This would be such a dangerous game with the old NCAA...
Ole Miss is trying the Auburn approach, but with damning evidence already on the record. I think the Auburn stonewall might have worked if not for Tunsil, but he's blown that wall up twice already. Now they're still not firing people, and they're still basically claiming ignorance, even in the face of a lot hard evidence. The risk though, is that the NCAA wakes up, realizes that Ole Miss still payed players while under investigation, sees that Ole Miss is basically dodging responsibility, not willing to punish people responsible, and does their job.
Playing the Auburn game, with less to gain and more evidence against them is bewildering at this point. It is like their entire approach was built around the Tunsil stuff never coming out, and now that it has they're pretty unwilling to change their tune. It just seems like it could blow up in their face, but perhaps now they look at it like what they have accepted is bad enough, anything worse and they might as well bury the program. How deep really might not matter to them.