Laremy Tunsil’s social media hack fiasco minutes before the NFL draft left everyone wondering what would happen to the projected Top 10 draft pick. Fortunately for the offensive tackle, the Miami Dolphins looked past his faults and picked him up as the 13th overall pick. Tunsil’s freefall costs him about $8 million, dropping from a potential $20.4 million had he been drafted to the 6th spot with the Baltimore Ravens to $12.4 million.
While Tunsil’s series of unfortunate events will possibly blow over in the coming months, Ole Miss is left with a bigger mess than originally thought.
Tunsil’s career at Ole Miss included suspension, domestic violence, and investigations after his stepfather, Lindsey Miller, made allegations of NCAA violations. He was suspended for the first seven games of his final season for accepting impermissible benefits, The Washington Post reports. At the time, when asked about these allegations, Tunsil denied.
Now, after being questioned about the screenshots published to the Instagram account @kingtunsil, which showed a request for money from Ole Miss assistant athletic director John Miller for his rent and his mother’s utility bill, Tunsil admitted the requests were true.
The question is, where does this leave Ole Miss? The college released a statement revealing its knowledge of the story.
“Like we do whenever an allegation is brought to our attention or a potential violation is self-discovered, we will aggressively investigate and full cooperate with the NCAA and the SEC,” the school said in a statement reported by ESPN.
Ross Bjork, Ole Miss athletic director, told Edward Aschoff of ESPN the school will refrain from comments until they hear from the former Rebel to see what he discloses about the text exchange and what supposed money he received. In addition, the school is trying to verify the authenticity of the text messages between Tunsil and Miller.
However, according to an Ole Miss official, Miller served as a liaison for athletes to receive money from the Ole Miss Opportunity Fund, which is available to underprivileged students to fill the gap for their educational and housing expenses.
It’s unclear whether or not it is against NCAA rules to use the fund to pay Tunsil’s bills.
