Spurrier on Clemson-Ole Miss tampering saga: ‘Somebody tell Dabo there’s no rules now’
CLEMSON — As Steve Spurrier spoke to reporters about his induction into the South Carolina Athletic Hall of Fame on Feb. 9, the former Gamecocks football coach had a message for his former rival, Clemson’s Dabo Swinney.
“Somebody tell Dabo there’s no rules now,” Spurrier said, referencing Swinney’s recent callout of Ole Miss for tampering with a Tigers transfer linebacker signee from Cal who inevitably transferred again to the Rebels.
“You can complain,” Spurrier said, “but I don’t know how good it’s gonna do.”
NCAA rules prohibit schools from contacting athletes at other institutions if they aren’t in the transfer portal, but the association has had immense difficulty enforcing a wide variety of regulations because of antitrust liabilities in the courts.
Former pros are rejoining college basketball teams, like Charles Bediako at Alabama, because judges have blocked the NCAA from enforcing its eligibility rules.
Direct revenue-sharing and a clearinghouse vetting third-party name, image and likeness (NIL) deals was supposed to bring order to a marketplace turbocharged by the transfer portal. But Ole Miss football coach Pete Golding allegedly sent then-Clemson linebacker Luke Ferrelli a text during an 8 a.m. class in January.
The text said, according to Swinney, “I know you’re signed. What’s the buyout?” Golding also allegedly sent a picture of a $1 million contract.
“They’re still on the books, I guess, back there. You can’t do (something) after this date or that date,” Spurrier said of NCAA rules. “Gosh, basketball, they got pros coming back to play in college there. So I don’t know.
“I don’t know if they’re gonna ever enforce any rules now or not.”
Clemson has reported Ole Miss to the NCAA for tampering, and Swinney spent 27-plus minutes on Jan. 16 detailing allegations against Golding and his program.
The “Head Ball Coach” sympathizes, because Spurrier isn’t sure how he would have handled NIL deals and the dynamics of the transfer portal back in his years with Duke, Florida or South Carolina.
Spurrier just isn’t sure Swinney’s airing of grievances — blasting the Rebels for the equivalent of “an affair on your honeymoon” and telling coaches to call out bad actors or “just shut your mouth” — will ultimately accomplish anything.
Because the same competitive pressures remain, and the NCAA hasn’t done much to disincentive programs from crossing blurred lines.
“I thought by now somebody would have told Dabo,” Spurrier said as reporters laughed, “Dabo, there ain’t no rules anymore. There are no rules.”
“Dabo has learned now, he’s gotta start paying his players just like everybody else is, or you’ll get left behind,” Spurrier added.
South Carolina’s current coach, Shane Beamer, was less humorous when he was recently asked about the Clemson-Ole Miss situation.
He said there should be a “severe” penalty for the kind of tampering outlined by Swinney.
“If we have rules and we’re not going to enforce them, then what the hell do we have rules for?” Beamer said. “I’m not sitting here in a glass house or whatever. I’m sure there’s a gray area that we’ve been in at some point and ticked off some school.
“But I can honestly say, as a head football coach, I’ve never contacted a guy that’s not in the portal, much less put in a text message, much less asking, ‘What’s your buyout?’”
While Spurrier can afford to be a bit flippant and fatalistic, because he isn’t coaching, Beamer and his contemporaries are more invested in the NCAA’s handling of Ole Miss.
“Myself and every coach in America is sitting around waiting to see what’s going to happen in regard to that situation,” Beamer said, “because if it’s proven that that did happen, and then nothing happens, then you think it’s the wild wild west now — just wait what it’s going to turn into.”
