Hugh Freeze once called allegations against Ole Miss 'slander.' The Rebels are now bowl-banned.

The Ole Miss football program is in boiling hot water. The Rebels will play the 2017 season under a self-imposed bowl ban, they announced Wednesday, after NCAA investigators hit the program with eight new compliance allegations. More than half of the 21 charges Ole Miss is facing are Level I allegations, the most serious type.

A couple of years ago, Ole Miss started to land a lot of elite recruits, after previously not landing nearly as many. This led to plenty of internet calls that the Rebels must’ve been cheating, and head coach Hugh Freeze didn’t appreciate them.

In 2013, Freeze tweeted:

If you have facts about a violation, send it to compliance@olemiss.edu. If not, please do not slander these young men or insult their family

That tweet’s since been deleted. And in light of recent events, and some not-so-recent events, it’s aged terribly. Ole Miss isn’t contesting that Freeze’s program has committed violations, though it disagrees with the NCAA over how much and many.

Ole Miss stated publicly on Wednesday that “there is sufficient credible and persuasive evidence” of three violations under Freeze’s watch, including two Level I infractions. The NCAA made 13 allegations against Ole Miss last year, and Ole Miss hasn’t contested the evidence on several of them. Nobody here is saying Ole Miss did nothing wrong.

Freeze has already expressed regret over his tweet.

"Do I regret doing that? Absolutely," Freeze said last summer at SEC Media Days. "When I sent the tweet about compliance, I had good intentions.”