Morgantown, West Virginia – Over the past week, the rumors surrounding current Liberty head coach Hugh Freeze becoming the new head coach of the West Virginia Mountaineers have heated up.
Freeze, 53, has reportedly been in contact through his representatives with West Virginia University and expressed his interest in the position should Neal Brown be fired.
While Freeze would certainly make an outstanding replacement for Neal Brown, one Liberty University Insider reached out to me on social media to say not so fast about the Freeze to West Virginia rumors.
The anonymous insider revealed several details about Freeze that could make it unlikely that he ever ends up in Morgantown.
“On a Liberty Podcast, ‘Flames Central’, Freeze said this week that his agent has been contacted and asked for school’s permission to talk to him, but that he has not yet granted any school that permission,” the insider explained. “Jimmy Sexton (Freeze’s agent) makes this move often. There’s no doubt in my mind that Sexton called Shane Lyons and is circulating it, so that when he goes to our athletic director and asks for that $1 million bump for Freeze, it will be the exact $4.2 million that Lyons has been thinking about getting Freeze for at WVU. We’ve heard these very same rumors for 4 years with Freeze every time a job opening becomes available.”
He continued: “I know that he would kill it at West Virginia and probably get 9+ wins every season, but when he leaves Liberty, I believe it will be for the SEC. He’s from the South and that’s where he ultimately wants to be.”
In addition, the insider gave numerous other reasons for why he thinks Freeze will be at Liberty for the immediate future: “He has a work-life balance that he’s not sure he can replicate at a Power 5 school. Liberty is low pressure for him. He loves winning and Liberty is going to be favored in all 12 games on their schedule next year and could be playing in a NY6 bowl game, as crazy as that sounds. He hates NIL fundraising and knows what it takes to be at a Power 5 school now. He doesn’t have to do all of that at a G5 school like Liberty. He’s happy here with the faith-based mission of the school aligning to his mission as a coach, he deals with zero negative publicity about his wrongdoings in the past and I think he’s very happy here.”
