As far as OM's penalties go, we are playing with house money.

[AlmostPositive]

If the NCAA decided at 10:00 am today that the only penalty handed down would be no more Chardonnay, red shorts or chicken fingers allowed in the Grove, the damage has already been done.


-- 247Sports has Ole Miss's current recruiting class ranked 70. (Six spots below Toledo, six spots above Bowling Green)

-- Their brand is toxic... This won't change soon...OM will keep getting blasted until the penalties are issued, then they'll get blasted again.

-- Now that actual reporters are on the story, more dirt will be uncovered. This is more fact than speculation. It WILL happen.

-- The same council of elders who paid a quarter-million dollars for the black bear mascot stratagem, the same brainstrust that thought Ed Orgeron was a good fit for Oxford -- ditto for Hootie dale Nutt -- ... these same folks are still running the circus now.

Even leaving harsh NCAA sanctions out of the equation, things are going to get worse in Oxford before they get still worse again.

If you're worried that the NCAA will revert to form and let OM skate, relax. They have already been gutted, and they know it.

[ShotgunDawg]

If the NCAA decided at 10:00 am today that the only penalty handed down would be no more Chardonnay, red shorts or chicken fingers allowed in the Grove, the damage has already been done.

Completely disagree.

The damage isn't done yet. The only reason they aren't cheating & can't recruit right now is because of the fear of what the penalties will be.

If the NCAA offered up what you just said today, then they would immediately rally the Network & start paying off recruits to flip to them. Additionally, they would have little if any fear to do so, because they would have just gotten minimal penalties for the largest cheating scam since SMU.

The damage will not be done until the NCAA announces the penalties.

[JimmyMcNulty]

They are actually are sitting at #80 now after the second decommit last night.. Lots of chatter that Hyman from Meridian will be next

[ShotgunDawg]

-- 247Sports has Ole Miss's current recruiting class ranked 70. (Six spots below Toledo, six spots above Bowling Green). Once they rallied the Network, they'd be in the 20s by signing day.

-- Their brand is toxic... This won't change soon...OM will keep getting blasted until the penalties are issued, then they'll get blasted again. Recruits don't care about a toxic brand when your offering good money & jobs.

-- Now that actual reporters are on the story, more dirt will be uncovered. This is more fact than speculation. It WILL happen. Yes, more will be uncovered, but the NCAA is the Judge here that matters. Not public opinion

[Mimi's Babies]

They are actually are sitting at #80 now after the second decommit last night.. Lots of chatter that Hyman from Meridian will be next

Have you ever wondered why there are no recruits from Meridian HS???? Ask around... you will find that the dear ole coach there is a die hard OM..... Check for the vehicles that were given to coots....

[ShotgunDawg]

Have you ever wondered why there are no recruits from Meridian HS???? Ask around... you will find that the dear ole coach there is a die hard OM..... Check for the vehicles that were given to coots....

Meridian is a cesspool. The recruits that do come from there don't pan out because of the culture they come from.

[AlmostPositive]

-- 247Sports has Ole Miss's current recruiting class ranked 70. (Six spots below Toledo, six spots above Bowling Green). Once they rallied the Network, they'd be in the 20s by signing day.

-- Their brand is toxic... This won't change soon...OM will keep getting blasted until the penalties are issued, then they'll get blasted again. Recruits don't care about a toxic brand when your offering good money & jobs.

-- Now that actual reporters are on the story, more dirt will be uncovered. This is more fact than speculation. It WILL happen. Yes, more will be uncovered, but the NCAA is the Judge here that matters. Not public opinion


1. They're not going to rally the Network unless they want to rally the death Penalty.

2. Public matters a lot. OM has courted it to great effect, if you haven't noticed. Media matters in the 21st century.

3. If it sounded to you like I'm advocating for the NCAA to go easy, I'm not and it wouldn't matter if I did. I think and hope that OM gets historically hammered.

In short, if you don't think OM has already taken a huge hit, we are just going to have to disagree.

[MSUDawg99]

Honest question...when folks say they'll get the "Death Penalty" (or not), what does the Death Penalty look like? I'm sure it means something different to every person you ask. I didn't follow college athletics back during the SMU death penalty days so I don't know what their punishment was. But everyone says they got the death penalty. What does that look like in today's terms?

Even if it comes out & it looks like they got the death penalty, don't you expect UMess fans to say "nothing to see here, this is what we expected"?

[TrapGame]

Honest question...when folks say they'll get the "Death Penalty" (or not), what does the Death Penalty look like? I'm sure it means something different to every person you ask. I didn't follow college athletics back during the SMU death penalty days so I don't know what their punishment was. But everyone says they got the death penalty. What does that look like in today's terms?

Even if it comes out & it looks like they got the death penalty, don't you expect UMess fans to say "nothing to see here, this is what we expected"?

Exactly. They will try and spin the death penalty as a good thing. It will "clean out" the program. They will turn on Freeze like a rabid mob and blame him for everything and not the culture/atmosphere of the university itself.

[Mobile Bay]

It means at least one year where the team is prohibited from playing. Literally no TSUN football for 2018 or 2019. None. Most likely all players allowed free transfer to other schools, and most likely everybody from head coach down to towel boy fired from the program.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Death_penalty_(NCAA)

SMU received the following:

The 1987 season was canceled; only conditioning drills (without pads) were permitted until the spring of 1988.

All home games in 1988 were canceled. The NCAA allowed SMU to play their seven regularly scheduled away games so that other institutions would not be financially affected and so that SMU could avoid uninsurable default liabilities to those schools if its failure to uphold the contractual obligation to appear for competition was not beyond the school's control. The university ultimately chose to cancel the away games as well, and to accept the uninsured "failure to appear" liability.

The team's existing probation was extended to 1990, resulting in essentially two full years of lost appearance, broadcast media, and advertising sponsorship income. Its existing ban from bowl games and live television was extended to 1989.

SMU lost 55 new scholarship positions over 4 years.

The team was allowed to hire only five full-time assistant coaches instead of the typical nine.

No off-campus recruiting was permitted until August 1988, and no paid visits could be made to campus by potential recruits until the start of the 1988–89 school year.

[AlmostPositive]

Death Penalty is just shorthand for not playing football for a specified period.

And yes, Rebel Nation will be trying to brush off anything short of Hiroshima as a flesh wound.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zKhEw7nD9C4

[BrunswickDawg]

1. They're not going to rally the Network unless they want rally the death Penalty.

2. Public matters a lot. OM has courted it to great effect, if you haven't noticed. Media matters in the 21st century.

3. If it sounded to you like I'm advocating for the NCAA to go easy, I'm not and it wouldn't matter if I did. I OM gets historically hammered.

In short, if you don't think OM has already taken a huge hit, we are just going to have to disagree.

They have taken a hit, but right now it is a hit they could quickly recover from without the NCAA dropping the hammer. Basically at this point they have lost a coach and a recruiting class (the upcoming class, not '17. '17 was closer to their historic norm). They muddle through this season and find the right coach and the Network would jump back in and give them a Top 10 class.

The only way to really hurt them is multiple recruiting classes in the 70-90 range and the breaking up of the Network, which is what sanctions will get them.

[The Federalist Engineer]

Nope, can't agree. I want them dead. I want cathagenian annihilation. ...like Texas did with SMU, Rome did with Carthage, Greeks did with Troy.

I want my 2-year-old (when he is 20) to be utterly confused as to why MSU once played a liberal arts college called "Ole Miss". Same way the old schedules with Suwannee, Cumberland, and Duquesne look funny today

[32 Dive]

Honest question...when folks say they'll get the "Death Penalty" (or not), what does the Death Penalty look like? I'm sure it means something different to every person you ask. I didn't follow college athletics back during the SMU death penalty days so I don't know what their punishment was. But everyone says they got the death penalty. What does that look like in today's terms?

Even if it comes out & it looks like they got the death penalty, don't you expect UMess fans to say "nothing to see here, this is what we expected"?

Here is the Wikipedia entry, for SMU's death penalty.

LINK (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Southern_Methodist_University_football_scandal)

For the situation UM has put themselves in, it wouldn't be entirely unfair to have the same restrictions placed upon them, that SMU had in imposed upon them for the 1988 season. (Granted, SMU subsequently cancelled the '88 season.). For comparative purposes only, I'll substitute The University of Mississippi, for SMU, and the years, to make them relevant.


All home games in 2018 were canceled. The University of Mississippi was allowed to play their seven regularly scheduled away games so that other institutions would not be financially affected.
The team's existing probation was extended until 2022. Its existing ban from bowl games and live television was extended to 2019.
The University of Mississippi lost 55 new scholarship positions over 4 years.
The University of Mississippi was required to ensure that John Doe and eleven other boosters previously banned from contact with the program were in fact banned, or else face further punishment.
The team was allowed to hire only five full-time assistant coaches, instead of the typical ten.
No off-campus recruiting was permitted until August 2018, and no paid visits could be made to campus by potential recruits until the start of the 2018-19 school year.

[AlmostPositive]

I'm banking on the Network being neutered for the foreseeable future. Operating as before will get them deep sixed... even Ole Miss can figure that out.

Their recruiting will suffer because they won't be cheating as rampantly as before. It will also suffer because of penalties. On top of that their image is tarnished across the board. I would not be surprised to see their enrollment drop noticeably once it is apparent that their football fortunes are going to be in the crapper for awhile... look for things to snowball in Oxferd

[HSVDawg]

Meridian is a cesspool. The recruits that do come from there don't pan out because of the culture they come from.

Tyler Russell and Chris Smith did OK for themselves.

[PassInterference]

Easy, grasshopper. This is the damage we wanted to see FOR MULTIPLE CONSECUTIVE YEARS. 2017 was a start 2018 looks good and should stay that way for 4 more years.

[BeardoMSU]

"I went to the casino with $100, got up to over $5,000, just to lose it all....but still walked out with my $100, so it's all good...house money and all..."******

There are some situations where the "we were just playing with house money" statement is warranted, but this is it. These ****ers need to be broken over the NCAA's knee if they're going to fully to acknowledge the situation and actually serve punishment. Having a head coach resign amidst controversy and a few recruiting classes suffer is not out of the norm in college football, and it's not an insurmountable hole to dig out of. I want more.

[Dolphus Raymond]

Nope, can't agree. I want them dead. I want cathagenian annihilation. ...like Texas did with SMU, Rome did with Carthage, Greeks did with Troy.

I want my 2-year-old (when he is 20) to be utterly confused as to why MSU once played a liberal arts college called "Ole Miss". Same way the old schedules with Suwannee, Cumberland, and Duquesne look funny today
Something we agree on. In this era of absolutes, who says "common ground" is a pipe dream?

[TrapGame]

Nope, can't agree. I want them dead. I want cathagenian annihilation. ...like Texas did with SMU, Rome did with Carthage, Greeks did with Troy.

I want my 2-year-old (when he is 20) to be utterly confused as to why MSU once played a liberal arts college called "Ole Miss". Same way the old schedules with Suwannee, Cumberland, and Duquesne look funny today

Agree. I want them D3 fighting Delta State and Milsaps for croots.

[Bully13]

what's funny also is to watch how their "brand" they've always hung on a pedestal has taken a complete 180 in the eyes of the national media. funny shit to watch.

lying to the media has come back to bite them in that ass on multiple fronts. Like the late , great Samuel Clemens once said "Don't get on the wrong side of those who buy ink by the barrel."

[TUSK]

Honest question...when folks say they'll get the "Death Penalty" (or not), what does the Death Penalty look like? I'm sure it means something different to every person you ask. I didn't follow college athletics back during the SMU death penalty days so I don't know what their punishment was. But everyone says they got the death penalty. What does that look like in today's terms?

Even if it comes out & it looks like they got the death penalty, don't you expect UMess fans to say "nothing to see here, this is what we expected"?

While the "death penalty" is defined as "No football for a specified time", it does have different meanings depending on the program receiving it...

For OM, DP could be as little as losing 10 skollies/yr for 3 or more years... that wouldn't hold true for an Ohio State, USC, or a Bammer (they'd merely be on "life support" for 5-10 years...

A 2 year Death Penalty for OM would, IMO, be merciful in regards to the rebuild process vs what's happened to other schools in the past.

[I_Spy]

They have taken a hit, but right now it is a hit they could quickly recover from without the NCAA dropping the hammer. Basically at this point they have lost a coach and a recruiting class (the upcoming class, not '17. '17 was closer to their historic norm). They muddle through this season and find the right coach and the Network would jump back in and give them a Top 10 class.

The only way to really hurt them is multiple recruiting classes in the 70-90 range and the breaking up of the Network, which is what sanctions will get them.

The entire administration is at fault and they act like it. Simple psychology is that they 'avoid' the truth for a reason or were never really proactive in ending the talk. Instead they use media to push it under the rug because football is so important but of course now, it's family first. I hate the people and the chancellor is truly completely in the dark and being controlled by higher powers or stupid.

The oldest story in the book 'we did nothing because we assumed he was a man of character'...that isn't the officials job to assume. Lame ole excuse coming out of the ole missp

[Dawg-gone-dawgs]

1. They're not going to rally the Network unless they want rally the death Penalty.

2. Public matters a lot. OM has courted it to great effect, if you haven't noticed. Media matters in the 21st century.

3. If it sounded to you like I'm advocating for the NCAA to go easy, I'm not and it wouldn't matter if I did. I OM gets historically hammered.

In short, if you don't think OM has already taken a huge hit, we are just going to have to disagree.

$1

[Dawg-gone-dawgs]

lots of dolla bills in this thread. Cha-ching!