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By now you’ve certainly heard that Ole Miss coach Hugh Freeze was undone by the reveal of one phone call. It was a one-minute dial to a phone number tied to an escort service in Florida. The original line of thinking was that the call was found by Houston Nutt’s camp and relayed to Ole Miss.
But an ESPN report has added another layer to this. Apparently a rival fan named Steve Robertson was doing book research and actually started this ball rolling:
But when Robertson saw a phone number with a 313 area code, he was stunned by what he discovered in a Google search. A call made on Jan. 19, 2016, lasting one minute, was made to a number connected with several advertisements for female escorts. Robertson then asked his wife to read him the telephone number again to make sure it was correct. The escort service ads came up again.
He then called Nutt’s attorney, Thomas Mars (who he had a working relationship with), and Mars took it from there.
The best part of this is easily that Robertson has been a Mississippi State fan for nearly 40 years and literally has the logo tattooed on his hand. Robertson says he did not specifically go searching for something to bring down Freeze with, but it just turned out that way.
We’ve seen rival espionage in college football before, but this is particularly good because of the accidental upheaval of a program already in turmoil.
Freeze claimed is was a butt dial, but Ole Miss found what it termed as a “pattern,” that was apparently so cut and dry the school would have fired him with cause had he not resigned.
Just another turn in the saga that’s taken us everywhere from a gas mask bong in an apartment to a lawsuit filed right before the now former Ole Miss head coach went before over 1,000 credentialed media members.