With their most recent response to NCAA investigators’ Notice of Allegations, it is clear that the University of Mississippi administration entirely stands behind head coach Hugh Freeze. In this response, Ole Miss attempted to entirely deny some allegations regarding the tenure of former head coach Houston Nutt as well as other allegations regarding Coach Freeze and the University.

In all, the NCAA’s NOA included a total of 21 allegations—15 of which were Level I violations, the most serious of the association’s classification scale. These 21 allegations involve recruiting, booster, and academic misconduct and, most notably, a lack of institutional control by Coach Freeze and the school’s administration.

While Ole Miss admits to numerous allegations, they refuted the charge against Freeze for his lack of institutional control by insisting that no “reasonable compliance or monitoring system”—that Freeze apparently should have instilled—would have made a difference in avoiding these allegations, specifically those of boosters and staffers, such as David Saunders and Barney Farrar who are no longer involved with the program. Specifically, the allegations at the hands of Saunders are irrelevant in regards to Freeze and the administration as they were committed in 2010, before they arrived in Oxford, and therefore these allegations should not be lumped in with the “justification” of the alleged lack of control.

The allegations of former assistant Farrar revolve around of his recruitment of Mississippi State linebacker Leo Lewis. Farrar—who was fired in December 2016—and his attorney anticipated last week that the university would “throw him under the bus.” Ole Miss claims that Farrar “disregarded his head coach’s repeated directives” and “purposefully and actively” hid misconduct from and circumvented the program’s compliance bodies.

While the university is placing a certain amount of blame on Farrar, they do deny multiple allegations involving him and his recruitment of Lew Lewis. In particular, Ole Miss points out multiple inconsistencies in Lewis’s testimonies, as the now Mississippi State Bulldog provided stories of his payment of $10,000 that were not consistent.

In addition, Ole Miss pointed to a tweet by Lewis just hours after news of the allegations against the program broke implying that the undoubtedly biased source not only had reason to, but also took pleasure, in causing his in-state rival harm.

https://twitter.com/LeoLewisIII/status/834611090243850243?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw&ref_url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.clarionledger.com%2Fstory%2Fsports%2Fcollege%2Fole-miss%2F2017%2F06%2F06%2Fole-miss-releases-its-response-ncaas-notice-allegations%2F369626001%2F

A hearing in front of the NCAA Committee on Infractions later this year will determine whether Ole Miss’s self-imposed punishments will be deemed suitable for the violations or if more will need to be levied. The program’s self-imposed punishments involve a postseason ban for the 2017 season, 3 years of probation, recruiting restrictions regarding official visits and “evaluation days,” and a reduction of eleven scholarships over four years.

Featured Image via Flickr/Ken Lund