Ole Miss was near the peak of the college football world in 2014 and 2015.

It went to consecutive New Year's Six bowls, beat Alabama twice and looked like it had -- for the first time ever -- established itself as a real college football power.

But Thursday marked the start of the avalanche. Or, to put it in Game of Thrones terms, "Winter is coming" to the Ole Miss football program.

Freeze's abrupt departure will trigger the cascade of problems for a program that tried everything it could to keep Freeze around.

Why did they try to keep him? It's obvious. Freeze won at a high level in the toughest division in college football with no inside running game, patchwork offensive lines and rosters that, while under the microscope of an NCAA investigation, were nowhere close to as talented and deep as those in Tuscaloosa, Auburn, Baton Rouge, College Station or other locations across the SEC.

They were blindsided by shiny wins. But apparently a closer look behind the shine proved that it doesn't always gleam.

So now what? Where can Ole Miss go from here?

"It's about the team," athletic director Ross Bjork said. "The team is the focus right now. I haven't even thought about a [coaching] search. There will be a lot of time to search for a permanent head coach."

Just how bad was it for Freeze? Bjork said that, had Freeze not submitted his resignation, he would have been terminated with cause.

"No buyout, no settlement," Bjork said.

What coach realistically would take a job in a tough division that has no prolonged track record of success in modern college football except during a time in which they self-imposed significant recruiting restrictions? What coach would walk into a situation that could include another year added to the current, self-imposed, one-year bowl ban, and could allow upperclassmen to transfer without sitting?

Not Chip Kelly. Not the next hot shot Group of Five coach. Not a coordinator who is looking for a destination job.

Ole Miss is about to find out very quickly that it isn't like Ohio State, which effectively replaced Jim Tressel with Urban Meyer after Luke Fickell held down the fort for a year. It's going to find out that it doesn't have the luxury of falling into Nick Saban after Rich Rodriguez says "no," like Alabama did. It can't pull a USC and go from Paul Hackett to Pete Carroll.

Those are established programs. Freeze made Ole Miss a flash in the pan. That flash burned out due to a "pattern of misconduct" in Freeze's personal life, first uncovered due to a one-minute phone call to a number associated with an escort service.

Yes, for Ole Miss, it happens that fast.

Will Freeze's departure because of an issue that's unrelated to the ongoing investigation curry favor with the NCAA?

As CBSSports.com's Dennis Dodd details, Ole Miss now is in a tricky spot regarding that case.

It's safe to say that it will help, because violation of coaching responsibility rules is a big part of Ole Miss' ongoing NCAA case. But lack of institutional control does go beyond the head coach. At this point, any additional sanctions will add more snow to an avalanche that is careening down the mountain.

Ole Miss had it.

It had the coach who could make the program relevant among college football behemoths. It had the coach who made Ole Miss fun. It had the coach who could beat Alabama at Alabama's peak.

Sure, it took its lumps off the field, but it didn't care.

It cares now. That coach buried the program, didn't bring a shovel and isn't allowed to stick around to help dig it out.