It’s been a rough week for Ole Miss’ football program. Last week, their former star quarterback got trolled by Mia Khalifa on Twitter (again), and then on Wednesday they released a 21-minute long video detailing the latest NCAA allegations against the football program in a high-quality news dump. No one is going to sit through a 21-minute long video where people read a Notice of Allegations and explain what happened, and to release it at close to 5 p.m. ET is diabolical.
Luckily for us, plenty of college football reporters sifted through the miserable video to find the gems. The biggest revelation from the new NOA is that Ole Miss was charged with “lack of institutional control.” That’s about the worst allegation you can get from the NCAA, and it often leads to significant penalties. Ole Miss, in an attempt to get ahead of it, has placed a self-imposed postseason ban on the football program for 2017.
Now, for an Ole Miss team that missed a bowl game this past year and isn’t expected to make a massive turnaround this year (if anything, people expected this coming year to be the drop-off season), that doesn’t mean a lot on the field. However, that does mean they forfeit nearly $8 million in postseason revenue from the SEC.
#OleMiss also will forfeit its annual SEC postseason money, which is approximately $7.8 million, as per league rules.
— Bruce Feldman (@BruceFeldmanCFB) February 22, 2017
However, the best revelation from the video was that Ole Miss allegedly paid a recruit between $13,000 and $15,600, with the payments coming from boosters as set up by an assistant coach. Not only did they allegedly pay the kid, but they didn’t even sign him. The recruit signed elsewhere, and Ole Miss’ boosters were out a chunk of change for nothing.
4. In the fourth allegation, it is alleged that between April 2014 and February 2015, Former Staff Member A initiated and facilitated two boosters having impermissible contact with Prospective Student-Athlete B (who enrolled at another institution). It is further alleged that these two boosters provided Prospective Student-Athlete B (who enrolled at another institution) with impermissible cash payments during that timeframe and that Former Staff Member A knew about the cash payments. The value of the alleged inducements according to the NCAA is between $13,000 and $15,600. This is charged as a Level I violation.
The university believes there is sufficient credible and persuasive evidence to conclude that the impermissible contact outlined in the fourth allegation occurred. However, we are still evaluating whether there is sufficient credible and persuasive evidence to support the alleged payments and will make that determination over the course of the next 90 days.
I hope you will join me in laughing at this, because it’s a wonderfully hilarious revelation. It also comes courtesy of the NCAA’s new immunity rule that allows recruits that committed to other schools to assist in investigations against a different school without getting penalized themselves, which was a diabolical rule put in place by the NCAA because it entices players at rival schools to snitch.
Now, this raises the natural question of “what are the kids that are signing with Ole Miss getting paid?” Not all of them receive money, but if you think the only recruit that got paid more than $13,000 by boosters ended up going elsewhere, then I have some prime oceanfront property to sell you in Kansas.
Former Ole Miss basketball player Marshall Henderson had the best response to all of this.
https://twitter.com/NativeFlash22/status/834524040140308480
The drama between the Ole Miss and NCAA figures to drag out into the summer months, but a resolution will likely come prior to the start of the football season. If the NCAA holds up the allegation of “lack of institutional control,” which the school will fight, one would have to think heavier punishment than just a postseason ban is coming and coach Hugh Freeze could find his job in peril.
