Ole Miss head coach Hugh Freeze and his program have come under fire for NCAA infractions. (Spruce Derden-USA TODAY Sports)
Ole Miss has self-imposed a reduction of 11 scholarships for football, starting with one last season and extending into 2018, as part of the university’s 154-page response Friday to an NCAA notice of allegations.
The notice indicates several violations occurred during head coach Hugh Freeze’s tenure, and include some Level I infractions, which the NCAA considers the most serious. Women’s basketball and track and field are also mentioned in the allegations.
The university received a notice of allegations from the NCAA in late January.
In a letter posted on the university’s website Friday morning, Ole Miss athletic director Ross Bjork and chancellor Jeffrey Vitter wrote that the school has requested that its case be delayed in light of allegations made by former Rebels offensive lineman Laremy Tunsil at last month’s NFL Draft in Chicago.
“On the first day of the 2016 NFL Draft, new information came to light involving a former football student-athlete,” the letter said. “That very night, the University and NCAA began a joint review to determine whether bylaws have been violated, and we hope this review will be concluded soon. To ensure fairness to all parties and pursuant to (Committee of Infractions) procedure, we have asked the COI to remove the hearing from this summer’s docket until this review can be completed and closed.”
Tunsil’s draft stock plummeted to No. 13 when he was picked by the Miami Dolphins amid a series of social media posts on allegedly hacked accounts belonging to him just minutes before the start of the draft. A video posted on Twitter showed him smoking marijuana through a bong while wearing a gas mask.
In addition to the video posted, screenshots surfaced on Tunsil’s Instagram account on April 28 of a text conversation he allegedly had with Ole Miss director of football operations John Miller in which Tunsil asked for money to help his mother pay recent electric bills.
Freeze, who was at the draft on the night Tunsil’s stock plunged, said later he was “shocked like everyone else” that Tunsil accepted money from the school during his playing career.
As a result of the other violations, Ole Miss claims it has taken “several corrective actions” with self-imposed penalties.
“The University has accepted responsibility for the violations that occurred and self-imposed meaningful penalties,” the school said in the report. “While discussed in more detail below, they collectively and generally include the termination of four coaches, including the only two involved head coaches still employed when the violations were discovered; the disassociation of every involved booster; a post-season ban in women’s basketball; a double-digit reduction of scholarships in the football program; a significant reduction in off-campus evaluation days and official and unofficial visits in football and track and field; violation-specific rules education across all involved sports; and a $159,325.00 financial penalty.
“In every one of these situations, the University carefully weighed the appropriate range of penalties and erred toward the upper limits.”
The Rebels were accused of 28 NCAA violations, including 16 Level I violations, according to the report. The NCAA Committee on Infractions will assess the situation before ultimately deciding the university’s penalties.
“The fact that all but one of the 16 Level I violations arose from intentional misconduct committed by rogue former employees or boosters outside the University’s direct control acting in contravention of rules education provided to them by the University,” the Ole Miss report said. “Although a post-season ban may be imposed in a Level I — Mitigated case, the University believes a ban is unnecessary here based upon applicable precedent and because the most serious allegations occurred years ago, involving staff and student-athletes long-since separated from the University.”
