The Ole Miss NCAA drama timeline: Freeze, Tunsil, and everything else

In 2013, when rumors were heating up about the Ole Miss football program paying players, then-coach Hugh Freeze fired off the tweet heard ‘round the world:

NCAA enforcement staff were already poking around in Oxford. SB Nation’s Steven Godfrey, in his report on what became more than a half-decade-long investigation, described Freeze’s tweet as “a giant neon sign” for investigators who needed a win after bungling an investigation into violations involving a Miami booster. The Ole Miss probe would lead to two years of bowl bans and various scholarship and recruiting penalties. Freeze would lose his job before the case wrapped up, though not for NCAA reasons.

Part of Ole Miss’ punishment in the big NCAA thing from a few years back: vacating wins. We knew that’d take a while to sort out, and now — more than a year after the NCAA’s main sanctions announcement — the Rebels and the NCAA have figured out which Ole Miss wins involved ineligible players. Rebel Grove reports Ole Miss now [wink wink] no longer won the following games, which Ole Miss won:

Vacating wins is the silliest and most harmless weapon in the NCAA’s arsenal. We all saw those games happen. Whatever.

An NCAA appeals committee overturned a restriction on unofficial visits for Ole Miss football, the school announced Thursday. It’s a potentially big deal for the Rebels, who have been dealing for more than a year with a variety of self- and then NCAA-imposed sanctions.

When the NCAA ruled on Ole Miss’ case at the end of 2017, after a sprawling, years-long investigation, it stacked all of these penalties on top of things Ole Miss had already done to punish itself:

SB Nation’s “Foul Play: Paid in Mississippi,” a docuseries examining the shadowy economy that fuels Southern college football, is now available to watch for free on YouTube.

The series includes four 25-minute episodes in which writer Steven Godfrey investigates how brokering for highly touted recruits triggered an explosive NCAA scandal that got a millionaire coach fired, inflamed a bitter rivalry, and caught a couple of NFL hopefuls in the crosshairs.

A part from Steven Godfrey’s Crooked Letters, the definitive story on the NCAA vs. the state of Mississippi and, if we’re being honest, large portions of the entire NCAA. This comes from toward the end:

The NCAA would tell you the victim in the Ole Miss story was some common noun like amateurism or integrity. Counter with proper nouns, the names of actual humans:

Mississippi State linebacker Leo Lewis was arrested on disorderly conduct charges.

According to a release from the Oktibbeha (Mississippi) County Sheriff’s Office, the situation happened as follows:

The Oxford store at the center of some of the NCAA’s allegations against Ole Miss’ football program is suing the head coach and athletic director at Florida.

The NCAA says that Rebel Rags, a private business that sells Ole Miss gear, gave free merchandise to Ole Miss players and recruits at the behest of Ole Miss staff. In the report by the NCAA’s Committee on Infractions that led it to sanction Ole Miss in December, Rebel Rags is mentioned — as a “retail store” — dozens of times.

One of the biggest QB recruits in recent memory is no longer a college football free agent. On Monday, Ole Miss quarterback Shea Patterson announced that he is transferring to Michigan.

247Sports reported earlier this month that he was granted permission to explore a transfer. The Rebels were just hit with an extra bowl ban season and additional NCAA sanctions, and seniors can now transfer without penalty.

The Ole Miss football program is facing heavy NCAA sanctions. The NCAA’s Committee on Infractions finally ruled on the Rebels’ years-long case and unveiled its punishment last Friday. That includes a bowl ban for 2018 (after Ole Miss self-imposed one for 2017), scholarship reductions, and hiring penalties for former coaches.

Because Ole Miss is bowl-banned for 2018, players entering their last year of eligibility are allowed to transfer from the program without sitting out a year in “academic residence.” That could lead other programs to make a run on Ole Miss’ roster, and it also might contribute to players deciding to leave school for the NFL.

The NCAA delivered its version of justice to Ole Miss on Friday. In the culmination of a years-long investigation, the NCAA’s Committee on Infractions handed Ole Miss a series of penalties for compliance violations: a bowl ban for 2018 (on top of a self-imposed ban this year), scholarship losses, and free transfers out for rising senior players.

One player who’s not going anywhere, apparently: receiver A.J. Brown.

After five years, the NCAA’s Committee on Infractions finally issued a ruling in Ole Miss’s recruiting scandal on Friday morning.

The core penalties, per a source close to Ole Miss:

The University of Mississippi has been notified that a ruling from the NCAA’s Committee on Infractions (COI) regarding the Rebel football program is due Friday, multiple sources confirm to SB Nation.

Ole Miss and multiple former coaches are facing 21 alleged violations that began under former head coach Houston Nutt and through former head coach Hugh Freeze. Ole Miss is facing a charge of lack of institutional control — a charge that has resulted in other football programs, such as USC, receiving harsh punishments including multiple-year postseason bans, eliminated scholarships and vacated wins — and Freeze is alleged to have violated NCAA legislation requiring head coaches to promote compliance within their programs and among staff. The Rebels have already self-imposed a one-year bowl ban, and if the NCAA adds on an additional year, Ole Miss’ players would be free to transfer from the school without penalty.

Ole Miss is taking the interim tag off head football coach Matt Luke.

The hire is a bit surprising from afar, but that doesn’t mean it’s a bad idea. The Rebels were 3-5 heading into November, but they finished the year on a 3-1 run and would’ve been bowl-eligible if they hadn’t self-imposed a bowl ban amid an ongoing NCAA case. They ended their season by beating rival Mississippi State in a Thanksgiving Egg Bowl.

In July 2017, former Ole Miss football coach Houston Nutt sued his old school, alleging a smear campaign to pin many of the Rebels’ NCAA investigation problems on him.

As news about the story began to filter out last year, some media reports indicated that much of the NCAA’s probe wasn’t focused on the staff of then-head coach Hugh Freeze. The upshot of that is that Ole Miss’ previous head coach, Nutt, was somewhere near the center of the investigation. Nutt and his lawyer, Thomas Mars, alleged that Ole Miss officials orchestrated those reports. But the vast majority of the NCAA’s charges against Ole Miss are against Freeze’s administration, not Nutt’s.

In mid-September, Ole Miss went in front of the NCAA Committee On Infractions, and in the coming months, the NCAA will decide the outcome of its years-long probe into athlete benefits.

Ole Miss went in front of the Committee regarding 21 allegations. Fifteen of those are Level I (the most serious). The school does have some self-imposed sanctions, but the safe bet is that the NCAA will add to them as long as its case holds up. The fallout from the scandal has already cost Ole Miss more than $9 million. Now, there’s even more money on the line for the Rebels.

The University of Mississippi’s hearing in front of the NCAA Committee on Infractions starts Monday in Covington, Kentucky, and despite a request from Mississippi State officials to be there “as observers,” they will not be able to attend.

The panel will review 21 allegations against the Rebels, including 15 Level I violations.

SB Nation’s Steven Godfrey reports on the many ways an NCAA investigation into Ole Miss’ football program has caught up Mississippi State linebacker Leo Lewis. Testimony by Lewis is the “sole basis” for five NCAA allegations against Ole Miss, per Godfrey, including four that are classified as the most serious type: Level I.

During a meeting with NCAA investigators last December, Lewis testified that boosters for a program offered money during his recruitment, according to a transcript of the meeting.

Every time Leo Lewis spoke to the NCAA, the conversation started the same way.

There was always a statement for the record, a reminder from college sports’ governing body that Lewis would be safe ... so long as he told the truth.

This is not a piece about either former Ole Miss head coach Hugh Freeze’s firing or the Rebels’ longstanding battle with the NCAA. We’ve written those pieces. A lot of them. Steven Godfrey and I have done a podcast about it, too. It’s well-covered territory.

No, this is an acknowledgment that Ole Miss will play a football season. The Rebels will play 12 games — and no more than 12, thanks to self-imposed sanctions — with an interim head coach. At some point this fall, athletic director Ross Bjork will begin his search for a full-time head man, but this is a preview of those 12 games.

The NCAA’s investigation into the football program at Ole Miss is now about a half-decade long. The proceedings could come to an end soon.

Ole Miss officials will have their hearing with the NCAA’s Committee on Infractions on Sept. 11. It might take a few days to complete. Once it’s done, the committee is expected to have a verdict on Ole Miss’ case within six to eight weeks. That puts the timeline on a decision in the case at no later than November.

The NCAA’s current most famous investigation is into Ole Miss, but the name of the school doesn’t matter all that much in at least one sense. The governing body has no subpoena power or any IRL power beyond what’s vested in it by schools, so its investigations often look a little farcical. Combine that with the unimportant things it chooses to investigate, and you’ve got a fine recipe.

The fate of the University of Mississippi’s football program could hinge on live comments from current Mississippi State linebacker Leo Lewis to the NCAA when the Committee on Infractions hears the case against Ole Miss this September.

In a letter obtained by SB Nation dated May 17, 2017, Xavier athletic director Greg Christopher, Chief Hearing Officer of the NCAA Division 1 Committee on Infractions, instructs counsel for five former Ole Miss football staffers and one current assistant coach, as well as NCAA Vice President of Enforcement Jon Duncan and Ole Miss Chancellor Jeffrey Vitter:

Spencer Moncrief never played a collegiate sport in his 24 years. Yet here he sat again, across the table from NCAA investigators at the University of Mississippi.

By September of 2013, everyone in the room was familiar with one another — Spencer, the brother of then Ole Miss and future Indianapolis Colts wide receiver Donte Moncrief, their lawyer, and the lawyers for Ole Miss and the NCAA’s enforcement team, headed by a man named Mike Sheridan. Multiple sources confirmed to SB Nation Donte was first summoned to meet with Sheridan and the enforcement staff because of a photo of the junior wideout driving a red 2009 Dodge Challenger — his older brother’s car — in April of 2013.

By now you’ve certainly heard that Ole Miss coach Hugh Freeze was undone by the reveal of one phone call. It was a one-minute dial to a phone number tied to an escort service in Florida. The original line of thinking was that the call was found by Houston Nutt’s camp and relayed to Ole Miss.

But an ESPN report has added another layer to this. Apparently a rival fan named Steve Robertson was doing book research and actually started this ball rolling:

The name Ole Miss brings in to replace the disgraced Hugh Freeze likely won’t be quite as big as some Rebels fans are hoping, based simply on how infrequent it is for one Power 5 school to swipe another’s head coach. Sure, Les Miles is likely interested in moving a few hours north. But beyond him, we’re probably talking a mid-major head coach or an elite-ish Power 5 assistant.

As everyone fires out lists of potential replacements, one that stands out is this odd list from Bet Online, where you can wager actual dollars on whom Ole Miss will hire in five months: