Jerry Westlund’s strip club empire spans both coasts, including much of the Southeast. But of the 25 he owns and operates, his college football loyalty is on display inside The Pony near Starkville, Miss., where he boasts of owning “the world’s largest tuned cowbell.”

No doubt that cowbell will be rung, Westlund told USA TODAY Sports, on Saturday night when his club hosts a “Hugh Freeze Tribute Party.”

You might have seen the photo floating around the Internet this week of the club’s marquee advertising that event. But making a joke at the expense of the former Ole Miss coach is not simply good advertising for Westlund, who admittedly is a Mississippi State fan and whose club is just a few miles east of campus.

He’s doing it, he said, to get even.

“Hugh Freeze was a piece of work to me because he banned his players from coming to my clubs,” Westlund said. “He banned them from going to strip clubs. I’m like, I’m sorry at 18 years old you can serve your country. We can give you a gun and send you to a Godforsaken place like Afghanistan, but Hugh Freeze decided they weren’t mature enough to come to a strip club so as the ultimate hypocrite, it’s only appropriate we’d have the Hugh Freeze tribute party.”

Westlund owns some of the biggest and most popular strip clubs in the Southeast, including in Memphis roughly an hour from the Ole Miss campus. He said Ole Miss players would frequently come to the door but would express concerns about coming in because it was against team rules.

“As a legal business in this country, these young men had no reason to be banned from that," he said.

Westlund now views that as hypocritical given that Freeze was forced to resign on July 20 for a pattern of inappropriate behavior after the school investigated a one-minute phone call to an escort service. For many, the revelation was a shock given how publicly Freeze flaunted his Christian faith.

“He was willing to go out there and attack people who come to my club,” Westlund said. “If you want to call an escort service, knock yourself out. You could have come to my club and gotten a lap dance and made a friend just as quick.”

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HUGH FREEZE:Conflicting views on the former Ole Miss coach

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Westlund, to be clear, said he harbors no ill will against Ole Miss fans. Many of them are customers.

Still, a Freeze-themed tribute party is the ultimate SEC football troll job. So how will it work?

Westlund said if the doormen determine that someone looks like Freeze, the cover charge will be waived. There will also be free admission plus a drink for anyone who “turns in your Ole Miss official SEC coaching visor,” a nod to the sideline headgear Freeze preferred.

“We’ll be ringing the bell in tribute to Hugh and wish him nothing but the best as he seeks to further his coaching career at some community college in the Pacific Northwest,” Westlund said.

Westlund, of course, noted he's not just a Mississippi State fan. He also owns a club in Huntsville, Ala., where he has an 18-foot tall fiberglass elephant out front. Given that Freeze beat Alabama twice, a tribute night might work well there, too.

“We’re still trying to get a location in Tuscaloosa, but they’re pretty aggressive about it,” Westlund said. “They’re not quite as open minded as Huntsville.”