LITTLE ROCK — Hugh Freeze curses without swearing. Peeved, the Arkansas State football coach bends his drawl around each syllable, handing down a God-fearing man’s scolding to the Red Wolves’ offense.
“When are you going take responsibility for yourselves?” Freeze says, snapping at the Red Wolves during a recent spring scrimmage.
Freeze, 41, is irked: 3 interceptions, 5 shotgun snaps fired over the heads of quarterbacks, and 5 sacks of quarterback Ryan Aplin by unblocked linebackers.
“It’s been an embarrassing day,” Freeze said. “I mean, it’s really bad right now. Really, really bad, guys.”
Linemen pant. Receivers lift bottles to spray streams of water down their necks. Aplin pats sophomore backup Phillip Butterfield on the top of the helmet.
“You can change the way this goes,” Freeze says. “But it’s going to take a focus you haven’t shown. It is up to you.”
Freeze should know. His rise to Division I coach - an ascent predicted by peers 15 years ago when he took over at Briarcrest Christian School on the suburban fringe of Memphis - has been an unorthodox one.
If his name is familiar, it’s because he has a tendency to show up in other people’s narratives, namely that of Baltimore Ravens left tackle Michael Oher. Freeze coached Oher at Briarcrest, a rise chronicled in the bestselling book and $258-million grossing film The Blind Side.
But his true character is
the inverse of a seemingly
dimwitted and hapless headman harangued by Sandra Bullock as Leigh Anne Tuohy, Oher’s adoptive mother. But that is who you probably think you know, not Freeze as he exists.
WILL TO INSTILL
Freeze was 25 when he took over as head coach at Briarcrest Christian School in August 1995, clinging to the dog-eared playbook for a Wing-T system inherited from his predecessor.
After three seasons, Freeze shed his two-back persona. The premise was basic: Going uptempo was an equalizer. More plays. More mismatches. More formations.
“I think I have ADD,” Freeze said. “Anytime I’ve had control, that’s what we’ve been. ... I want to have options, and tempo gives me that.”
In his fourth year, the Saints reached the first of five consecutive state title games. The Saints lost that first one, then three more after that - two of them in heartbreaking fashion.
Freeze’s reprieve came on a misty November night in 2002 back at Vanderbilt Stadium.
In a fifth consecutive Clinic Bowl, Briarcrest trailed Battle Ground Academy 13-10 in a second overtime. After Briarcrest was stuffed on three plays at the 2, assistant Matt Saunders expected Freeze to call on kicker Justin Sparks - a future All-American at Ole Miss.
“You want me to send him out?” Saunders asked.
“Let’s go win it,” Freeze said.
A minute later, Saints quarterback Josh Fletcher took the snap and wheeled for a screen pass to running back Robert Towns. The pass wobbled but landed in Towns’ hands for a game-winning score.
“He has that ‘it’ you can’t teach,” Saunders said. “[The] second thing I realized: We’re not going to keep this guy very long.” ALL IN THE FAMILY
Freeze is adamant about demanding perfection without having it evolve into an assault on a player’s personality.
He harps in a deadpan sarcasm but Freeze does not swear. He does not drag his players by the collar, but he never relents in letting a target know he’s needling them on a sore spot.
“He’s never going to dog-cuss you,” said Aplin, the Red Wolves quarterback. “It’s just to let you know he’s back there, that he’s watching everything and won’t ever let you be lackadaisical.”
Freeze closes any would-be emotional chasm early. Always has, likely always will.
“There was no doubt in my mind that he was my coach,” Saunders said. “But there was never a shred of doubt that he was my friend.”
In Freeze’s first season at Briarcrest, there was a team building trip to Sardis, Miss., where players and coaches bonded around campfires. Later, the Saints lugged air mattresses into the school gym and slept on the hardwood floor during preseason camp.
On Saturdays, it was a table lined with coaches and their wives for dinner out followed by a movie. And Sunday afternoons, the staff would assemble at Freeze’s home, watch an early NFL game and break down film.
By 2002, wealthy boosters put the staff up in a condo near a golf course at Pickwick Lake. Another year, the staff hopped aboard a private jet for a golf and coaching retreat at the Grand Mariner resort in Florida.
Now, Freeze arranges his staff’s schedule to have them home by 7 most nights. Any coach is excused for a family function and told, “We’ll finish when we finish. Yougo.”
“Frankly, it’s ridiculous to sit here and watch film just to say you watched more than someone else,” Freeze said. “If there’s a reason to it, we buckle down. If not, I want you home with your family.” X’S AND OHS
Freeze bears his own vices - a predilection for trick plays taken for showing off and a short leash for quarterbacks and assistants taken together as vanity.
“I hope I’ve changed from what I was,” Freeze said. “The truth is, God’s been good to me in coaching, and I’ve tried to be careful in recognizing his goodness to me.”
Saunders has his Hugh Freeze story. The one where he and assistant Bryan Wimberly are coaching a Briarcrest junior varsity game. Freeze, upset with the poor timing of a play call, descends from the stands and takes over the reins - halfway into the first quarter.
“I look up, and he’s coming down from the box,” Saunders said, chuckling. “It’s not an insult, but he can’t sit there and let someone else do his thing.”
Freeze’s penchant toward perfection also runs deep toward quarterbacks.
“It’s a pride thing,” Freeze said.
“That’s the position I’m known for teaching, and if they don’t succeed, it makes me feel like I didn’t get it done in practice.”
And his pride sometimes had the effect of vanity. Freeze had a penchant for trick plays, running one each game to put it on film and force defensive coordinators to prepare. Yet, at times, it gavethe appearance of flaunting his X’s and O’s expertise.
His most fabled came against Evangelical Christian School in the 2004 state title game, when he ran a fumble-rooskie while already leading 10-0 and heading in for a touchdown to make it 17-0 en route to a 24-0 victory and a second state championship.
Yet, his motivation might have been more basic.
“He just got bored sometimes,” Saunders said.
BLINDSIDED
You know the story of Michael Oher. Almost everyone does.
A docile Goliath, standing 6-4 and weighing 340 pounds, filled the doorway of Briarcrest Christian School Coach Hugh Freeze’s office in 2002.
Oher, one of 13 children from a crack-addicted mother in the west part of Memphis, was provisionally admitted to the school, and by his junior season was protecting the Saints quarterback at left tackle.
A wealthy Memphis family, the Tuohys, took him into their home and later adopted him.
But, contrary to the book and film, Freeze didn’t see an All-Pro in the making - just a kid looking to get to a better place than where he was.
“Did I look at Michael and see a future NFL pick? No,” Freeze said. “People don’t like to hear it, or believe it, but I have a heart for kids like that.”
By 2004, though, college football’s elite coaches formed a line outside Freeze’s office and he was receiving plenty of input from other sources as to how to use the quick-footed behemoth.
Contrary to the film and book, Freeze had little trouble accepting that running off tackle would be the best solution.
Suffice it to say, then, Leigh Anne Tuohy didn’t need to tromp on to the field or call from the stands to tell Freeze that a power game was the best solution.
“The movie is misleading about that stuff,” said Carly Powers, a former Briarcrest assistant who is now the school’s athletic director. “I ain’t never seen Leigh Anne walk out on to our football field. She’d tell youthat, too.”
All the attention and advice heaped toward Freeze did not impact his control of the program, which remained absolute. “There were times when a lot people had a voice, but decisions always came back to Hugh,” Saunders said.
Yet, the perception could linger that the task of molding Oher overwhelmed Freeze.
Not that it bothers Freeze these days.
“It would sting if that’s the only thing I’m known for,” Freeze said. “But there was plenty before that.” OLE MISS FOOTBALL
By 2004, Freeze admitted apathy had set in.
Not that he wasn’t happy at Briarcrest, but Freeze had been harboring hopes of jumping to college coaching since 2000, and at 35, he wondered whether he had reached a ceiling for what he could do at the school.
Then, Noel Mazzone was brought in as offensive coordinator by newly hired Ole Miss Coach Ed Orgeron in December 2004.
Freeze and Mazzone were friends.
“I was blowing his phone up,” Freeze said, “trying to see if there was any way he could help me.” Freeze got a face-to-face meeting with Orgeron in Miami, where as a defensive line coach Orgeron was helping Southern Cal prepare to face Oklahoma for a Bowl Championship Series title.
Two months later, Orgeron called with an assistant athletic director for external operations job - a noncoaching position.
“Can I really pull the trigger and go be on support staff?” Freeze said he asked himself. “It was really just paperwork, budgets and travel.”
But it came with the implicit guarantee that he’d fill a coaching vacancy if one opened.
“I just thought it was the right time,” Freeze said.
GETTING READY
What followed paved the way to Freeze’s arrival as a Division I football coach. Three years at Ole Miss, the last as tight ends coach and recruiting coordinator for Orgeron, were followed by two successful but stressful seasons as head coach at NAIA Lambuth, a financially strapped college near Nashville, Tenn. After two months at San Jose State, ASU Coach Steve Roberts hired him as Arkansas State’s offensive coordinator.
“I thought I’d come here, help Steve succeed and move on,” Freeze said. “Sadly, it didn’t work out that way.”
On Nov. 29, 2009, a buzz on Freeze’s Blackberry heralded the chance he’d always sought, just not the way he desired.
Driving on Interstate 40 to Little Rock, heading to a speech at the Little Rock Touchdown Club, Freeze glanced down at his phone to see Roberts beckoning.
On the other end, a somber boss sighed out the news that ASU had let him go that morning.
Roberts’ nine-year tenure came to an end with back-to-back 4-8 seasons, the last of which came with Freeze employed as offensive coordinator as the Red Wolves broke nine school records, including a Sun Belt Conferenceleading 4,841 total yards.
Freeze ducked questions about Roberts’ status during his appearance at the Touchdown Club, then called Athletic Director Dean Lee to ask if he should go on a recruiting trip to Phoenix.
He was told to come back to campus.
“It wasn’t fair for Hugh to be dragged along or to bring in people from all over the country if we planned to stay in-house,” Lee said. “That wasn’t professional.” Lee offered him the job five days later.
Freeze at a glance AGE 41 HOMETOWN Senatobia, Miss.
FAMILY Wife, Jill; three daughters, Ragan, Jordan and Madison COLLEGE Southern Mississippi, 1992, with a bachelor’s degree in mathematics and a minor in coaching OVERALL RECORD 119-28 HIGH SCHOOL RECORD 99-23 COLLEGE RECORD 20-5 COACHING CAREER Assistant coach/offensive coordinator at Briarcrest Christian School 1992-1994; head coach at Briarcrest Christian School 1995-2004; assistant athletic director of external operations at Ole Miss 2005; tight ends coach/recruiting coordinator at Ole Miss 2006; wide receivers coach at Ole Miss 2007; head coach at Lambuth University in Jackson, Tenn., 2008-2009; offensive coordinator at Arkansas State 2010; head coach at Arkansas State 2011 HIGHLIGHTS Won Division 2-AA state titles in 2002 and 2004 in Tennessee at Briarcrest. ... Briarcrest won regional titles in 1995, 1996, 1997, 1998, 2001 and 2002. ... Named Associated Press Coach of the Year in Tennessee four times. ... Helped assemble the 13th-ranked recruiting class at Ole Miss in 2006. ... Coached Ole Miss receivers Mike Wallace and Shay Hodge to top 15 among SEC wideouts in receiving yards during 2007. ... Led Lambuth to first round of NAIA Division I playoffs in 2009. ... Oversaw an offense that set nine school records at Arkansas State in 2010, including passing yards, passing yards per game and touchdown passes.
Sports, Pages 27 on 05/01/2011