Kellenberger: Ole Miss, Tunsil fortunate to be back

Ole Miss is lucky to get Laremy Tunsil back at all.

That was my first thought reading the full list of charges brought by the NCAA against Tunsil, and after letting it digest for a little while it still holds. The list of impermissible benefits Tunsil has received in Oxford is lengthy and more than just the one loaner car which had been previously reported. It was about three of them, over a six-month period without payment. A four-month interest-free promissory note on a $3,000 down payment for purchasing a used vehicle, two nights of lodging at a local home, an airline ticket purchased by a friend of a teammate and one day use of a rental vehicle were also among the impermissible benefits Tunsil has received in Oxford. Tunsil was also apparently less than truthful with the NCAA when first asked about all these things, and the NCAA is a lot like a mother in this regard: lying only makes it worse.

That’s why it was seven games. This whole thing went from coach Hugh Freeze at SEC Media Days saying he did not see a problem forthcoming with Tunsil, to a season-opening press release announcing Tunsil was being withheld from the game as a “precautionary measure,” to finally seven weeks of the preseason All-American sitting out and deafening silence from Ole Miss as to when this would end.

So yes, Ole Miss should be grateful that it was able to announce on Monday that Tunsil will sit out a seventh game, this Saturday against Memphis, but he’ll return for the No. 13 Rebels when they play No. 9 Texas A&M at Vaught-Hemingway Stadium on Oct. 24.

Ole Miss will have gone through more than half of the college football season without its left tackle -- without its most important player since the moment he arrived in 2013. But it’ll have him for a stretch run that’ll ultimately decide the fate of the Rebels. Can they compete for an SEC West title? Can they do more than compete? Was the Alabama game a fluke, and the Florida loss reality? At least Ole Miss will find out these things with Tunsil.

The best you can say about this whole process is that at least it’s over. Tunsil has served his time, so to speak, and the NCAA has also directed him to the pay the value of the benefits to a charity, perform community service and he will also make the vehicle down payment. That’s his punishment, and now he’ll get to play presumably the final five games (plus a postseason) of his college career before he goes to the NFL and can earn all the permissible benefits he desires.

Ole Miss will obviously be better with him than it was without. Tunsil is an awesome football player, easily the best offensive tackle I’ve ever seen. Between him and Robert Nkemdiche, I dare you to find a college team anywhere that allures even the common fan away from just watching the football and staring at the line of scrimmage. Ole Miss does not beat Florida with Tunsil, but can it beat Texas A&M with him? LSU? Mississippi State? It has a better shot now.

As for Ole Miss and the NCAA, I don’t think this is over. Louisiana-Lafayette is facing major sanctions based off the actions of former assistant David Saunders, who has previously worked at Ole Miss under David Cutcliffe, Ed Orgeron and Houston Nutt. As part of its response to the NCAA, ULL is putting some of the blame at Ole Miss’ feet and arguing that fixing ACT scores for players was something Saunders starting doing in Oxford. The school also said that at least one member of the NCAA enforcement staff and Ole Miss legal counsel interviewed Saunders and a student-athlete on Dec. 16, 2013, “concerning events that occurred while Saunders was employed by Ole Miss (or immediately thereafter) and (name redacted) was being recruited by that institution.”

Are these the violations before Freeze’s tenure that have been talked about and reported on before? Sure feels like it. Combine that with Tunsil and no public resolution on the women’s basketball case from 2012, and you start to wonder if the NCAA is connecting the dots here. Could there be more coming, like formal charges against the school that include terms like “failure to monitor” and “lack of institutional control”? I’m not ready to rule it out. Ole Miss punished itself hard in women’s basketball, and there were reasons why then-athletics director Pete Boone told Nutt several times he could not hire Saunders (and that’s all stuff dating back at least five years). But it’s still there. Is the NCAA interested? For the moment, I suspect, Ole Miss will just be happy to have the Tunsil ordeal be over.

Contact Hugh Kellenberger at hkellenber@jackson.gannett.com. Follow @HKellenbergerCL on Twitter.