Three-point stance: Ole Miss, recruiting gimmicks, LSU QB's

Today's edition discusses Ole Miss, gimmicky recruiting and LSU’s new quarterback commitment.

Every team across the country that hates the success Ole Miss has been having in football recruiting in recent years, especially SEC fans, cheered on Friday when they saw Pat Forde’s Yahoo! article on the Rebels receiving a Notice of Allegations from the NCAA, essentially charging the athletic department with dozens of violations in numerous sports.

The immediate assumption was that these allegations were recent, Hugh Freeze and company had finally been caught cheating and Ole Miss would die a slow death.

As Lee Corso says, not so fast, my friend!

I’m not an investigative reporter by any stretch, and I don’t search for dirt while covering the recruiting process. I’m about scouting, ranking and reporting the process from players, their family and coaches and from numerous sources familiar with each situation.

So when word surfaced that this investigation is mainly about women’s basketball, track and field, Houston Nutt and the already hashed-out Laremy Tunsil situation, the disappointment among those same haters seemed evident on social media.

Nearly every time I report on Ole Miss being involved with a five-star or landing a five-star commit, my mentions on Twitter are filled with $$$ signs, allegations of bag men and cheating. Not being an investigative reporter nor working for the NCAA, I have no idea what the future holds when it comes to any program and potential NCAA infractions.

But I do know that general assumptions, the meat and potatoes of Twitter and social media, are dangerous and insulting to many. How does a recruit feel when he commits to a school when internet tough guys throw out $$$ symbols and accuse him of being bought? How do coaches, who work their butts off recruiting players for years, feel when being accused by the nameless all over the Internet of buying recruits?

Does it happen?

Of course it does, I’m not some naïve babe in the woods who thinks all is lollipops and rainbows in recruiting. But in the meantime, the only thing I know is that Freeze and his staff have done an amazing job taking a middling SEC program (at best) and turning it into a recruiting juggernaut and SEC West contender.

Do I think Ole Miss will be impacted this recruiting year by the allegations and the timing in which they were served? Nope. It’s too late for 2016 to be affected that much. But 2017 and beyond could be more challenging and time will tell if the keyboard cowboys of the world are correct and Ole Miss gets hammered for something more recent.

Until then, hats off to the staff for landing some high character kids like Shea Patterson and Gregory Little when no one thought they could.

I used to get annoyed when kids were the ones getting gimmicky with recruiting. Committing to Georgia with a bulldog puppy or to Florida using a baby alligator or revealing the jersey of the team of your choice underneath the jersey of the team you fooled everyone into believing you’d pick. Picking up the wrong hat and throwing it down to choose the one you want. Antonio Logan-El’s puppet show on TV dropping each hat and then pulling out a picture of Joe Paterno as he committed to Penn State and insulted many others.

Heck, one kid even flipped a coin to pick his school.

But that’s just the old, cranky man in me. After all, kids will be kids.

But is it me or are coaches -- grown men -- getting more and more gimmicky with recruiting especially this year? We all know my thoughts on sleepovers (I hate them), but I don’t honestly care if Jim Harbaugh wants to have a cake baked for a kid on his birthday or if he likes to climb trees. And I don’t really care that Notre Dame drove the equipment truck nearly 1,000 miles to greet Demetris Robertson in Georgia on his way to school (and no that shouldn’t be a recruiting violation -- it was transportation after all).

Heck, I don’t even get that upset that Kirby Smart traveled 105 miles-per-hour with a police escort to meet with a recruit and apparently showed up with a live bulldog on that visit, although my assumption is that my tax dollars kinda go toward that police work, right?

I am noticing more and more of a creative arms race developing for recruiting attention. I have a feeling we are just starting to scratch the surface of this in 2016 and the next few years could get downright weird.

I remember when the NCAA allowed for unlimited mailings for a short period of time -- I think it was last year or the year before -- I wanted to buy stock in Fathead because I knew every recruit in the country would be getting dozens of them, but they quickly turned around and killed that idea thankfully.

This honestly needs to be self-governed to me by the coaches themselves. Do whatever you want, but ask yourself this question: Does this shine the proper light on the recruiting process, or am I becoming part of the problem?

LSU got its quarterback in this class and it’s Lindsey Scott Jr. from Zachary, La., a three-star kid with offers from Rutgers, Tulane, Maryland, Syracuse, Wake Forest and a whole bunch of smaller schools.

This wasn’t flipping Ryan Perrilloux from Texas or landing Russell Shepard, JaMarcus Russell, Jordan Jefferson, Anthony Jennings or Hayden Rettig or taking Zach Mettenberger from the JUCO ranks. It isn’t even landing current quarterback Brandon Harris, who has struggled and is part of the reason Les Miles is on the hot seat.

But that may be the good news, as the big-name quarterbacks haven’t worked out so well for LSU if you take away Russell’s big season. There have been some serviceable quarterbacks at LSU in the Rivals.com era, but it’s puzzling why this storied program can’t produce an elite guy.

So maybe a sleeper who wasn’t wanted by many until the very end will be the solution, even if it’s another coach and staff mentoring him.