NCAA announces Ole Miss penalties
The University of Mississippi’s football program will not be eligible for the 2018 postseason as part of NCAA sanctions levied against the school in the long-running rules violation case that included a charge of lack of institutional control.
On Friday, the NCAA Committee on Infractions came down fairly hard on Ole Miss, most notably deciding the postseason ban the school had imposed on the Rebels this year was not enough.
Ole Miss, which finished 6-6 this year, had hoped to avoid a second postseason ban and plans to appeal the decision. The case has been ongoing for more than five years.
“We wish that this were over,” Ole Miss athletic director Ross Bjork said. “But there is more work to be done, and that work has already started.”
The committee said the case was similar to other Ole Miss rules violations cases in 1986 and 1994, and described the school as having an “unconstrained booster culture.” The NCAA said six football staff members and 12 boosters contributed to the current violations.
“This is now the third case over three decades that has involved the boosters and football program,” the panel wrote in its decision. “Even the head coach acknowledged that upon coming to Mississippi, he was surprised by the ‘craziness’ of boosters trying to insert themselves into his program.”
Ole Miss had also self-imposed other punishments in anticipation of Friday’s sanctions, including scholarship reductions and recruiting restrictions. The NCAA largely accepted those penalties, but the big addition was the extra year of postseason ineligibility.
Ole Miss chancellor Jeffrey S. Vitter believes the 2018 postseason ban was excessive.
“It is simply not warranted and based on fundamental flaws in the NCAA case and how the investigation was conducted,” Vitter said. “We will vigorously appeal the additional postseason ban. It’s clearly an excessive punishment and we are outraged at the unfair characterization of our football program and university culture involving athletics.”
Former Ole Miss coach Hugh Freeze will be suspended for two conference games during the 2018 season if he is employed as a head coach at another school. The ruling said Freeze promoted an atmosphere of rules compliance but failed to monitor his staff.
Several former assistants and staff members received showcause restrictions, which hinders their ability to work for schools in the NCAA. The stiffest penalty was for former staff member David Saunders, who received an eight-year show-cause penalty for helping arrange fraudulent ACT scores.
The Rebels will be on probation through Nov. 30, 2020, and must pay a financial penalty of about $179,000. They must vacate wins in which ineligible athletes participated, and that could take some time to sort out.
The complicated case consisted of 21 alleged violations, including 15 that were Level I, which the NCAA considers the most serious. The committee said it reviewed 53,000 pages of information related to the case.