Former Ole Miss coach Houston Nutt has filed a lawsuit against Ole Miss along with the university's athletics foundation and Board of Trustees on Wednesday for breaching its 2011 severance agreement. Specifically, Nutt's lawsuit claims that current Rebels coach Hugh Freeze and athletic director Ross Bjork created a "false narrative" of Nutt's alleged involvement in the university's ongoing case with the NCAA.
Nutt, who coached at Ole Miss from 2008-11, is seeking punitive damages for what he calls a "smear campaign" against him.
The lawsuit, which can be read in its entirety here, goes particularly deep into the school's alleged efforts to pin its NCAA investigation largely on Nutt. It claims "certain members of the Ole MissControl Group, Coach Freeze, AD Bjork, and [associate AD Kyle] Campbell reached an agreement in 2014 to carry out carefully orchestrated misinformation campaign, the specific purpose of which was to mislead the media, Ole Miss boosters, and potential recruiting prospects about the true nature of the matters that were being investigated by the NCAA."
The suit also takes a stance on the stories that developed following the Notice of Allegations. Pat Forde of Yahoo Sports reports "Citing phone records obtained from the school, the suit details numerous 'off the record' communications in January '16 from Freeze and Bjork to media members that allegedly influenced reporting on the NOA, resulting in stories and social media posts that portrayed the violations as having primarily occurred during Nutt's tenure."
However, when the NOA was made public, a majority of the allegations were found to have happened under Freeze.
In all, Ole Miss has been accused of 21 violations football program, some of which the school has acknowledged. However, it has fought the lack of institutional control charge and has been a public supporter of Freeze in a possible failure to monitor situation.
Freeze is scheduled to speak at SEC Media Days on Thursday. He was already expected to be asked about the ongoing NCAA situation anyway -- the university is expected to appear in front of the NCAA's committee on infractions later this year -- but now, the lawsuit and the NCAA case will almost certainly be the No. 1 topic of questioning.
