re: The silence is telling re: Ole Miss

Not really. In this day and age, clamming up and letting the lawyers and PR flacks do their job is SOP for any smart organization in a bad situation. At best, you should just say that you're working on examining the issue and doing your due diligence. The temptation to deny, deny, deny is strong, but wrong. If there's even a minor correlation between reality and the accusations, you come off as looking like you're covering things up. So stay quiet, get the right people together, then make a considered, carefully-worded statement to the effect that you intend to get to the bottom of this. It'll be the university proper, not the athletic department, that will be dealing with the public. In that case, it's probably even sincere -- I seriously doubt any coaches actually told the PTB and the lawyers in administration of any wrongdoings. So the administration and its legal team can very honestly project an image of not knowing anything and needing time to investigate. Obviously they had to suspect, but suspicion isn't knowledge.