{"id":775593,"date":"2026-02-25T14:38:13","date_gmt":"2026-02-25T14:38:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/775593\/"},"modified":"2026-02-25T14:38:13","modified_gmt":"2026-02-25T14:38:13","slug":"college-football-tampering-ncaa-promises-penalties-how-dabo-swinney-played-role","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/775593\/","title":{"rendered":"College football tampering: NCAA promises penalties, how Dabo Swinney played role"},"content":{"rendered":"

Jon Duncan, the NCAA’s vice president of enforcement, announced in a memo sent to NCAA schools that the Division I Board of Directors has informed its staff to “pursue significant penalties” against tampering offenders along with publicly identifying those found guilty of wrongdoing, according to Yahoo Sports<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Duncan wrote in the memo that the NCAA is working closely with Geoff Means, the chair of the Division I Board of Directors Infractions Process Committee, to quickly address violations.<\/p>\n

“It is our sincerest hope that these potential policy and rules changes will better serve the new era of Division I while balancing fairness and efficiency to meet membership expectations,” the memo said, according to the report.<\/p>\n

Within the memo, the process includes “streamlining various stages of an investigation, collecting information from schools or student-athletes more quickly, conducting interviews on a shorter schedule and\/or limiting extension requests often made by parties in infractions cases.”<\/p>\n

This heavy-handed announcement from the NCAA comes after Clemson coach Dabo Swinney accused Ole Miss and Pete Golding of tampering<\/a>\u00a0transfer portal signee Luke Ferrelli. Ferrelli re-entered the transfer portal and committed to Ole Miss after initially landing at Clemson.<\/p>\n

“We have a broken system, and if there are no consequences for tampering, then we have no rules and we have no governance,” Swinney said last month.<\/p>\n

Within a screenshot of the memo posted on social media, Duncan identified tampering as falling under the label of “communications of any kind are not permitted with a student-athlete at another school — or any other representatives of their interests, including agents — before that student-athlete entered the NCAA transfer portal.”<\/p>\n

Swinney said he previously warned the Rebels that he would blow the whistle on what he considered under-the-table recruiting if Golding and Ole Miss failed to back off the former California linebacker, who signed with Clemson on Jan. 7 and moved from the West Coast to South Carolina four days later.<\/p>\n

Swinney alleged that Golding texted Ferrelli a photo of a “$1 million contract” and asked about his buyout at Clemson.<\/p>\n

Previously, Golding and Ole Miss pointed fingers elsewhere and were concerned over tampering during the College Football Playoff<\/a>\u00a0with fear former Rebels coach Lane Kiffin was targeting players to join him at\u00a0LSU<\/a>. Numerous Ole Miss players left for LSU even after reportedly signing rev-share contracts, including pass-rusher\u00a0Princewill Umanmielen<\/a>.<\/p>\n

These are not the only instances of tampering allegations since the end of college football’s 2025 season, though certainly the most public.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Jon Duncan, the NCAA’s vice president of enforcement, announced in a memo sent to NCAA schools that the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":775594,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2026],"tags":[8308,92208,1681,109951,331,109952,7,102097,30144,8307],"class_list":{"0":"post-775593","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-football","8":"tag-acc-football","9":"tag-cfb-transfer-portal","10":"tag-clemson","11":"tag-clemson-tampering","12":"tag-college-football","13":"tag-dabo-swinney-comments","14":"tag-football","15":"tag-ole-miss-tampering","16":"tag-pete-golding","17":"tag-sec-football"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@nfl\/116131784740198448","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/775593","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=775593"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/775593\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/775594"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=775593"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=775593"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=775593"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}