Ole Miss

When you're a bad program competing for the same talent as a good one, you need to have a little something extra up your sleeve. What's the real cost of a down payment on a 2010 Dodge Challenger, or a $2,250 cash handout, or a fraudulent ACT score if it improves the team and increases a coaches' earning power 10 times over?

The NCAA should let Ole Miss know.

Ole Miss released a 154-page response to the NCAA's 52-page notice of allegations on Friday, in which the school admitted to a wide variety of violations that range from the outrageous (Ole Miss arranged for the ACT scores of three future football players to be changed to meet NCAA requirements) to the tame (paying for parents' lodging and meals during an official visit) in three sports, but most prominently football, with most of those violations happening under coach Hugh Freeze's watch.

Ole Miss has docked itself 11 football scholarships over the next four years, "disassociated" with a few people, put the athletic program on three years probation, and instituted "reduced evaluation opportunities" in 2016, taking football coaches off the road for 21 days in a move they will surely cheer. (Less work!)

The NCAA can now decide whether it wants to increase those penalties. It should.

When Freeze went from signing the 12th-best recruiting class in his conference to one of the nation's best in the span of a year, speculation of impropriety flew, and Freeze was incredulous.

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

Is a 52-page report, detailing 13 football violations, eight of them of the most serious variety (with more to come) enough evidence?


Ole Miss tried to spin it as pertaining mostly to events that happened before Freeze came to town and turned the Rebels into SEC West contenders. The school was doing everything in its power to avoid confirming the speculation that has lingered around Freeze's program.

Ole Miss can't avoid it anymore.

Ole Miss clearly lacks institutional control —€” it spit in the face of the rules and was unabashed about doing so, daring someone to catch it.

Now it's been caught. Comeuppance should be on its way.