Like It Is

Ole Miss can't add any more spin to this one

FILE - This Dec. 16, 2016 file photo shows Mississippi NCAA college head football coach Hugh freeze speaking during a news conference at the Manning Center in Oxford, Miss. Mississippi's football team will not play in the postseason next year. The Rebels might be facing more penalties, too, now that the NCAA says the program has committed more than 20 rules violations over the past several years. (Bruce Newman/Oxford Eagle via AP)
FILE - This Dec. 16, 2016 file photo shows Mississippi NCAA college head football coach Hugh freeze speaking during a news conference at the Manning Center in Oxford, Miss. Mississippi's football team will not play in the postseason next year. The Rebels might be facing more penalties, too, now that the NCAA says the program has committed more than 20 rules violations over the past several years. (Bruce Newman/Oxford Eagle via AP)

There's an old saying in college sports, "If you ain't cheating, you ain't trying."

Apparently, the University of Mississippi has been trying harder in football than anyone the past four years.

At least that is what the NCAA has decided after handing down eight more major charges against the Ole Miss football program, bringing the total to 21.

What was initially called "mistakes" by head Coach Hugh Freeze -- things such as assistant coaches' cellphones butt-dialing recruits -- has become serious allegations.

Things such as paying a recruit between $13,000 and $15,000, which wasn't enough. He signed with a different school, which should be looked at immediately.

Ole Miss, one of the most beautiful campuses in the SEC with academics almost as highly regarded as its social life, has self-imposed a one-year ban from a bowl that it probably wasn't going to qualify for anyway.

The serious part of the self-imposed sanctions was sacrificing its share of football revenue from the SEC, more than $7 million.

Neither will be enough.

Granted, the Rebels' fans will dig their feet in. They'll spin it the best they can, but in the end they will feel they were cheated.

Those glorious wins over the University of Alabama, University of Arkansas at Fayetteville and even Oklahoma State University in the Sugar Bowl are tainted. Some, if not all, will be vacated, as if the game existed only in the mind of the most faithful Rebels fans.

Freeze, who was at Arkansas State University as head coach but apparently isn't being looked at for his one year there before jumping to Ole Miss, drew national curiosity in 2013 when his second recruiting class for the Rebels was ranked No. 7 in the nation. The 2012 recruiting class was 41st.

The 2013 class had three five-star players --Laremy Tunsil from Lake City, Fla., Robert Nkemdiche from Loganville, Ga., and Laquon Treadwell from not-so-nearby Crete, Ill. Note:No one has ever confused Florida, Georgia or Illinois as being Mississippi.

That class also had nine four-star players, and a lot of folks were scratching their heads at how a guy with two years of head-coaching experience on that level was signing some of the greatest players in the country. The only one that made sense was Nkemdiche, whose brother signed with Freeze a year before. That is not a new trick, either.

One can only wonder whether the NCAA considered Freeze's meteoric rise from high school football and high school girls basketball coach to the SEC.

Freeze was Michael Oher's head coach in high school and was a small part of the movie The Blind Side about Oher's life and recruitment. Because Oher's adoptive parents -- Sean and Leigh Anne Tuohy -- were Ole Miss grads, the NCAA investigated him signing with the Rebels over programs such as Louisiana State University, the University of Florida, the University of Alabama and Auburn University, to name just a few.

They were cleared.

Under the radar though, Freeze was quietly hired by the Rebels shortly after national signing day as the assistant athletic director for external affairs. A year later, he was promoted to tight ends and receivers coach. Oher and Freeze were together at Ole Miss for three years before Freeze took the head coaching job at tiny Lambuth University in Tennessee, an NAIA school, then landed the job at ASU for a year before replacing Houston Nutt at Ole Miss.

Perhaps to most, that giant leap from Briarcrest Christian -- a small private school in Memphis -- to football's biggest stage in just seven years was why there was so much concern about that No. 7 recruiting class.

Now, all those Ole Miss claims that they were outworking everyone seems to be that they were just trying harder, as in "if you ain't cheating, you ain't trying."

Sports on 02/24/2017

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