Ole Miss was forced to self-report recruiting violations. Some Rebels fans were to blame
.JPG "Ole Miss head coach Matt Luke is entering his second season on the job after taking over for Hugh Freeze.")
The Ole Miss Rebels have been surrounded by a cloud of scandal for the better part of the last five years. A new incident was added to the list of miscues, although this one was out of the hands of the Ole Miss athletic department.
The Clarion Ledger’s Maddie Lee reported Ole Miss submitted a self-report to the SEC due to Rebels fans improperly contacting recruits through Twitter. Ole Miss athletic director Ross Bjork told Lee there was “direct” and “deliberate” contact between fans and recruits this winter. Bjork described the self-report as “standard” of a Level 3 violation, the lowest on the scale of violations.
“Fans cannot contact a recruit and attempt to entice them to attend a certain school, as this is a violation of NCAA rules,” NCAA spokesman Kayci Woodley told NewsOK in 2013. “If a school comes across an instance of this happening, it is expected they would reach out to those athletics personnel, fans and boosters and reinforce the ground rules related to communicating with recruits. This communication outreach would most likely be reported to the NCAA, which would show the school is doing their due diligence to abide by the NCAA rules.”
Meanwhile, Ole Miss went in front of the NCAA Infraction Appeals Committee to fight for weaker sanctions for the Rebels football team. As it stands, the Rebels are facing a 2018 postseason ban, recruiting restrictions and probation.
It is unclear when the committee will give a decision, though Bjork told Lee he expects to hear something sometime this fall.
“We were prepared,” Bjork told Lee. “We left everything on the table, and that’s all we can do.”
This story was originally published July 24, 2018 at 11:31 AM.