Imagine for a moment…
Ole Miss opens up the 2021 season in the Georgia Dome against a tough Louisville team.
The game goes back and forth for three quarters but the Rebels are able to pull away at the end for a 38-21 victory. The offense sputters out of the gate but ends up putting 38 on the board nonetheless. The defense plays lights out and holds the Louisville offense to 168 total yards.
Headlining the Magnolia State’s major news outlets the next day, “Landshark Defense Returns.”
A week later, the Ole Miss offense piles up the points in a landslide victory over Austin Peay. The most entertaining part of the game is the spattering of Austin Peay fans trying to rally their team with chants of “Let’s go Peay!”
Another week goes by and the Rebel defense turns in another stellar performance against Tulane. This is a much better Green Wave team than the Rebels have seen in the past but they just don’t have the horsepower to keep up with the Rebel offense. Ole Miss wins 24-3.
Going into an off-week, the Rebels are now 3-0 and ranked #19 in the country in both major polls. They have two weeks to prepare for Gump University, the top-ranked team in the country.
With both teams undefeated, buzz around the game begins to grow. Pundits scoff at the idea of Ole Miss upsetting the Gumps in front of their home crowd. Ole Miss fans remain relatively quiet throughout the week but maintain a sliver of hope that the Rebels can repeat the magic of what happened back in 2015.
GameDay announces plans to travel to Tuscaloosa for the matchup. ESPN and SEC Network run ads all week hyping the “coach against the student” in a possible game for the ages.
The day before the game, the atmosphere in Oxford is electric. Rebel fans everywhere are scrambling for tickets, scooping up seats in the GumpU student section by the handfuls. The players and coaches are fired up and ready to show that they can compete.
The morning of the game arrives. One of the Ole Miss athletic trainers tests positive for Covid-19. She has no symptoms whatsoever but has been in contact with several key members of the team.
Upon hearing the news, the NCAA shows up to enforce some ridiculous contact-tracing rule and removes 14 different Rebel players from the game. Seven of those players are starters, including one Matt Corral.
Game over.
Would the NCAA Really Step In?
Admittedly, the previously mentioned scenario is full of hyperbole. It is not, however, out of the realm of possibility.
Think about it.
Ole Miss will be favored to win each of its first three games and no one will be surprised if they go into the Alabama game 3-0.
Alabama has a significantly more difficult road to being 4-0, but any Gump on the planet would bet the trailer and a case of Natty Light on a 4-0 start.
ESPN, SEC Network and GameDay? Well, maybe that’s a little over the top.
Think about the last part of that scenario though.
The NCAA comes in and contact-traces several players out of what would be a huge game for the Rebels if they were to win it and, consequently, a huge game for the Tide if they were to lose it. Is this game really something that the NCAA would bother sticking its nose into?
Damn right they would. Especially if you are a school from the State of Mississippi.
This is EXACTLY the type of thing that we have come to expect from the group charged with ensuring fairness among its member institutions. Selective enforcement.
Selective enforcement of the rules is a tool that the NCAA relies on religiously to keep certain schools in check. In fact, it seems to have become the primary tool of choice when dealing with those who threaten to upset the balance of power in the world of collegiate athletics.
Lest we forget that barely two months ago, the NCAA removed a member institution (NC State) from championship contention for political reasons using contact-tracing as the exact excuse. The reasoning behind their decision to do this remains unknown because they refuse to give comment or answer questions about it.
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Make no mistake about it, though. The NCAA does not care about what is fair or right or sensible. They are a politically-correct, thug of an organization that does everything they can to protect the chosen few and the purse strings that they are attached through. This is not a notion or a suggestion or an opinion. It has been proven time after time after time.
Lining the pocketbooks of the chosen few is the only order of the day when it comes to NCAA enforcement.
History Always Repeats Itself
Knowing their history, does anyone really think that the NCAA would hesitate to intervene in a regular season SEC football game?
Please.
They wouldn’t think twice.
I mean, it’s not like Greg Stankey and the SEC is going to step in and do anything about it. This is the same guy who allowed the NCAA to camp out in Oxford for FIVE freaking years without so much as a single word. Certainly not something Mike Slive would have stood for, but he didn’t have a daughter at Mississippi State at the time either.
Kiffin Plays His Hand
It seems evident that Kiffin and his coaches made it perfectly clear to the players what could happen if they declined to get vaccinated. All the hard work that they put in over the off-season could be taken from them with one phone call from the NCAA. It wasn’t likely, but it was possible. It could have been any game on the schedule as well, not just Alabama.
With the team now 100% vaccinated, Kiffin has preemptively painted the NCAA into a corner when it comes to selective enforcement on the contact-tracing issue. Forcing Ole Miss to play without many key players would be the exact opposite of what they did with NC State. This means that the NCAA’s only option at intervention would be to declare a no-contest. Ole Miss doesn’t necessarily win anything with a no-contest, but they don’t lose either.
So give credit to Lane Kiffin and his staff for not only foreseeing that this could become an issue for his team, but to actually make efforts to do something about it. Also give credit to the team for selflessly volunteering to get vaccinated in order to preserve all the hard work they’ve done.
Lord knows there is no need to give the NCAA a reason to be hanging around in Oxford anyway. You never know who’s couch a player may have slept on.
