The last step of the NCAA investigation into Ole Miss is complete, and it concluded with the program vacating 33 wins over a seven-year period due to ineligible players participating in football games. Four wins from 2010, two from 2011, seven in Hugh Freeze's first year in 2012, seven in 2013, eight from 2014 and five from 2016 have been wiped from the record book.
According to 247Sports, the six from 2010-11 under Houston Nutt were due to ACT violations and the seven from the 2012 season are left over from the players who were ineligible during the previous two seasons. Former offensive tackle Laremy Tunsil's participation in games in 2013-14 caused those to be erased, but since he was suspended for the first seven games of the 2015 season before being reinstated, no games from that season are affected including the Sugar Bowl win over Oklahoma State. Five more were erased in 2016 due to illegal player participation.
"It's the last part of this process," Ole Miss athletics director Ross Bjork said, according to RebelGrove.com. "In a way it's just a piece of paper because you saw those games."
Indeed we did, and there's nothing that can be done -- save for Will Smith breaking out the neuralyzer from Men In Black -- that can change that. But the more shocking development is the impact it has on the records of two former Rebels' head coaches, Freeze in particular.
Nutt drops from 24-26 (10-22 SEC) in four years at Ole Miss to 19-26 (9-22 SEC). Freeze's record drops from 39-25 and 19-21 in conference play to 12-25 overall and 6-21 in the SEC. Freeze was dismissed in the summer of 2017 after it was discovered through the Freedom of Information Act that he made inappropriate calls from his school-issued cell phone. He was hired by Liberty in early December 2018.
