These days, Josh Nelson lives in South Bay, a section of Los Angeles hugging the Pacific Ocean with a strand of beach towns that run together. He's a world away from Oxford, Miss., where he spent two years playing quarterback for the big state university in that quaint town.

For years, Nelson didn't reflect much on his football days, choosing not to watch the old highlight tapes his father had collected.

But lately old memories have resurfaced as he's been transported back in time to Ole Miss and a period in his life when uncertainty prevailed.

Nearly 2,000 miles away in California, Nelson has watched a cloud of scandal envelop the Rebels -- Alabama's next opponent -- much in the same way it did when he played at Ole Miss 22 years ago.

The crippling NCAA investigation. Allegations of cash for players. A lack of institutional control charge.

The head coach (this time Hugh Freeze) forced out in July, just before the dawn of new season. The interim replacement (Matt Luke, a former teammate of Nelson's no less) taking charge of a program in turmoil.

It all seems so familiar, like a bad Hollywood sequel too derivative of the original film. But there is one twist.

"You don't know what's going to happen," Nelson said. "I'm sure there is stuff that is going on internally with the coaches and players and they're wondering, 'Hey how bad is it is going to be and do I want to stick around for this?' It's awkward and uncomfortable."

Nelson knows those feelings because he experienced them.

Change is hard, he noted. It's even more jarring when it's precipitated by something unsavory.

"Oddly enough, history repeats itself," he sighed.

Nelson takes solace knowing that Ole Miss won't have to deal with a season-long blackout as it did in 1995, when the Rebels were slapped with the last television ban the NCAA ever administered to a football program. The sanction was one of many Ole Miss endured back then, when it was hit with a four-year probation and stripped of 24 scholarships in a two-year period during which the Rebels were also prohibited from playing in a bowl game.

It was the stiffest punishment the NCAA imposed since it gave SMU the so-called "Death Penalty" in 1987.

"Oh my God!" former Ole Miss coach Tommy Tuberville remembers exclaiming when he learned the extent of the sanctions.

"Absolutely devastating," he said.

**

Tuberville understood he would face an uphill battle when he took the Ole Miss job in December 1994. The Rebels had just finished 4-7 under Joe Lee Dunn, the caretaker who stepped in after longtime head coach Billy Brewer was fired for getting Ole Miss into the mess.

The challenges, Tuberville noticed, were everywhere. Other teams tried to poach the players from a contracting Rebels roster. Scholarship reductions hindered the rebuilding process. Then there was the television ban, a draconian measure Tuberville had suffered through at Texas A&M -- the school he had just left after serving as the Aggies' defensive coordinator.

Georgia runningback Selma Calloway (32) tries to run over Mississippi defensive tackle Devon Coburn (87) during first half action Saturday, Sept. 23, 1995, at Vaught-Hemingway Stadium in Oxford, Miss. (AP Photo/Rogelio Solis)

Before the age of the Internet, social media and the proliferation of live sports programming, getting exposure on a national network was a big deal.

"Back then there were not as many TV games, and when you were on, people watched you," Tuberville said. "So it was a four-hour infomercial and you were able to sell your school."

During his first season at Ole Miss, he wouldn't have that luxury. It was a crushing blow for Tuberville, who prided himself on being as much a salesman as a football coach.

"With Tommy, we had the personality," said J. Stern, the university's former assistant athletics director for Ole Miss Sports Productions.

Tuberville was willing to market the Rebels any way he could. But the TV ban was restrictive. The NCAA not only prevented Ole Miss from having any of their games aired live but also enforced a byzantine stipulation that limited the program from showing no more than five minutes of original taped highlights per week. Stern, who presided over the production of the coach's show, had to get creative to fill out the 22-minute block that provided a window into Ole Miss football during this period of darkness.

After gaining clearance from the NCAA and the school's director of compliance, David Wells, Stern came up with the idea of editing a montage of the same play captured from multiple angles to elongate the film-review segment. There were also frequent cutaways with images of Tuberville on the sideline and fans in the stands.

"All of our setup shots did not count as part of our five minutes," Stern said. "It got that stupid and technical. But I was young and we were having fun."

With Tuberville eager to increase Ole Miss' visibility, Stern had a willing partner to accomplish that mission.

Stealing a concept used on ESPN's College GameDay, he and Tuberville decided to film a live-to-tape segment from the Grove that would feature the Rebels' most ardent supporters in the background.

It was part of Tuberville's grassroots campaign to engage the program's backers as much as he could. The same crusade led him to move his own radio show out of the basement of the coach's office and stage it at the Downtown Grill.

"We were in the business of sales," Tuberville said.

The bootstrapping approach Tuberville took was perfect for a program in bad financial straits. New athletic director Pete Boone had tightened the purse strings in the aftermath of the television and postseason bans, which were estimated to cost the university $3 million in revenue over a 24-month span. It got to the point that the Rebels were forced to bus to games -- once making the five-hour trek to Baton Rouge for a tilt with LSU.

Tuberville was exasperated.

"Come on Pete," he told his boss. "It's a long drive down there."

Boone, an old banking executive, shot back: "Coach, we just don't have the money. Would you rather have the money for recruiting or take this trip?"

Tuberville thought about it for a second.

"If it comes between those two, we've got to have money for recruiting."

Tuberville, after all, knew the future was at stake.

So too did Nelson.

A kid from Southern California, Nelson came to Ole Miss as a junior college transfer after developing a relationship with Larry Kueck, the Rebels' offensive coordinator, and a fondness for the scheme he ran. But soon after arriving prior to the 1994 season, everything began to be torn asunder for Nelson. Brewer was fired. Then Tuberville came aboard before overhauling the staff and replacing Kueck, the man who convinced Nelson to take a leap of faith and come to this foreign land.

"The reason you're out there goes and then that offense is gone," Nelson said. "It was just another question mark that piles on. It was just a weird transitionary period."

It was also isolating. The TV ban prevented his West Coast friends from seeing his games and took some of the allure away from playing in the Southeastern Conference.

"Kids want to be on TV, right?" Nelson said. "It made it even worse."

But his family was determined to see Nelson play. His father flew out to every game while his granddad drove out in a motor home and stayed for Nelson's final college season. They eventually witnessed Nelson lose his starting job to Paul Head, a junior Tuberville turned to in the eighth game, in part, because he had eligibility the following year.

"It's sort of a difficult period for everybody -- people who have been there and the new guys like Tuberville," Nelson said. "They kind of got to pick up the pieces and put it together as best as they can for right now and they also have to build to the future as well."

But then a funny thing happened: Ole Miss won.

The Rebels upset No. 20 Georgia and later defeated Mississippi State in the Egg Bowl to finish 6-5.

Ole Miss appeared to be climbing out of the rubble, although only the people in the stands at Vaught-Hemingway Stadium and the sites of the Rebels' road games could experience the reconstruction that was underway.

**

It's been 22 years since his college career ended and the emotions come flooding back for Josh Nelson when the television ban of 1995 was mentioned.

"It was destructive for the team from a financial perspective, from a recruiting perspective and from a personal perspective," Nelson said.

Yet the negative impact the sanction had on Ole Miss isn't the reason why the NCAA hasn't imposed it since, David Swank said.

Swank, the chairman of the collegiate governing body's Committee on Infractions back when the Rebels were punished in 1994, explained that it was the residual effect created by the sanction that caused the NCAA to rethink the punishment.

"The schools that were playing the schools that were penalized were complaining because they were being denied TV revenue when they didn't do anything wrong," said Swank, a dean emeritus at the University of Oklahoma College of Law. "It turned out to be a penalty for the innocent...And I think it would be very difficult to adopt it [now]. That was at a time when there was television but nothing to the extent we have today."

Yet the TV ban lives, tucked away in an NCAA enforcement document that contains a laundry list of proposed sanctions. A section in NCAA bylaw 19.11.7 (h) reads as follows: "The Board of Directors is authorized to permit a closed-circuit telecast, limited to the campus of the opponent of the ineligible institution, provided no rights fee is to be paid to the ineligible institution."

The language of the legislation screams practicality. But then there is this to consider: College football is big business in this day and age. With the recent advent of the SEC Network, the Southeastern Conference alone reported it made $420 million in revenue from TV and radio rights in 2015-2016. Prohibiting a team from playing on live television for an entire season appears, on the surface, ludicrous. The rise of cell phone cameras and Facebook Live, as Stern noted, gives fans the power to broadcast the games with no real way to police amateur productions. There is also too much at stake for teams, conferences and networks.

Yet Neal Pilson, a former president of CBS Sports, rejects the notion that TV execs and the beaucoup bucks they have invested in college sports have swayed the NCAA to put the kibosh on the TV ban.

"The existence of TV and the money that it puts into the programs may influence a decision on the part of the NFL and NCAA," Pilson said. "I doubt it. They have never signaled it. I always resist anybody asking me if television influences the decision-making. As far as television is concerned, we don't."

One of Pilson's last acts at CBS was negotiating a partnership with the SEC that began in 1996 -- a year after Ole Miss became the last school to be barred from live television as part of a punishment that was intended to damage the Rebels for years.

"The ban really sucked," Nelson said. "I can't imagine it now. But I couldn't really imagine it then. TV was sort of the only way to see any of the stuff. I don't know if the same penalty would really carry the same weight now."

Nelson has pondered that question as the Rebels are once again in the crosshairs of the NCAA. So too has his former coach.

"It's just a shame Ole Miss folks are having to go through this again," Tuberville said.

Together, Nelson and Tuberville hope for the best.

They know dark times are ahead.

But they're also certain the Rebels won't fade to black as they did that year when the red light was turned off in Oxford.

Rainer Sabin is an Alabama beat writer for the Alabama Media Group. Follow him on Twitter @RainerSabin