Ole Miss and Mississippi State are bitter Egg Bowl rivals. They hate each other. That Ole Miss is in deep trouble with the NCAA is good news for the Bulldogs. If the tables turned and Mississippi State was in the NCAA’s crosshairs, Ole Miss would like that, too.
Ole Miss tried to drag rival Mississippi State down in the same compliance mess, per report
The NCAA says Ole Miss boosters paid thousands to a recruit. The Rebels reportedly have a tape detailing “incentives” offered by other teams.
Photo by Streeter Lecka/Getty Images
So the Rebels, according to one report, have tried to make that happen. Of the eight new charges the NCAA recently levied against Ole Miss (and the 21 in total), the blockbuster is that two Ole Miss boosters paid a recruit at least $13,000 in cash before that recruit decided to play college football elsewhere.
Rebel Grove, Ole Miss’ Rivals website, reports that the player Ole Miss boosters allegedly paid is Leo Lewis, a four-star linebacker who went to MSU in the class of 2015. The Rebels, according to reporter Neal McCready, tried to show the SEC some dirt:
Ole Miss, per multiple sources, possesses a recording, and has given the SEC a copy, of Lewis’ mother asking Ole Miss for money and detailing incentives she received from other programs, including Mississippi State.
The report doesn’t say if Ole Miss has given that recording to the NCAA itself.
The NCAA says the Ole Miss boosters made these payments between April 2014 and Feb. 2015, when Lewis signed with the Rebels’ in-state foes.
Ole Miss says it’s still investigating whether these payments occurred and will have a response to the NCAA’s allegation within 90 days. But for now, it can’t hurt to try to turn this on a rival. Tapes are one way to do that, if Ole Miss has them.
Inter-program snitching has been a frequent feature of the NCAA’s years-long investigation of Ole Miss football. The NCAA has reportedly asked players at other SEC West to dish on their recruitments by Ole Miss. Any effort by Ole Miss to counter-snitch seems like it’d be firmly within the rules of engagement.
The NCAA’s new list of allegations against Ole Miss mostly deals with players who didn’t actually go to Ole Miss. That means the rest of the SEC is at some risk, too, as SB Nation’s Steven Godfrey wrote Thursday morning:
Obviously Ole Miss can’t retaliate in any formal way. But far from the above-board practices of major programs, there’s a dense network of boosters, university employees, and middlemen who both create and solve problems in recruiting.
Rival coaching staffs file formal complaints against one another regularly, but among individuals who do the actual compensating of recruits, the philosophy of mutually assured destruction has been a loose rule.
If Ole Miss or any SEC program goes completely under for recruiting violations tied directly to allegations from players at rival schools, the omerta among rival “bagmen” turns null. The prevailing sentiment in SEC recruiting is that no one dies alone. It’s possible the NCAA has not considered this scenario, or it’s possible it’s been aiming to create just such a moment.
