SEC Football: NCAA COI hearing and impending ‘Doom’ for Ole Miss
By Ronald Evans
Ole Miss stages its last defense this week in Covington, KY in front of the NCAA Committee on Infractions. What can the SEC football member expect? Doom is the answer.
What SEC football fans understand that is a mystery to the rest of the college football world is the bond between southern football and pride. SEC football is first and always about pride and an honor long lost and perpetually sought through college football.
It is that perpetual quest to claim honor that fuels college football in the deep South. The fervor can lead to glory. In the last 20 years, it has done just that for Tennessee, Florida, LSU, Auburn and most of all, Alabama. But the fervor can have a dark side. When nothing, absolutely nothing but winning, winning big on a national stage, is all that matters.
Having not tasted the championship elixir for more than 50 years, Ole Miss fell victim to over zealous fervor. They were certainly not the first and will not be the last to succumb.
William Faulkner’s characters are often shackled by fate. Some are doomed and don’t know it. Others know of their doom and are desperate. Representatives from Ole Miss will rail against such fate this week in a suburb of Louisville, KY. The NCAA Committee on Infractions (COI) convenes to hear Ole Miss words of partial contrition, mixed with vows of innocence and pleas for mercy.
A Faulknerian Doom
‘Doomed and don’t know it’ and ‘doomed and desperate’ both apply. The Ole Miss head athletic honchos would do well to accept the inevitable, just as a Faulkner character in the story That Evening Sun Go Down, “I reckon what I going to get ain’t no more than mine.”
The Ole Miss story is both complex and simple. We will stick with the simple version. Ole Miss cheated, as in broke NCAA rules and admitted to doing just that. For those admitted violations Ole Miss self-imposed a loss of 10 scholarships and a one season bowl ban.
Ole Miss denied many of the full list of NCAA allegations, most importantly, the one of ‘institutional lack of control.’ The Ole Miss defense has been that head coach Hugh Freeze was a decent and honorable man, above reproach. As Ole Miss later learned and the college football world now knows. Hugh Freeze was neither decent nor honorable.