Unprecedented is a word that can be associated with the Ole Miss football program both on and off of the field.
Since Hugh Freeze took the reins in December 2011, it has been on an upward trajectory.
He reeled in a 2013 recruiting class headlined by Laremy Tunsil, Robert Nkemdiche and Laquon Treadwell. It was the highest-rated group in school history until it was topped by the 2016 class. It marked the beginning of a run of unprecedented recruiting success that has included two top-ten classes in the last three seasons and four consecutive top-15 classes. It had never had back-to-back classes rated that high previously. That soon translated to the field.
The Rebels sent shock waves across college football in 2014 when Bo Wallace led Ole Miss to a 23-17 victory over Alabama. A year later, they had the same fate in Bryant-Denny Stadium, the first time Ole Miss won two consecutive games over the Crimson Tide. The Rebels won 19 games over the past two seasons. Ole Miss produced three first-round picks in the 2016 NFL draft, the most in school history.
Ole Miss is also fighting an unprecedented battle off of the field with the NCAA. Seriously, there is no precedent here. The NCAA revamped its penalty structure in 2013 into a four-tier system designed to hold coaches more accountable, and the Rebels are the first on the chopping block.
The NCAA arrived in Oxford in 2012, and they’re still here.
The case has been the talk of college football over the last six months. It’s been every bit as compelling as it has been trying on a program that seemingly came out of nowhere in the college football landscape.
From loaner cars to the draft night fiasco when Tunsil admitted he took money from a coach during his college days, this case has had its fair share of twists and turns, and it took another one on Thursday.
Yahoo Sports reported that the NCAA expanded its investigation into the Rebels beyond Tunsil’s admission of accepting money from a coach and has now interviewed players at Mississippi State and Auburn who were recruited by Ole Miss. According to Yahoo’s sources, the players were granted immunity for their cooperation in the investigation.
This suggests two things. First, the NCAA did not find anything nearly as severe as it had thought it would with regards to Laremy Tunsil. And secondly, that it is out for blood.
The NCAA has made it clear that it’s going to turn over every stone until it finds something significant to punish Ole Miss and it isn’t going to stop until it does.
Why? It could be a number of things. Maybe the NCAA is feeling pressure to hammer the Rebels after attempting to do so with Penn State and North Carolina and failing in the end.
Maybe it doesn’t appreciate the ‘dig your feet in’ stance that Freeze and Ross Bjork have taken in terms of potential wrongdoing.
Maybe it’s because there is more, potentially much more to this case than is being led on. No one really knows. There is still much left to be determined.
We do know a couple of things, however. This thing isn’t getting resolved anytime soon and Ole Miss will be playing a role it is unfamiliar with as it attempts to continue its unprecedented run of success.
