How Laremy Tunsil’s draft night ruined Ole Miss

Before Hugh Freeze got to Ole Miss in 2012, Ole Miss had lost 15 conference games in a row. To make matters even worse, they played in the SEC West. So in 2013 when Ole Miss signed the #5 ranked recruiting class in the nation, a lot of heads were turned.

In 2013, Hugh Freeze took Ole Miss to a record of 8-5 with a 3 point loss to #9 Texas AM (Johnny Manziel) and a 3 point win over #6 LSU.

Flash forward to October of 2014 and #3 Alabama is traveling to Oxford to take on #11 Ole Miss. Alabama was driving down the field to score a touchdown with very little time left in the game when Blake Simms threw a game losing interception in the end zone. Ole Miss went on a 7 game winning streak that season before losing 4 of their last 6 games.

During the 2015 season, Ole Miss beat Alabama for the 2nd year in a row while going 10-3 and winning the Sugar Bowl.

Flash forward to draft night of 2016. Laremy Tunsil could go as high as #1, considering he was one of the best if not the best left tackles in the draft. Minutes before the draft started, a video of Laremy Tunsil smoking weed was posted to his personal twitter. If that wasn’t bad enough, moments later screenshots of him and an Ole Miss football staff member talking about giving Laremy money were posted on his personal Instagram. After being drafted that night, Laremy eventually slipped and told reporters that in fact he did receive financial benefits from Ole Miss.

While it took the NCAA over a year to drop the hammer on Ole Miss, the 2016 season obviously showed that something had changed considering Ole Miss returned to the bottom of the SEC going 5-7.

Since Hugh Freeze was resigned on July 20th of 2017, Ole Miss has not gotten over 6 wins.