Hugh Freeze is no longer the head coach at Ole Miss, resigning effective immediately on Thursday night. The official Ole Miss twitter account confirmed the news shortly after Yahoo’s Pat Forde tweeted that explosive new information had put his job in immediate jeopardy. Freeze’s run at Ole Miss was an interesting one with many recruiting highlights, but the long, dark shadow of NCAA violations as well. Here are a few observations/thoughts.

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* Ole Miss suffered through a miserable recruiting class in 2017, finishing No. 39 nationally after being ranked No. 7, 21, 19 and 7 the previous four cycles. The seemingly endless NCAA investigation crippled the class as five-star and four-star prospects were no longer looking Ole Miss’s way.

Now that Freeze is gone and Matt Luke is the interim coach, things will get no better any time soon. Freeze could at least sell two wins over Alabama, a solid 39-25 record and multiple first-round draft picks despite the ominous NCAA cloud. Now Ole Miss has just the cloud, and it is getting more and more threatening.

When the NCAA hammer drops, things will get even uglier, as scholarships are likely to be lost and a bowl ban could also be part of the penalties. As things stand now, finishing No. 39 in the recruiting rankings in 2018 will be a reason to celebrate in Oxford.

* Luke is facing a monumental challenge on and off the field, but he is an excellent coach and recruiter and should have a chance to earn this job. He’s from Mississippi, played at Ole Miss, knows the area well and has recruited at a high level with the Rebels and at Tennessee. He was also an excellent talent evaluator during his stint at Duke. His offenses at Ole Miss over the last few seasons have been fun to watch and, by all accounts and from what I know, he is a high character individual. A long-term coaching search is likely, but don’t count out Luke.

* Freeze was hired as Ole Miss head coach in December of 2011, but his first gig with the Rebels was back in 2005 when he was hired as assistant athletic director for football external affairs, an off field position not nearly as common and popular as it is today. Freeze was the head high school coach of Michael Oher who signed with Ole Miss, coincidentally, in 2005 as well. There were some rumblings that Freeze was hired by then coach Ed Orgeron as a bit of a package deal with Oher. That practice is still common today. Whether true or not, Freeze’s entry into college football was marred a bit by his connection to Oher.

* Ole Miss recruiting improved under Freeze, but it was the 2013 recruiting class that really got the attention of the football world. Ole Miss finished No. 7 in the country that cycle and signed five-stars Laquon Treadwell, Laremy Tunsil and Robert Nkemdiche, who was the No. 1 player in the country for 2013. Nkemdiche, who originally committed to Clemson, was not a surprise as he joined his brother Denzel at Ole Miss but many were stunned by Treadwell’s decision as well as that of Tunsil.

Tunsil was rumored to be a Georgia lock or even silent commitment until he shocked the world and chose Ole Miss and many expected Treadwell to commit to Michigan early in his process. Antonio Conner was a huge in-state grab as well that season as we was coveted and recruited specifically by Nick Saban, who lands most defensive backs he wants. Everything went perfectly for Ole Miss that recruiting year and it paid dividends in 2014, 2015 and 2016.

Ole Miss didn’t sign any five-stars in 2014, but still landed a Top 20 class and followed that with the No. 21 class in 2015. In 2016, as the NCAA began to investigate, Ole Miss signed five-star quarterback Shea Patterson and five-star offensive tackle Gregory Little and were back in the national top 10 again at No. 7.

Perhaps the most famous moment of Freeze’s recruiting tenure was when he tweeted the following on Feb. 1, 2013:

“If you have facts about a violation, email compliance@olemiss.edu. If not, please don't slander the young men.”

In response to numerous allegations from fans and boosters of other programs regarding his 2013 class being so highly ranked. The tweet has since been deleted.

Freeze and athletic director Ross Bjork, who may be next on the chopping block at Ole Miss for overseeing this multi-pronged mess, tried to pin many of the 13 NCAA breaches on Houston Nutt. Nutt has recently sued over this issue. The NCAA never stopped looking at Ole Miss and heightened their investigation when Tunsil said on NFL Draft night that Ole Miss had paid him.

* The column I wrote in June of last year regarding Freeze and Ole Miss was vilified by the Ole Miss fan base probably more than anything I’ve ever written at Rivals. But the writing was on the wall by then, the NCAA was coming and it was going to hammer the Rebels.

* On the field, Freeze was an excellent coach, leading Ole Miss to a 39-25 record with 19 wins in the SEC including two against Alabama. Freeze put Tunsil, Treadwell and Nkemdiche into the first round of the NFL Draft and was known as an excellent developer of talent and had a great eye for overlooked prospects. His tenure at Ole Miss certainly made the SEC West a much more interesting division to cover from both a football and football recruiting standpoint and time will tell what price will be paid for that.

* In all of my years covering recruiting, I have never been asked more about whether a coach was cheating than I was about Freeze. My answer was always the same – I have no idea. Were there some eyebrow-raising commitments and moments during the process? Obviously. Did I ever fall into or uncover information about Freeze that proved to me he was cheating? Never, not once.

The reign of Hugh Freeze in Oxford is over and it’s been a very, very interesting ride from his days as a high school coach to Thursday evening.