The last 4 years in Oxford, Mississippi have seem some amazing and exciting football and some equally as amazing and exciting stories coming out of the NCAA investigation, which looks like it will be concluded around the end of Donald Trump's second term. So, there's a couple questions that circle around the investigation, namely, WHAT IS TAKING SO LONG?
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How bad is the NCAA at it's job that it takes 4 years to try and conduct an investigation? You either have something or you don't at this point. Wrap it up.
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The NCAA has had questions circling around it for years. They only have the power that its member schools grant it, and they are desperately trying to show that they are relevant and important to justify their own existence. Sure, they do a lot of good helping a large number of kids get educations, they may not normally be able to afford, but they also make hundreds of millions if not billions of dollars off the backs of amateur athletes whose hard work and labor generate zero income for them personally.
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Don't believe that the NCAA is a complete for profit enterprise built on exploiting cheap to free labor? Judge for yourself based on this. Here's the NCAA's operating budget for 2012-13, nearly four years ago: $800 million. Their television and marketing rights are 90% of their budget. Are they marketing and televising Division III Swimming and Diving? No, it's overwhelmingly Division I College Football and Basketball.
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The Investigation into football in Oxford began in 2013, after initial reports and claims emerged asking how a 7-6 Ole Miss team could land the No. 1 overall player in the nation, Robert Nkemdiche (his brother was already on the team), the No. 1 WR, Laquon Treadwell (his best friend from high school was already on the team), and the No. 1 Offensive Tackle Laremy Tunsil (his younger brother was offered a scholarship the following year and is still on the team)?
All 3 players went in the 1st round of the 2016 NFL Draft. Do you know where Ole Miss finished in the recruiting rankings the year those players started college? 7th in the nation and 4th in the SEC per Rivals.com. They finished 4th in their own conference and 3rd in their own division. So, if they're paying players and finishing 4th in the SEC and 3rd in the SEC West how much are the other schools paying?
It couldn't be that Oxford, Mississippi is a really beautiful and fun place to go to school. It couldn't be that College Game Day, a crew that goes to a different school every week for 20 years, called it the best Game Day experience they've ever had.
They have to be cheating at an unprecedented rate. Who would ever want to go there? The answer is a lot more people than you'd think.
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As for the investigation, what the NCAA and many journalists don't seem to be asking is a pivotal question about basic finance? If Ole Miss is the only school offering benefits in the form of monetary compensation, why are recruits signing with other schools in the same conference and division at a higher rate? Are the recruits that much in love with the awe of Alabama and LSU or is Ole Miss simply getting outbid?
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There are multiple reports from very respected national journalists, that the NCAA has offered immunity to recruits and players at other schools about benefits they may have received from Ole Miss or Ole Miss boosters. Think about how ridiculous that sounds for a minute.
Imagine if you're a stock broker at a Wall Street firm and you're breaking Securities and Exchange Commission regulations and federal laws everyday at your current job, but the U.S. Attorney's office says we don't care about that, tell us about what happened at the job you were offered, but didn't take. What did that brokerage firm offer you? What do they do? Nothing you tell us can be used against you or your current employer. It makes no rational sense.
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There are also multiple reports that within the last 6 months an NCAA investigator went into a local Oxford sport's apparel store, and began asking employees of the store about impermissible benefits, namely merchandise that may have been given to recruits and players. To make matters even more unbelievable, Ole Miss was not only aware of the NCAA going to this store, they sat in the damn parking lot complicit while it was going on.
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In year 4 of the investigation, if you're just now visiting that store, you're clearly fishing. Oxford isn't a bustling metropolis. It's a small college town, where you can see just about everything the town has to offer in a relatively short period of time, and that store is arguably the most popular sport's apparel store in North Mississippi, so if the NCAA is just now visiting it, it's because they've officially run out of ideas and are throwing things against the wall to see what sticks.
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The bigger issue though is why in the world is the Ole Miss Compliance Department or Athletic Department or anyone who gets a paycheck from The University of Mississippi complicit in this witch hunt of a search for the Holy Grail of Impermissible Benefits? It's completely baffling and illogical to the point of absurdity, that Ole Miss is literally trying to help the party who has set up shop in Oxford for 4 years and spent millions of dollars to try and prove you did something wrong and your players got some impermissible benefits.
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You know which top level football recruits get extra benefits? NEARLY ALL OF THEM. If you don't believe that then you need to stop watching Division 1 College Football and get season tickets to the local Community College's Intramural Ultimate Frisbee games.
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For example, here's a 2015 article from USA Today regarding Heisman Trophy Winner Derrick Henry and this car, that he posted on his Instagram account that was supposedly given to him in 2014 and registered in his Middle School Football Coach's name. When asked about the car, J.T. Medley, the registered owner of the vehicle, said Henry's parents and another football coach of Henry's paid for the car. So why is it registered in Medley's name if he didn't pay for the car and isn't using it?
It's not what you did, but what the NCAA can prove you did that matters. Anyone with a basic objective view point knows that star college athletes all get something extra. It happens at every major Power 5 program across the country, from Iowa State to Indiana to Oregon to Alabama to Virginia Tech. They all do it. So why hasn't Ole Miss fought back?
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The University Mississippi made the inexcusable decision to hire In-House Counsel, rather than going and hiring a reputable law firm in Jackson, Memphis, New Orleans, or Nashville to handle this case. Last time I looked at the wall in my office, Ole Miss has a law school, a pretty good one at that, and I personally know a number of Ole Miss Law School graduates who could have done far better than the person who was put in charge of this debacle of an investigation.
The University has essentially rolled over and taken punch after punch from the NCAA, allowing multiple leaks to the press, while watching its recruiting class get decimated, (they are currently 71st on Rivals.com) and listening to how every other program fighting for recruits against Ole Miss is negatively recruiting against them. You know who's ahead of Ole Miss in recruiting right now? Kansas and Purdue.
There are multiple reports that a highly ranked QB who is searching for a program in the SEC has said that other programs are talking about a 3-4 year bowl ban and 15-20 scholarship reductions for Ole Miss. 3-4 Years! After what happened to USC with much worse evidence, and what didn't happen to Auburn, or UNC, or Miami, or Oklahoma State, this reeks of ridiculousness. The NCAA has shown a propensity to take their time reviewing hours of testimony gathered from several meetings with a handful of people while a program suffers in the background.
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Perhaps the NCAA should make a consolidated effort in the near future to restructure their guidelines with a more reasonable set of rules that don't punish a school for letting a player sleep on a coach's couch for the night, but turn a blind eye when there's illustrative evidence that a player or his family got a car or a significant sum of money immediately after signing his letter of intent with a school. The selective prosecution that exists, whereby the NCAA picks and chooses it's victims at it's own whim acting as judge, jury, and executioner, edges closer and closer to the line of outright corruption. If you don't believe that, take a look at this empirical evidence of swift justice handed down to the Southeastern Conference by the NCAA in the last 6 years.
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2010: Cam Newton had the fastest eligibility review ever recorded, while playing QB at Auburn, after being declared illegible and then subsequently eligible in the same week before the SEC Championship game, despite an admission by his father that he shopped his son in a pay for play proposal around to schools in the SEC.
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2013: The NCAA had clear and convincing evidence Johnny Manziel was "distributing" his own autographed merchandise, which was subsequently sold for profit while playing QB at Texas A&M and he had to sit out half a game...against Rice.
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2014: An Alabama booster was selling autographed merchandise in his Tuscaloosa clothing store from current and former players and the University of Alabama got a warning. No players served any suspensions.
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2016: Tennessee settled a sexual assault lawsuit largely centered around the football program for millions of dollars, and they aren't being hit with any bowl ban or penalties for their football program.
So, that brings us to which party is more culpable for their incompetence at this point, and it's clearly Ole Miss. The hand-holding, cooperative, weak-minded response that The University of Mississippi has displayed during the last 4 years has been down right embarrassing. If they had any sense of self-awareness and understanding, they'd have told the NCAA to go pound sand the second they set foot in Oxford. When the NCAA investigators showed up in 2013, Ross Bjork and Hugh Freeze should have been on the phone with the best litigators within a day's drive and lawyered up, the same way Auburn did in 2010.
Unless the NCAA wraps this thing up by Christmas, and it doesn't look like they're going to, the In-House Counsel for Ole Miss should either resign or be fired for ineffective assistance of counsel, because no rational attorney in their right mind would let this matter go on this long, despite what happened on Draft Night with Laremy Tunsil. You don't hire a Compliance and Administrative Attorney when someone is coming for blood. You hire trial attorneys who know how to put pressure on big corporations and defend their clients. Johnny Manziel/Texas A&M and Cam Newton/Auburn both hired the same law firm out of Birmingham and their cases had swift and positive resolutions for their players and schools.
Additionally, Ross Bjork, who by all accounts has done a great job as an Athletic Director (with the obvious exception of this) should be on the phone with SEC Commissioner Greg Sankey daily trying to get this matter resolved, and if he's not then he's not doing his job. Mike Slive never would have let this go on this long for any program in the Southeastern Conference.
Ole Miss has remained largely silent throughout this process, and it's likely because they've worked out some type of deal with the NCAA, but it's abundantly apparent that the NCAA isn't holding up its end of that bargain based on several leaks to the media, and continuing to go well beyond the scope of what this investigation should have covered. Even objective people looking at this situation who have no connection to Ole Miss or the NCAA have come forward saying, it's clear the NCAA wants to hammer Ole Miss, now they just need to find evidence that gives them the right to do so, and in 4 years, they have not found any evidence that has been released of a pay for play scheme.
There's small things here and there relating to Laremy Tunsil's stepfather and a booster and the obvious academic issues that resulted during the Houston Nutt era 5-7 years ago, but there's no evidence of buckets of cash or a smoking gun that's been shown yet that illustrates rampant cheating and lack of institutional control.
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There doesn't appear to be an end in sight for this investigation, which in and of itself is a punishment that may or not be warranted. In recruiting and public opinion the implication of impropriety is all that is needed to damage a reputation, whether it's factually correct or not, and the NCAA has clearly succeeded in that venture. Here's to hoping there's an end to all this sooner rather than later. Cheers!
