We're at the point in which I don't know what to expect anymore. The NCAA kind of had a trifecta in which they let Miami, North Carolina (before revisiting), and Auburn get away with a lot. This really flew in the face of previous handling of cases like Alabama and USC. The Ohio State situation seemed to kind of straddle both worlds, as the NCAA tried to get them get off light and then Ohio State lied to them and got caught. The NCAA had to ramp up the punishment.
I wonder how much of the NCAA going light on these three influenced Ole Miss' decision to ride dirty?
Pretty clear they also use Rebel Rags (Booster 8)...
I always felt it was a big factor. I mean, those programs weren't trying to flaunt what they were doing, but in particular for Auburn everything sure worked out well didn't it? If you're Ole Miss and desperate for relevance, I thought it provided more than enough justification. The problem of course was they never really tried to hide it. Before that first big recruiting class was done a lot of us were just kind of shaking our heads. The thing that I feared was one-upsmanship within the SEC. Ole Miss beat Alabama twice, if they could have kept up what they were doing, what would have been the next logical step for other SEC programs? So, I really hope Ole Miss gets taught enough of a lesson that other programs learn from it to, before things get worse...
Hard to imagine how they win the war on all three fronts. MSU, former coaches, and the NCAA. All this while they circle the wagons around Freeze.
Not a bit. This has been going on since the 1950's. They got bradded in 1986 and again in 1994. In 1994 and 1995 they were hit with the loss of 24 total scholarships over two years. The first year they had a class of walk ons that half the schools in the conference offered and the boosters responsible are still the same. They have been using Wayne County for ACT scores since women's basketball became an SEC / NCAA sport and Title IX was passed in the mid 70's.
Seems to me that was basically our argument in the early 2000s...worked out real well for us <_< >_>
We never gave them a cudgel to hammer us with. Hard to bring the hammer down when you can't find any evidence. The NCAA walked away from a year in Auburn with absolutely nothing. The only thing they had was his dad's admission of solicitation to MSU. Arguably they could have invented something to rule him ineligible, but they still didn't have a single piece of evidence implicating Cam or AU in any payment, or that any payment from anyone at all. They turned over a lot of stones during that year, but there was nothing under them. They went out of their way to commend our compliance efforts on their way out the door.
Ole Miss got caught because they cheat like amateurs
Disagree with the first two paragraphs in that Cam was hardly a down-and-out guy upon his recruitment out of JUCO. He was a nationally-respected talent with highly questionable character.
His offer list was pretty sparse. He did visit OU, but the only two programs that were seriously considered were MSU and AU, as OU had a quality returning starter. A lot of schools steered clear, for very valid reasons.
The point I was making with those paragraphs essentially boils down to "it isn't what they know, it's what they can prove." Whether such evidence exists or not, the NCAA could not find it, and we looked squeaky clean throughout their investigation.
