Meet the Ole Miss message board poster who went to the university's NCAA hearing

COVINGTON, Kentucky — Clant Seay is a 71-year-old attorney interested in animal welfare. He moonlights as a citizen journalist with his website billygoboy.com, and he also regularly posts on the RebelGrove.com message boards under the handle “jhvaught.”

Mostly, Seay said, he’s an Ole Miss Rebel.

That’s what led him roughly 300 miles this week to this Cincinnati suburb, where he spent many hours Monday and Tuesday sitting in the corner of the lobby of the Embassy Suites, right outside the doors of the ballroom where the NCAA’s Committee on Infractions held Ole Miss’ hearing.

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On each day, there were two armed guards who secured the doors of the hearing room.

Mostly they protected the hearing room from four writers, a local Mississippi television station, and ... Seay, who dressed in a button-up shirt with a red tie and black pants, a small flashlight attached to his hip. He worked on his Macbook, taking pictures of individuals as they entered the hearing room at the start of the day or as they exited.

“I think it’s one of those deals where this entire saga is borderline insane and it’s just the latest chapter,” said RebelGrove publisher Neal McCready. “If it were on anything else, it would have more value, but we’re so numb to chaos at this point that it’s almost semi-normal that he’s over there covering the story for billygoboy.com.”

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Seay, who has earned a reputation as a firm Ed Orgeron defender, wasn’t covering the story for his own site. With his digital camera, he took photos of Hugh Freeze, Jeff Vitter and Ross Bjork, among others, and posted them on the RebelGrove’s message boards.

He acted professionally. He didn’t attempt to interact with any of the involved parties. He was there to document and observe what he felt like was a historic event. He doesn’t consider himself a fan because it would mean he’s a fanatic, which he says isn’t the case, even though he spent roughly $1,250 to make this trip.

All these years of NCAA drama have left the fan base confused, he felt. So this was his attempt to try to find out what the deal is.

“I just think the public needs to be informed,” Seay said. “I think they have a better understanding of what’s happening here, a better appreciation. … The whole university is involved in this. In that room right behind me.”

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When he posted a picture of the Cincinnati skyline early Monday morning, the general reaction was laughter and curiosity.

Of course, others thought he was flat-out crazy. Surely, some thought, there could be better uses for his time.

At his age, he said he couldn’t be less concerned with what people think of him making the trek to Covington. He didn’t care if he made people feel uncomfortable as he was snapping photos of them as they sat at the table next to him.

And it’s kind of always been that way in some way.

"If you need to know anything about jhvaught, it's that he's obsessed with Ole Miss," Ole Miss Spirit editor Ben Garrett said, "but also, he's not afraid to stand firmly behind his stances because he's been banned from the Ole Miss Spirit message boards, immediately went to RebelGrove and started with the same shtick ... and now, he's here. That's surreal."

Seay’s father was a manager for Ole Miss’ football program in the 1930s. That’s where his namesake's love for Ole Miss is rooted.

Seay witnessed Ole Miss’ success in the ‘50s and ‘60s, and enjoyed when Freeze achieved some national prominence with a 2016 Sugar Bowl win and back-to-back wins over Alabama.

He doesn’t want to lose that but knows it’s a possibility if the program, which was charged with 21 allegations, is hit with a two-year bowl ban.

“I hope they’re successful,” Seay said. “I hope they get out of this with something we can live with and hope we never make the mistake again.”

It’s a concerning time, Seay admits. But he posted that it was a pleasure to share the past two days with members of the Ole Miss family, while he was sitting in the corner of that lobby, outside those doors, snapping his photos, pondering identities of individuals he didn’t recognize.

“Think of the money we’ve all spent this week to sit in a hotel lobby while armed guards guard a door that no one is thinking of threatening," McCready said. "All of the energy that could have gone to so many other things. I don’t know. In some ways, he fits.”

Contact Antonio Morales at 601-961-7117 or amorales2@gannett.com. Follow him on Twitter.