Ole Miss NOA

[peewee]

I agree that there is absolutely no way that Freeze did not know about this. People were all over message boards asking about how Tunsils family was able to afford the lifestyle they had. Of course Ole Miss fans crucified them for it but thanks to the draft night debacle we know why. Also how do you not notice your star left tackle driving loaner cars for extended periods of time. That's just one guy. All of these allegations are just what the NCAA was able to find. Imagine all the stuff they did not find or could not prove. Finebaum(who has actually been supportive of Freeze) said today from what he is hearing is that if Ole Miss goes before the committee of infractions with Freeze as the head coach then they will get a second year of bowl ban and he will be suspended. As far as his religious beliefs I think it is a sham. Tebow never used his religion to promote himself but the other way around. Freeze has used it to promote himself and his program. If he was as great a man as he claims he would not have cheated this much, he would not have publicaly lied about what was in the first letter, and he would not have lied to recruits. Also when Freeze said on signing day that this signing class was a punishment by the NCAA that was a slap in the face to those guys that decided to sign with Ole Miss. Basically he publicaly was saying well these guys are crap but the best we could get because of the NCAA.

You took the words out of my mouth.

[Deltamud77]

Good post. I'm admittedly conflicted about Freeze. He really does say and tweet some good stuff, on the one hand. I want to believe him to be genuine.

On the other hand, he has clearly lied in this process. He's apparent lied to recruits that signed, the press and is.

Interestingly, he has personally been hit with a level one charge for lack of oversight. It's a captain of the ship charge.

If he says he didn't know this was going on or denied it happened, he's necessarily admitting to that charge and will receive a suspension and show cause in all likelihood.

This is why I think he will never coach again in the NCAA once he is separated from Ole Miss. He is done, one way or the other. He may coach this year due to the timeline of things...I can see that potential. He will never coach after that though as a head coach.

[Drakeshead]

If I am Bjork and I think that Freeze has even the slightest chance of being suspended for the 2018/2019 season, I get rid of him now. How are you going to recruit during this year, 2017/2018, if you have to tell your recruits that their head coach will not be present. You have to get rid of Freeze now, start over, and right the ship.

Bjork, and my Rebels, must have a good bit of evidence to prove innocence, and better, or I would think Freeze would have been gone last week.

[deltadukman]

Drakeshead, its not spelled evidence, its spelled arrogance, and that's why, I believe, the NCAA is coming at them full bore. They have been very arrogant about the whole thing.

Everyone is hung up on the player pay, yet they are forgetting the most damming of them all, the ACT center they had going on down in Waynesboro.

[Deltamud77]

If I am Bjork and I think that Freeze has even the slightest chance of being suspended for the 2018/2019 season, I get rid of him now. How are you going to recruit during this year, 2017/2018, if you have to tell your recruits that their head coach will not be present. You have to get rid of Freeze now, start over, and right the ship.

Bjork, and my Rebels, must have a good bit of evidence to prove innocence, and better, or I would think Freeze would have been gone last week.

I think OM is taking a calculated risk. If the NCAA finds him guilty of the lack of oversight charge, they can fire him for cause and avoid a costly buyout of his contract. If he's cleared of the charge, they may be able to salvage him. They know it'll be very hard to hire a new coach when they are on probation.

[420 racin]

I don't really give a $#!+ about any of it...everybody cheats some, just when you get so arrogant and sloppy with covering your tracks, you get caught. But I just read something about a Ole Miss signee being arrested for burglary...damn things just get worse!

[mfalkner]

It's a mess. The players they have seem solid behind Freeze so if UM fires him, they run the risk of an exodus. Not a good place to be for any involved.

[Deltamud77]

It's a mess. The players they have seem solid behind Freeze so if UM fires him, they run the risk of an exodus. Not a good place to be for any involved.

Yep...not to mention a two year bowl ban allows juniors and seniors to transfer with having to sit out. They could lose talent by that alone. I think they receive a two year bowl ban, with one that will have been served.

[peewee]

Drakeshead, its not spelled evidence, its spelled arrogance, and that's why, I believe, the NCAA is coming at them full bore. They have been very arrogant about the whole thing.

Everyone is hung up on the player pay, yet they are forgetting the most damming of them all, the ACT center they had going on down in Waynesboro.

You hit it on the head with the Arrogance. As a state fan do I think our program or boosters are clean as a whistle, HECK NO. But this is what I believe, if the school gets caught punish the folks in charge. If a booster is caught paying etc. ban them from anything MSU related. Don't BLAME other people for actions you inflicted on yourself.

For OM it is time to cut ties with Freeze and get back to the University it is known for. Quit bowing to every freaking PC thing in the world. Bring back Col Reb, and the traditions of the school.

[mfalkner]

Drakeshead, its not spelled evidence, its spelled arrogance, and that's why, I believe, the NCAA is coming at them full bore. They have been very arrogant about the whole thing.

Everyone is hung up on the player pay, yet they are forgetting the most damming of them all, the ACT center they had going on down in Waynesboro.

You hit it on the head with the Arrogance. As a state fan do I think our program or boosters are clean as a whistle, HECK NO. But this is what I believe, if the school gets caught punish the folks in charge. If a booster is caught paying etc. ban them from anything MSU related. Don't BLAME other people for actions you inflicted on yourself.

For OM it is time to cut ties with Freeze and get back to the University it is known for. Quit bowing to every freaking PC thing in the world. Bring back Col Reb, and the traditions of the school.

So, it sounds like you're saying if MSU booster pays a kid, ban the booster, but if UM booster pays a kid, hang the coach. ??

Totally agree with you on the PC garbage.

[stang67]

We fired the coach immediately on the Will Redmond deal. Did so before word had even leaked out. Seemed excessive at the time, but I'm starting to think that's the expectation. Of course, we had the unique flexibility to terminate that asst, due to the simple but overlooked fact that his cheating was him acting alone and not done at the direction of HIS BOSS. Double hint.

[Deltamud77]

OM fans, do you think Freeze knew about the cheating or not?

To the others, why do you think that there was. O mention of the Nkimdeches or Tunsil or Laquan in the NOA? All of the articles reference that class but that class is not implicated.

[billyho]

Yes he absolutely knew. No way in hell he didn't. He's been great but in my opinion Bjork is just as big a problem as he is. The arrogance everybody refers to is not only Hugh its just as much Bjork. JMO again but if Hugh goes so long to Bjork as well as far as I'm concerned. Will be years before football program is ever relevant again... Not even sure either MS team can actually claim relevance anyway. Link to this article can shed light on how things actually work. http://www.sbnation.com/college-footbal ... ark-emmert

[mossyisland]

I don't believe Freeze knew. Head coaches don't know these kind of things. It is all done in the shadows. Do I think Ole Miss cheated? Not yes, but heck yes! For all the haters and please send mail, your school does too. Ole Miss was just very sloppy at it. Let's get to Ole Miss because they are who we are talking about. Lots of rambling, but really good facts.

1. Farrar was the coach named in most of the cheating. Let's get a little inside history on Farrar. Farrar was a hire or a better word would be placement at the request of Bjork by the boosters at Ole Miss. Farrar recruited in place of Werner because Werner was a single father raising a disabled child. Giving the Ole Miss coach nothing to do but recruit and no on the field responsibilities. It really pissed other SEC coaches off from a time management standpoint of their coaches that had to coach and recruit. Saban and Mullen were at the top of that list. Are they bad guys? Heck no! I agree with them. It gave Ole Miss an advantage. Add to the top of that, Farrar was the cheater in between Boosters and players. Double whammy!

2. College Football Recruiting inside info.- There are layers in cheating. There are Assistant coaches. (Notice I didn't say head coaches! It is called Plausible Deniability) 2. You have boosters. 3. You have distributors. 4. You have runners. In this, nobody knows who the higher levels in the layers are. Why dis Ole Miss get caught? They were stupid about how they did it. Where was Ole Miss stupid? They left out steps three and four in the cheating layers in recruiting Leo Lewis. (This is how it works at every school.) Guess what? For fans of other schools, There are players on your roster being paid by you that got paid by other schools in the recruitment process. All the schools know(we'll get to that in a minute), so don't freak out. Speaking of Leo Lewis, since most are Higher than mighty State fans in this thread, he took money from you, us, and LSU. Simmons took money from you and Alabama. Chris Jones took cash from you and us. I could go on and on and on.

3. "Ole Miss jumped to fast in "13." No, if you want to pick a class, it was '15 where they cheated and got sloppy. In '13, all except Tunsil had a in. Tunsil took money from I know three schools and privately committed to three schools. Ga cried the loudest, so they must have had the most invested . If you look back on it, Ole Miss missed out on 6 highly touted players that year. I guess those players went to other schools for their Criminal Justice or PE degrees because they looked better on paper. It may be your school has more SEC championships or national chamionships. Not no, but Heck no! That isn't it! Give me a freaking break! Repeat with me: College football is not pure! Recruits don't choose you because of a beautiful campus, tradition, etc. is a black market business. It just goes on behind closed doors like a old style poker game. Only those in the know, well know.

One other small fact that most don't get. Lots of times money never changes hands in the recruiting process. It all takes place once you get on campus.

4. Kobe Jones and Leo Lewis received free stuff from Rebel Rags. I have admitted faults as you can see above. I believe and know this one to be false.

5. Couple of nights extra in a hotel. Give me a freaking break! Some of this is the dumbest crap I have ever heard of.

6. Academic fraud. This is where they should be hammered, but come on, you are punishing kids now for something that happened 8 years ago under a different coach and AD.

7. Tunsil and Hampton have already been suspended for their violations.

8. Here is a little secret for non Ole Miss fans. Take away the fight between Tunsil and his step dad. This thing is long gone. As soon as his cash cow disappeared, that rooster crowed loud.

9. I will add this. If Ole Miss comes out of this still breathing and Freeze somehow makes it, Ole Miss needs to take Hugh's phone away from him. He got what he wished for when he invited all fans to report any wrong doings by the Ole Miss program. Like I said above, there are things your coach does not know about.



Here is little bit more of information for those that think I am just a fan boy. The group of SEC schools had a gentlemen's agreement when Slive was the president. In that agreement, all cheating unless it effected schools outside the SEC or got publicity, was handled in the SEC offices in Birmingham and never heard or seen by the NCAA. Here is where I think it got rough for not just Ole Miss. When the NCAA offered immunity, some schools stuck to the gentleman's agreement and didn't talk. Saban told his players to not say a word.(Biggest proponent from what I hear of his players not talking.) They didn't. Auburn players didn't! LSU players didn't! Then there is MSU. Their hate went above principle. They encouraged players to talk. Some did and some didn't. We all know who player A and player B is by now. But back to the SEC! Sankey is a worm for letting the immunity thing happen. Slive would have never and I repeat never allowed it under his watch.

What do I think is gonna happen:

1. 80% chance this happens. If Ole Miss finds a paper trail from Leo Lewis to Ole Miss, Freeze is gone before COI hearings. Offered as a sacrifice to the NCAA gods for lesser penalties.

2. 5% chance this happens. There is a recording of Leo's mom. I repeat there is a recording of Leo's mom. Believe what you want, but it does exist and she tells how much LSU and MSU offered. (I think recording recruits or recruit's parents or handlers will affect Ole Miss recruiting efforts negatively in the future with prospects.) There is also other proof of cheating from other schools over the years. If the SEC doesn't step in and tell the NCAA to "leave my little brother alone", I think Ole Miss throws the lit match in the air in a room full of gas and burns the mother down. Freeze and Bjork are both fired and burn the whole SEC down walking out the door. Freeze gets a 5 year show cause.

3. 15% chance this happens. If the SEC does take care of it and stands up to NCAA (not for Ole Miss but SEC principles or they may get blackmailed by Ole Miss), I think you are looking at 15 more scholarships being taken and Freeze suspended for six games with the year long bowl ban. It will appear like it is bad, but Ole Miss and SEC will be wiping their brow. They will both crow how bad it is for Ole Miss.

I will make this prediction right now. The power five conferences will form their own governing body within seven years. It is to much money involved in college athletics now and the NCAA is getting to much of a cut and the rules are freaking ridiculous.

Before I go, have you seen the Richmond baseball players that got suspended for playing fantasy football. Yet, right now, on the NCAA's website homepage is a bracket challenge sponsored by Capital one. Give me a break!!!!!!!

[eSJay]

Warning .........I’m about to go greenheadgrimreaper on y’all. Read if you want, but you’ve been warned!
The mistake that Ole Miss made is the same one bammer made in the late 90's. They did not understand how to play the game. Or maybe they knew, but took sloppy shortcuts which resulted in “sanctions” that still haunts some of the gump faithful today. If not for the “sanctions”, they could have at least 18,000 National Championship instead of 15,000, but I digress. The lesson they learned was not that cheating is wrong, but that when you do it, you have to take care of every detail, and you can't get cheap. Everyone (mama, baby daddy, mama’s boyfriend, uncle, aunte, hs coach, etc….) has to get paid and they have to get enough to keep quiet about it. Ole Miss did not fully understand that the game has multiple layers. Bottom line, if you're going to buy players, there are ways to do it that hide the money and handle it that skirt the rules, but don't violate them terribly bad. There are also ways that you handle it where the transactions have no trail. Ole Miss just did not understand how to do it as well as others. Alabama has mastered this and it shows. When your staff leaves a paper trail documenting payments, that is never good. I think we all agree that everyone pushes the envelope with regard to recruiting. It's all a matter of what you do, how you go about it and who is involved. I'll define shortly that there are plenty of ‘legitimate’ ways to funnel money to a player and his family without doing what Ole Miss did. Anytime you start handing out cash, which is what Ole Miss apparently did, you are going to have problems. For this, Ole Miss is about to pay the price. When they come out of this in a few years, rest assured, they will have a clear understanding of how the game is played. Simply put, they will be better cheaters.

Next, I will break down the logistics of how it works.
It's pretty simple actually. You don't pass money directly to the players, rather you arrange jobs for the kids family members, girlfriends or anyone else (choose from the above list) who can help the kid out without drawing any attention. You find a supporter somewhere with a business and he hires the person. It has to be a real job. It can't be just a payroll check. The person has to show up and do something. The employer can basically pay them whatever they want within reason. The NCAA has no way to monitor this or even to question it. They can't come in and say to an employer that you're paying this person too much because they have no way to know what too much would be. So, you take a poor family that is living on the edge and suddenly both parents, brothers, sisters and whatever all have very good jobs with a good salary. They provide financial support to the kids, just like you would do with your kids. It's all above board.
They have to be careful even at that. If a kid's Mom suddenly moves into a half-million dollar home, the NCAA might question that. So they are very careful to explain the deal to the people involved. By they, I mean the employers and other people who are helping out. The staff at bammer has nothing to do with these transactions. It's all handled outside the program.
Case in point….Way up in North Alabama a few years back where the Dad of a kid had a small landscaping/lawn care business. Once his kid signed, his customer base increased by a huge amount, and he was getting paid exorbitant fees for his service. He went from making a few hundred a month and barely getting by to a business making thousands a month almost overnight. Plus, all of a sudden he got some incredible deals on equipment. It was all business though, and completely beyond the reach of the NCAA.
You want to know how these kids end up with cars? The families buy them. The days of sending the kid down to the Dodge Charger dealership and having them sign a bogus financing note are over. You send the parents down there, who now have income, and they sign for the vehicles and make payments. The dealership makes them a great deal of course and they get the best financing terms available, which again is purely acceptable under NCAA rules.
The problem and risk is that one of these surrogates gets mad and turns on them. That's the lesson that bammer learned years ago. When you've got a line of people with their hand out, you have to satisfy all of them. If you leave anyone out, they can get you and cost you millions. So, you make sure that everyone involved is happy and that they understand the consequences of talking about any of it. It is a lot cheaper in the long run to hand out a few extra hundred thousand than it is to leave someone out that can cost you a bunch more than that.

Did CHF know? Some say yes, some say no. I say he knew some, but maybe not all. If he didn’t know, he should be fired for that reason alone. He wasn’t doing his job! The CEO should know everything…..period!
They are about to get hammered in my opinion and rightly so. They will defend the Institutional Control thing to the end, because that is the thing that gets you the worst punishment, but I suspect they will lose. They have to be careful though because traditionally the COI does not like schools that are uncooperative or unrepentant. (Note Alabama in the mid 1990's where the COI punished them mainly because they did not cooperate and were defiant to the end. Thank you Gene Stallings.) Probably the best thing Ole Miss could do at this point is to fire Freeze, which would demonstrate to the COI that they are serious about fixing this. I suspect that if they go to the meeting with Freeze still around, the punishment will be much worse. They will be lucky if the COI accepts the self-imposed bowl ban and just cuts their scholarships significantly for a few years. Right now I don't see any way that Hugh Freeze survives this, and the sooner Ole Miss decides to move on, the better for them on judgement day (no pun intended).

I think there is a rule that comes with a 2-year bowl ban that allows any athlete currently on scholarship to transfer to any other school without having to sit out. What that means is that if the COI extends the bowl ban to a second year, the entire team could walk and be playing somewhere else immediately. There are already schools who are going through the Rebel roster evaluating players with an eye to recruiting them away from Oxford. A 2-year ban could essentially gut the program, and it would take a 5 to 7 years to rebuild. You will know how serious this is when the COI issues the sanctions. If they extend the bowl ban, that would probably be the worst punishment they could get.

One last thing, there is a chance that Ole Miss won't go down quietly and that they will take some others with them. Supposedly, they have a lot of info on MSU that they are going to use if it comes to it. The SEC office does not want the member schools to start a mud-slinging war. I suspect that the conference will weigh in on the side of Ole Miss to mitigate the damage and prevent them from starting something worse. Basically they will tell Ole Miss to shut up and take your medicine. If they do, the SEC will come up with some incentives to help them recover,



P.S. – Yes, AU paid Cam Newton, but it was never proven.