It’s championship season for springtime college sports which means the quietest part of the college sports calendar is right around the corner.
For some sports, it’s already started. Need proof? Look no further than worldwide leader in sports.
ESPN published an article Friday with the headline “NCAA opened Ole Miss tampering probe after Clemson complaint.”
You don’t say?
In what is the most obvious sign that some media are scraping the bottom of the barrel, ESPN reported that the NCAA enforcement staff opened an investigation of Ole Miss football the same day Clemson coach Dabo Swinney got on his soap box for over an hour to detail the alleged tampering by Ole Miss with linebacker Luke Ferrelli.
“According to documents obtained by ESPN through an open-records request, an NCAA associate director of enforcement emailed Ole Miss senior associate athletic director for compliance Taylor Hall on Jan. 23, a couple of hours before a news conference in which Swinney blasted Golding for allegedly tampering with Ferrelli, who, after transferring from California, had enrolled at Clemson before then leaving for Ole Miss.”
This isn’t some shocking, earth-shattering news. It hardly qualifies as news because even though an official investigation announcement was never made every college football fan knew one would happen. Swinney said himself he would be submitting (turns out he already had submitted at the time) the evidence he had to the NCAA.
Maybe some of the details are newsworthy. But is anyone surprised the NCAA is requesting to look at the phone for Ole Miss coach Pete Golding, general manager Austin Thomas, inside linebackers coach Jay Shoop, outside linebackers coach Matt Kitchens, director of player personnel Jai Choudhary and senior associate athletic director for strategy/cap management Matt McLaughlin.
The NCAA also wants to look at Ferrelli’s phone records from that time period, too.
But anyone with a cursory knowledge of how investigations work knew all of that would happen. So, no, what ESPN published isn’t news.
It also ignores the bigger picture, which is how widespread tampering in college football is. Nowhere in the article does it talk about any other tampering investigations. If the open-records request was made to the NCAA, why not try and learn about any other tampering investigations that are ongoing?
Are we to believe Texas isn’t guilty of tampering in some way with getting Hollywood Smothers to flip his transfer portal commitment from Alabama to Texas?
Or, how about the obvious ones involving former Ole Miss players TJ Dottery and Princewill Umanmielen? Are we to believe Lane Kiffin didn’t tamper with either of those players?
It’s unfair to single out Ole Miss because the general public sees it and thinks Ole Miss should be slapped with some major penalties. Then when the NCAA does hand down a punishment, it’ll have to deal with inevitable blowback of being accused of being too soft.
So, yes, the ESPN report isn’t a good look. But it also doesn’t paint the full picture and, unfairly, singles out Ole Miss. Let’s not hide behind any arguments of “they can’t report what they can’t support with evidence.”
It didn’t stop ESPN from running an article last November detailing when, how and why tampering is rampant in college football. It shouldn’t have stopped them this time, either.
But, hey, Ole Miss is in the crosshairs. The Rebels (probably, because you never know) are doing the same stuff other schools are doing.
The difference is Ole Miss isn’t supposed to be competing with the likes of Texas, LSU and Alabama on the field, in the transfer portal or on the recruiting trail. But the Rebels are and that has a lot of people running scared.
