that making it look like it was a part of Ole Miss football,” Kiffin told ESPN. “It was extremely disrespectful, bush league and classless, and I apologize, even though I had nothing to do with it, to Liberty and Hugh Freeze.”
