Ole Miss found itself in the headlines for the wrong reasons last month when the NCAA transfer portal opened.
Clemson coach Dabo Swinney’s hour‑long press conference accusing Pete Golding of tampering with linebacker Luke Ferrelli is well‑known by now.
But tampering is so widespread that it’s hard to believe Swinney or his staff haven’t crossed that line themselves, and we already know Ole Miss players were being contacted behind the scenes.
Ole Miss All‑American running back Kewan Lacy confirmed as much during a recent appearance on The White House podcast with Michael Irvin and Brandon Marshall.
“It was a lot of factors that came into it,” Lacy said. “There was a lot of schools, great opportunities.”
There’s really no way Lacy would know about those “great opportunities” unless someone was reaching out. That’s tampering, plain and simple.
Lacy was one of several Ole Miss players fans were watching closely as potential portal entrants. When he announced he was returning (for somewhere between $2–3 million, according to OM Spirit’s Ben Garrett) the collective exhale around Oxford was loud.
He told Irvin and Marshall why he chose to stay instead of chasing those other offers.
“I just felt like what we’ve built at Ole Miss is remarkable,” Lacy said. “The people we got coming back, we’ve got Trinidad [Chambliss] coming back, the receivers, and then the people we got out of the portal for the defense, I just feel like we’re building something special. I trust Pete [Golding] to lead us in the right direction.”
It’s not hard to figure out which schools were making those offers. LSU, with Ole Miss’ former head coach, is the obvious one. Other national powers, including Texas, were rumored to be pushing for Lacy to enter the portal.
But he stayed put. Now he, quarterback Trinidad Chambliss, and one of the strongest portal classes in the country have Ole Miss positioned to be one of the best teams in the nation next season.
