College football’s moral police are apparently out in full force again.
Clemson’s Dabo Swinney claimed that Pete Golding tampered with linebacker Luke Ferrelli, who’d already enrolled and begun spring workouts with the Tigers after transferring from Cal.
Swinney ran to the nearest microphone, and suddenly Oxford, Mississippi, became the villain capital of the sport.
Wait just a minute, though.
Ferrelli entered the transfer portal on Jan. 2 and committed to Clemson four days later. He enrolled, started classes and began attending team meetings before re-entering the portal on Jan. 22 and committing to Ole Miss.
From Swinney’s point of view, that’s a clear-cut case. Swinney compared the whole thing to “having an affair on your honeymoon.”
That’s a vivid image, but if we’re handing out scarlet letters in college football, we’re going to need a whole lot more letters.
Golding Isn’t Running from Moment
At the SEC’s spring meetings, Golding stepped up to address a full barrage of outside criticism from tampering allegations from Clemson, shots at Ole Miss’s educational standards by Texas and insinuations about a racist culture in Oxford from former coach Lane Kiffin.
He’s suggesting all the noise from outside the program actually reflects how well the Rebels are doing.
“I couldn’t care less what everybody else thinks of us,” Golding said. “I think our players understand, there’s a bull’s-eye and a circle on them now based on their success and what they’ve done on the field. They’ve got to be able to block out the noise.”
That’s not the response of a coach who’s on the ropes. That’s a guy who’s comfortable in his own skin.
Golding largely deflected on the specifics of the Ferrelli situation and instead pointed toward the NCAA’s uneven track record in enforcing transfer portal rules.
“A lot of things make headlines,” he said. “There’s a lot more people involved that everybody might not know. Everyone wants clarity. Enforcement about a lot of these things is a real problem. I’m not going to sit up here and say whatever we did or we didn’t do, was it right or was it wrong?”
That last line is the most honest thing anyone’s said at a podium all offseason.
Kiffin-to-LSU Pipeline Deserves Same Scrutiny
Here’s where the story gets genuinely interesting — and it’s the part a lot of people are conveniently skipping over.
Ole Miss isn’t the only program that’s been talked about in connection with these kinds of allegations.
Former Rebel players TJ Dottery, Winston Watkins, Pricewill Umanmielen and Devin Harper all landed at LSU almost as soon as they entered the portal after Kiffin took the Tigers job.
Players like Kewan Lacy and Trinidad Chambliss were allegedly contacted without ever having entered the portal at all.
Dottery entered the portal one week after the Rebs’ loss to Miami in the Fiesta Bowl and signed with Kiffin at LSU the very next day.
One week. Then signed the next morning. With his former head coach.
And somehow there’s no NCAA investigation into that?
“Not comparing [Ferrelli] to a guy who’s been a [multiyear] starter somewhere that wasn’t in the portal that’s at a new school now after going to a semifinal, like, what are we doing?” Golding asked, not letting that irony slip by unaddressed.
What indeed.
“My thing when they talk about tampering, you don’t think the coaches get tampered with?” Golding asked. “You don’t think ADs meet with head coaches? I mean we’re talking about this new Kiffin rule and this s—, who do you think’s meeting with these guys and offering them the job before? I’m not getting into all of that, but holy cow.”
He’s not wrong.
The so-called “Kiffin rule” which is the idea that coaches should face restrictions on contacting their own program’s players when they leave exists precisely because everyone knows what happens when a coach bolts for a rival.
It’s been happening for decades. The outrage only gets loud when someone files a complaint. These days that’s usually in a social media post of some type.
Golding and Kiffin: Not Enemies You Think
Everyone loves a good rivalry. Golding at Ole Miss, Kiffin now at LSU, the two programs set to meet on Sept. 19 in Oxford practically writes itself as a revenge story. Former boss comes back to haunt his old school, new coach trying to prove he belongs.
Except that’s not the actual relationship between these two men.
Golding said he’s kept a strong relationship with Kiffin, who left in controversial fashion before the Rebels’ playoff run last year.
“[He] hits me up every day,” Golding said.
Every day. These two guys are texting every day, and we’re supposed to believe this is some bitter feud?
The September game will be loud and Vaught-Hemingway will be rocking. The story that Golding and Kiffin despise each other doesn’t line up with what Golding’s actually saying out loud.
Dabo, College Football Has Never Been That Clean
Now for the real question about why is Dabo Swinney acting so surprised?
College football’s history of bending, breaking and outright ignoring its own rules goes back more than 100 years.
From slush funds to under-the-table payments long before NIL made any of it legal, from coaches poaching recruits on handshake deals to boosters funding everything with a wink, the sport has never operated with the purity Swinney seems to believe existed before the transfer portal arrived.
“When you go through what we went through, and what you’re seeing day-in and day-out, some things you feel like shouldn’t matter that they’re making a big deal about,” Golding said. “It’s about the enforcement about it, that’s what everybody wants. What are the rules going to be in place, and are they going to be enforced? Up to this point, that hasn’t happened.”
That’s the crux of the whole thing. The rules exist on paper. Enforcement is a different matter entirely.
Golding’s willing to open up the entire system if the NCAA wants to press the issue and that probably isn’t a bluff at all.
There’s apparently an investigation over Ferrelli, who’d taken an official visit to Ole Miss, but nothing comparable involving Dottery, a multiyear starter who wasn’t in the portal before ending up at LSU.
Golding’s examples of other alleged tampering cases may reveal just how inconsistent the NCAA’s enforcement has been in the era of NIL, the College Football Playoff and the transfer portal.
Swinney’s a proven coach and a winner.
But his role as the sport’s conscience doesn’t quite fit the history of the game he’s been coaching. Interesting how that has increased since the Tigers aren’t winning as much.
If there’s a bull’s-eye on the Rebs right now, as Golding says, it’s because Oxford’s been winning, not because Pete Golding invented doing business in the shadows.
That practice is as old as college football itself.
