Ole Miss waits in the retroactive crosshairs of the NCAA
Depending on which side of the fence you live on, Ole Miss releasing the Notice of Allegations from the NCAA and subsequent self-imposed penalties is a sigh of relief that it wasn’t worse, or justification that “those cheatin’ Rebels finally got theirs, and it’s only the beginning!”
One wonders the relative indecency a fan base will accept at the price of winning, but 13 of the 28 violations involved the prized cash cow on campus, football, with 9 appearing under the watch of current coach Hugh Freeze.
Freeze’s tenure has taken Ole Miss to nationally relevant heights, but at what cost, and moreover, at what punishment? The school is still mired in a joint investigation regarding former star offensive lineman Laremy Tunsil, after all.
The most damning of the allegations found, however, came during the Houston Nutt era, when apparently rule breaking and lying was en vogue but unlike now, football wins were not.
Former Ole Miss staffers Chris Vaughn and David Saunders arranged for fraudulent ACT scores for three athletes who otherwise weren’t going to be eligible, then compounded the issue by lying to the institution and enforcement staff.
Just how much water this current Ole Miss team should take on for those transgressions is the source of eternal debate in how the NCAA seems to rule based on what side of the bed it got out of, and it often loves themselves some retroactive policing such as taking away wins and putting penalties for past transgressions on the backs of current student-athletes and staff.
Vaughn, who was a defensive backs coach at Texas up until February, has since been fired. Likely, Texas got some warm wind this was coming up and figured ‘the hell with it.’
Saunders was given an eight-year show cause penalty for multiple Level I violations. The same, feasibly, could happen to Vaughn. Those punishments enough hemorrhage the careers of the two men involved.
Again, depending on the colors you wear, Ole Miss acted proactively in chopping off a total of 11 scholarships over four years. It’s still tough to come to grips with the NCAA logic that taking scholarships away from future students is a good way to punish ones that benefitted from them and a little more in the past.
Convoluted logic often is the CEO of these situations, though.
So now, Ole Miss sits and waits for the NCAA to affirm the penalties as good enough as they dive into Ole Miss’ desire to have several of the findings reduced in level.
For some, it’s not close to being enough. For others, “it wasn’t that bad,” so they acted appropriately.
For the rest of us, the guys that did the worst are getting the stiffest punishments. The other victims in this shrapnel? The future students who miss out on those scholarships for something they never did.
As usual, these things could be better handled by recruiting restrictions and massive financial penalties, not taking opportunity away from students. The NCAA still has to rule, but lost scholarships are the buzz word in NCAA investigations.
Lots of people lose, and ultimately, for what?
