The old adage that “truth is stranger than fiction” certainly could be applied to the ongoing saga enveloping Ole Miss football.
Former Oxford resident and popular novelist John Grisham might be hard-pressed to make some of this stuff up.
• Charismatic young coach takes over and revives struggling program, landing five-star recruits while quoting Scripture and preaching character. He’s successful for a while, but there are allegations of cheating in landing and retaining some of those recruits, which he vehemently denies and at the same time invites anyone who has evidence of such wrongdoing to bring it forth.
• After rumors of an NCAA investigation are confirmed, the word among average fans is most of what is being questioned happened under former coach Houston Nutt, who was paid millions by the university not to coach. When the official NCAA charges were released to the public, it turned out this wasn’t true. Most of the alleged violations occurred under Nutt’s successor, Hugh Freeze.
• Meanwhile, it comes to light that some of the NCAA’s case apparently is based on testimony from a couple of players at a rival school who claimed they received illegal incentives to attend Ole Miss, which they apparently accepted but chose for some reason to go to the rival school, Mississippi State. They are then sued by the owner of a business they are alleged to have defamed in their testimony.
• The day before Freeze is to appear before sports writers at SEC Media Week, former coach Nutt sues the university for defaming him, alleging that it was university athletic officials, including the present coach and athletic director, who instigated the rumor he was the main culprit in the NCAA investigation.
• The former coach’s attorney, in going through phone records of the present coach, discovers a call to an escort service, which leads to an investigation by the Ole Miss athletic department, which leads to the unexpected resignation of the coach for what the university called an unacceptable pattern of conduct not related to the NCAA investigation.
• There are other sidebars to this soap opera — including a player answering in the affirmative on national television a question about his being paid to play at Ole Miss and him and other players at the school being pictured on the internet inhaling dope.
Comes now, in the latest episode of this series, the former coach, Nutt, who, through his attorney, offers to settle the suit against Ole Miss for an apology and a $500,000 contribution — not to Nutt but to fund the creation of an integrity for college sports commission in Mississippi.
It was no surprise that on Tuesday Ole Miss rejected the offer through its attorney. If the administration was going to apologize to Nutt, it probably already would have done so. There may be some valid legal reasons not to.
As for a college sports integrity commission, that’s a laugh. The NCAA is supposed to fill that role, although there are some — especially Ole Miss fans — who think the NCAA is doing a poor job of it.
Besides, Mississippi already has enough worthless commissions.
Stay tuned. There is more to come. Ole Miss is expected to get a hearing before the NCAA in September. Ole Miss fans are hoping it won’t be in Starkville or Tuscaloosa.
