Jury: NCAA Not To Blame In Ex-USC Football Player’s Death

FILE - Alana Gee, the widow of a former University of Southern California football player suing the NCAA for failing to protect her husband from repetitive head trauma, leaves the Stanley Mosk civil courthouse of Los Angeles Superior Court on Oct. 21, 2022. A Los Angeles jury has rejected a claim by the widow of a former USC football player who said the NCAA failed to protect him from repeated head trauma that led to his death. The jury found Tuesday, Nov. 22, 2022, that the NCAA was not negligent in the death of Matthew Gee. (AP Photo/Ringo H.W. Chiu, File)

BY BRIAN MELLEY

LOS ANGELES (AP) — In a verdict that could affect countless claims by athletes who sue sports organizations for head injuries, a Los Angeles jury on Tuesday rejected a lawsuit seeking $55 million by the widow of a former USC football player who said the NCAA failed to protect him from repeated head trauma that led to his death.

Matthew Gee, a linebacker on the 1990 Rose Bowl-winning squad, endured an estimated 6,000 hits as a college athlete, lawyers for his widow said. They alleged these impacts caused permanent brain damage, and led to cocaine and alcohol abuse that eventually killed him at age 49.

The NCAA, the governing body of U.S. college sports, said it had nothing to do with Gee’s death, which it said was a sudden cardiac arrest brought on by untreated hypertension and acute cocaine toxicity. A lawyer for the NCAA said Gee suffered from many other health problems not related to football, such as liver cirrhosis, that would have eventually killed him.

Hundreds of wrongful death and personal injury lawsuits have been brought by college football players against the NCAA in the past decade, but Gee’s was the first one to reach a jury. The suit alleged that hits to the head led to chronic traumatic encephalopathy, a degenerative brain disease known by the acronym CTE.

Judge Terry Green told jurors in Los Angeles Superior Court they “made history” in the first case of its kind.

The result could serve as a caution to lawyers preparing to take similar cases to trial, said Dan Lust, a sports law attorney and professor at New York Law School. Before the trial, he had said that a Gee victory could have opened the floodgates against the NCAA. Now, the NCAA has more leverage in future cases.

“Any plaintiff’s attorney is going to think twice before putting all the chips in the table and pushing them to the middle and saying, ‘We’re going to take our case to trial and see what happens,’” Lust said. “You’re going to be much less inclined to take that risk from a cost-benefit perspective.”

Alana Gee choked up as the verdict was read and had tears in her eyes afterward. She told one of her lawyers that she didn’t understand how the jury came to that decision, but thanked the seven women and five men personally as they left the courtroom. She declined to comment afterward.

“We feel deep sympathy for the Gee family right off the bat,” Will Stute, the NCAA attorney, said afterward. “But we feel like this verdict is a vindication of the position we’ve taken in all these cases, which is the science and medicine in Matthew Gee’s circumstance did not support causation.”

Stute had argued that medical evidence is not clear on what causes CTE, and what the impacts are from that disease.

Attorneys for Gee said CTE, which is found in athletes and military veterans who suffered repetitive brain injuries, was an indirect cause of death because head trauma has been shown to promote substance abuse.

Alana Gee had testified that the college sweethearts had 20 good years of marriage before her husband’s mental health began to deteriorate and he became angry, depressed and impulsive, and began overeating and abusing drugs and alcohol.

The NCAA said the case hinged on what it knew at the time Gee played, from 1988-92, and not about CTE, which was first discovered in the brain of a deceased NFL player in 2005.

Gee never reported having a concussion and said in an application to play with the Raiders after graduating that he had never been knocked unconscious, Stute said.

“You can’t hold the NCAA responsible for something 40 years later that nobody ever reported,” Stute said in his closing argument. “The plaintiffs want you in a time travel machine. We don’t have one … at the NCAA. It’s not fair.”

Attorneys for Gee’s family said there was no doubt that Matt Gee suffered concussions and countless sub-concussive blows.

Mike Salmon, a teammate who went on to play in the NFL, testified that Gee, who was team captain his senior year, once was so dazed from a hit that he couldn’t call the next play.

Gee was one of five linebackers on the 1989 Trojans squad who died before turning 50. All displayed signs of mental deterioration associated with head trauma.

As with teammate and NFL star Junior Seau, who killed himself in 2012, Gee’s brain was examined posthumously at Boston University’s Chronic Traumatic Encephalopathy Center and found to have CTE.

Jurors were not allowed to hear testimony about Gee’s deceased teammates.

Alana Gee’s lawyers had argued that the NCAA, which was founded in 1906 for athlete safety, had known about impacts from head injuries since the 1930s but failed to educate players, ban headfirst contact, or implement baseline testing for concussion symptoms.

Florida Universities Aim For Academics After Years Of Sports Fame

VOA

The Florida State quarterback is chased by players from Florida in the last game of the regular season for each team. Neither team won more games than it lost last year. (AP Photo/John Raoux)

In January, the University of Georgia defeated the University of Alabama to win the college football championship in the United States.

It was not a surprise to see the two schools in the final game because they were among the best in the nation. What is surprising, however, is that two other famous football teams from the neighboring state of Florida were so far from the best.

The University of Florida is in the city of Gainesville and Florida State University is in Tallahassee. Both are in the northern part of the state, close to Georgia and Alabama.

The teams lost more times than they won. That is different from the recent past, when they were among the best in the nation. The last year both schools had a good year was 2016. That is about the same time Florida and Florida State started getting national attention for their academic programs.

Top choices for strong students

The two schools are now seen as top choices for students in the southeastern United States.

U.S. News and World Report recently rated Florida fifth and Florida State 19th among public universities. In the 1990s and early 2000s, Florida, also known as UF, was rated about 50th among all U.S. universities. The school is now listed at 28th.

Other publications, including Forbes and the Wall Street Journal, also gave the schools high ratings on their lists.

How did the schools raise the academic bar?

Chris Chouinard is one person who knows about the academic programs at the University of Florida. He completed his advanced degree in chemistry there in 2016. He is now a professor at Florida Institute of Technology.

Chouinard said when he was younger, he had a different idea about the big Florida schools.

“I grew up thinking of a place like the University of Florida as a school that's really good at football and probably really good at partying but not necessarily the best in terms of academics. Well, come to find out that that's not the truth.”

Chouinard said the rise of the academic programs at the University of Florida has been “meteoric.” He credited President Kent Fuchs with pushing the school to think of itself as one of the best public universities in the nation, alongside the University of California – Berkeley, the University of California – Los Angeles, and the University of Michigan.

Before coming to Florida, Fuchs was the top academic officer at Cornell University, an Ivy League university. Fuchs helped Florida raise money, add more professors, and increase attendance.

In 2020, the university announced a partnership with technology company NVIDIA to create an artificial intelligence and machine learning center. One of the founders of NVIDIA is Chris Malachowsky, a graduate of the University of Florida.

Chouinard said the university’s push to be a leader in machine learning will put it in a leadership position for science and technology education.

Gaining an international reputation

Ayobami Edun of Nigeria came to the University of Florida to study engineering.

Ayobami Edun, a Nigerian, is working on an advanced degree in electrical engineering at the University of Florida.

He said he heard about the schools in Florida because his Nigerian university had a relationship with Florida A&M University, another college in Tallahassee. Edun said he chose Florida because “I found out UF was the best in Florida.”

“There’s a very intense level of research at UF,” he said. “And whether you’re going to go into academia or industry, the classes prepare you.”

The Florida State story

At Florida State, former President John Thrasher started an effort to raise $1 billion for the university when he took the job in 2015. Part of the money went toward hiring more professors and helping students pay for college costs.

The new president, Richard McCullough, came from Harvard and Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh where he led programs in information science and biology. His arrival shows the university will continue to support strong academic programs.

The school also centers its effort on keeping students and helping them graduate. Stephen McDowell is a leader in the university’s college of communications. He said, “FSU has gotten recognition for the four-year graduation rate. That’s good for the students (who start their careers sooner) and it also gets attention in the national rankings.”

Why have the football teams struggled?

Between 1993 and 2013, Florida and Florida State combined to have the best college football team six times. But now, the schools are struggling in football, the most popular college sport in the U.S.

David Hale writes about college football for the sports publication ESPN. He said when a school can select more top students, it makes it harder for people who are great athletes but not strong students to get into the school. Hale said university leaders have a difficult choice.

“Are they more concerned with investing in academics and getting your U.S. News and World Report rankings higher or are they more invested in making sure athletics is successful and you’re packing an 80,000-person stadium every Saturday and you’re winning championships?”

Hale said when investment in academics produces better results than money spent on football, it becomes easier to invest in school programs than new sports buildings or a costly new coach.

Hale put it this way:

“You have more investment in your state. And you have higher-achieving workers... And you can attract bigger companies to come there and set up headquarters to create jobs because you have that skilled labor. And all of that stuff has very real, significant, long-term effects that are much more positive than a winning football season is.”

I’m Dan Friedell. And I’m Jill Robbins.

Dan Friedell wrote this story for Learning English.

Nigerian Roots At Core Of Motivation For Seahawks Rookie DB Ugo Amadi

Free safety Ugo Amadi practices during the Seahawks training camp, Thursday, Aug. 15, 2019.


BY BEN ARTHUR

The boy was never supposed to have been conceived.

A Nigerian-immigrant mother, who'd already had four children, was dealing with serious health issues. She had heart problems during the birth of her most recent child. The doctor wasn't sure that her heart could handle the process again, so the message was clear and stern:

No more kids.

But she became pregnant again. Another child was on the way. She didn't tell the doctor that she was expecting a baby until four months later. Concern for her well-being grew to a peak.

No issues emerged throughout the pregnancy, however. And on May 16, 1997 in Nashville, she gave birth to a boy. There were no adverse health issues during labor. No heart issues. No side effects. Nothing. A miracle.

So she named the child 'Ugochukwu.' In the Nigerian language of Igbo, it means, 'a precious gift from God.'

It's a backstory to his life that Ugochukwu Amadi — Ugo for short — doesn't take for granted.

"People say how cool my name is and stuff like that," the Seahawks defensive back said. "It's a lot that I take pride in, especially the (Nigerian) culture that I'm from."

Amadi, a 2019 fourth-round pick out of the University of Oregon, takes pride in his game on the gridiron, too. Particularly with his versatility. The Seahawks are comfortable moving him around the secondary. And they like him for his special teams value, as both a punt returner and a gunner.

His big hit last Sunday on Vikings returner Olabisi Johnson in punt coverage, after beating a double team at the line of scrimmage, went viral on social media. It's been called perfection. In an era where rule changes have many football people scratching their heads on what it means to properly tackle, the 5-foot-9 Amadi showed the world how to do it in a nine-second span — with perfect timing and anticipation.

His emerging playmaking ability has made it hard to imagine a Seahawks' 53-man roster without him.


"He's just done something every time he's been out on the field," Seahawks coach Pete Carroll said. "He's been a really exciting player for us."

On defense, Amadi is shuffling back and forth between free safety and nickel for Seattle. He's been primarily used at the former, but Carroll said he's still very much in the competition for the slot cornerback role — Justin Coleman's spot last season. It's a starting position by default because of how frequently the Seahawks play in nickel packages.


Amadi said it's not challenging juggling multiple responsibilities. He understands that he's a rookie, and that it's important for his role to be fluid. He's new, so Seattle is trying to find the best spot for him. But he hopes that his plays, like his bone-crushing tackle last week, shows that he's eager to make a big impact as a rookie.

Amadi leads the Seahawks in the preseason so far in punt return attempts at four, netting 19 yards. He's tied for second with two special teams tackles. He has five tackles on defense (including a quarterback hit) and a pass deflection. He's even done kickoff return, too. Amadi returned one kick in the preseason opener against Denver for 15 yards.


"This is how I want to be able to come into the NFL," Amadi said. "I want my presence to be felt. I want to just make sure that I'm not here to play around. I'm here to make a living, to make a name for myself."

He was a big playmaker for the Ducks, especially on special teams. A Pac-12 All-Conference second-team selection in 2018, Amadi led the league with 15.93 yards per punt return. He became the first FBS player since 2015 and the first Pac-12 player since 2007 to record two pick-6's and a punt-return TD in the same year. As a senior, he was one of four Power 5 players with at least two interceptions returned for scores.

Amadi on defense posted 55 tackles, including five for loss, and 1.5 sacks in 2018. He was named a semifinalist for the Jim Thorpe Award, which is given annually to the top defensive back in college football.

He's been a humble learner in Seattle, according to teammate and fellow defensive back Bradley McDougald. He has stayed ahead of the game by constantly studying his playbook. He speaks less and listens more.

"If one player is getting coached, he takes the same advice for himself," McDougald said of Amadi. "You don't see him making a mistake that another rookie makes. That's a good trait to have."

Amadi has already performed a perfect tackle, but he doesn't know what his perfect rookie season would like yet. Why? He doesn't necessarily know what to expect. He's learning each day. He wants to run with the first-team defense in practice before he looks too far ahead.

But he does know the kind of effect he wants to have with the Seahawks in Year 1. He wants his competitive edge to show. He wants his teammates and peers to know that he's a playmaker — that when he gets the ball, he's going to do something with it. Something exciting.

He sees football as part of his name's meaning, his 'precious gift from God.'

"I'm going to be able to take care of my family with this career," Amadi said.

SOURCE: MY SAN ANTONIO

Oklahoma's Murray Beats Alabama's Tagovailoa For Heisman

Oklahoma quarterback Kyler Murray, winner of the Heisman Trophy, looks at the award Saturday, Dec. 8, 2018, in New York. (AP Photo/Craig Ruttle)
BY RALPH D. RUSSO

NEW YORK (AP) — Kyler Murray waited three years to fulfill the five-star potential he brought to college football. With one shot to deliver, Murray replaced a Heisman Trophy winner by becoming a Heisman Trophy winner.

The Oklahoma quarterback won college football’s most prestigious individual award Saturday night, beating out Alabama’s Tua Tagovailoa and setting up a College Football Playoff matchup of Heisman winner versus runner-up.

“This is crazy,” Murray said in his acceptance speech. “This is an honor, something that I’ll never forget. Something that I’ll always cherish for the rest of my life.”

The fourth-ranked Sooners play the top-ranked Crimson Tide in the Orange Bowl semifinal Dec. 29 in the seventh bowl matchup of Heisman winner and runner-up, and first since second-place finisher Vince Young and Texas beat Reggie Bush and Southern California in the 2006 Rose Bowl.

This season, Murray stepped into the starting job at Oklahoma held by last year’s Heisman winner and first overall NFL draft pick, Baker Mayfield. Oklahoma is the first school with have Heisman-winning quarterbacks in consecutive seasons and the fifth overall with winners in back-to-back years. Mayfield was also a finalist in 2016.

“Luckily, we’ve been here three years in a row,” Oklahoma coach Lincoln Riley said. “We’re going to have to start paying taxes here.”

Unlike most seasons, the winner was no foregone conclusion, but Murray (517 first-place votes and 2,167 points) ended up with a fairly comfortable margin of 296 points over Tagovailoa. Ohio State quarterback Dwayne Haskins, the other finalists, was a distant third with 783 points. Three more quarterbacks followed: Will Grier of West Virginia, Gardner Minshew II of Washington State and McKenzie Milton of Central Florida.

Murray appeared on 92 percent of the Heisman ballots, third most all time. Tagovailoa’s 1,871 points was the most for a runner-up in the 84-year history of the Heisman.

Murray, a pinpoint passer and explosive runner, surpassed the production of Mayfield. Murray has averaged 380 yards of offense per game and accounted for 51 touchdowns in leading the Sooners the Big 12 title and the playoff. Mayfield averaged 353 yards of offense and accounted for 49 touchdowns as Oklahoma won the conference and lost a playoff semifinal to Georgia.

“This didn’t just happen,” Murray said later during a news conference. “I’ve put so much time and effort into this game.”

Murray said he was in constant contact with Mayfield this week.

“It was just casual, bro-to-bro. He just told me to enjoy it. Have fun with it. It’s a once in a lifetime deal,” Murray said.

Tagovailoa was the Heisman front-runner for most of the season, but Murray surged late as the Sooners turned to him and their offense to bailout a leaky defense down the stretch. Meanwhile, Tagovailoa picked a bad time to have his worst game of the season, throwing two interceptions in the Southeastern Conference championship against Georgia and leaving early with a sprained ankle.

Murray’s first season as a starting quarterback in college is set up to also be his last. The junior has already signed a $4.66 million contract with the Oakland Athletic after he was selected in the first round of the Major League Baseball draft in June. Listed at 5-foot-10 and 195 pounds, Murray is small for an NFL quarterback but talented enough to be an intriguing prospect if he ever decided to give it a try.

For the next month, though, Murray is focused on capping his college career with a national championship. He took a circuitous route to get to a place most always expected him to be.

Playing for Texas powerhouse Allen High School, just outside of Dallas, Murray won three straight state championships at the state’s highest level and his team went 42-0 with him starting.

“Kyler’s journey, in particular, it’s kind of the stuff of legends,” Riley said. “But with all the high points there’s been a lot of tough moments.”

Murray signed with Texas A&M in 2015, but transferred after one tumultuous season.

At Oklahoma, the plan was sit the 2016 season to fulfil NCAA transfer rules and then step in for Mayfield in 2016. But Mayfield was granted an extra year of eligibility and returned for 2017, relegating Murray to backing up the best quarterback in the country.

This season, as the focal point of Riley’s creative offense, Murray developed into the dominant player he had seemed destined to become while at Allen.

“I trusted the process,” Murray said.

Murray fought back tears while thanking Riley during his speech.

“You pushed me harder than any coach ever has and I just want to say thank you for believing in me and allowing me to be the quarterback of this team. The leader of this team,” Murray said.

Murray is the fourth Oklahoma quarterback since 2003 to win the Heisman, joining Jason White, Sam Bradford and Mayfield, and the 16th quarterback overall to win the award in the last 19 years.

Oklahoma’s seventh Heisman matches Ohio State, Southern California and Notre Dame for the most by any school. That means another statue in Heisman Park in Norman, next to Memorial Stadium.

“I just hope they put the Bandana on me,” Murray said. “I hope they get the swag right.”

___

Follow Ralph D. Russo at https://twitter.com/ralphDrussoAP and listen at https://podcastone.com/AP-Top-25-College-Football-Podcast

Troy Surrenders To Mormon Country Youths

Oh what a game

You like the Trojans?

Yes, I live down the street

Trojans got to win

Yes, they have regained the lead

Against the Mormon Country Youths

Touchdown with 17 seconds

On the clock;

Mormon Country Youths now leads 23-21

Against the Trojans

Call reversed

Trojans 21-Mormon Country Youths 17

10 seconds on the clock;

Touchdown

Mormon Country on fire

Jubilation all over

Another one bites the dust

A Troy fall

All Ole Miss' Freeze Has To Do Is Win

Dennis Dodd, 

Senior College Football Columnist

CBS Sports, May 28, 2013

DESTIN, Fla. -- Hugh Freeze looked around the halls of the Sandestin Beach Hilton and wondered out loud how many of his peers would have done the same thing. Ole Miss' coach then answered himself, out loud.

"I don't know anybody else who would do that," he said.

It's been almost four months now since Freeze issued this tweet to cyber snipers questioning the legitimacy of his consensus top-10 recruiting class.

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

And so they replied via that email portal, at least 85 times according to the Memphis Commercial Appeal. The responses varied from the entertaining -- "Go Home Hugh, you're drunk" -- to what AD Ross Bjork said Tuesday was a legit 25-30 beyond the lunatic fringe that the school is looking into.

"There is nothing from those emails that we're majorly concerned with," Bjork said.

The SEC doesn't take kindly to upstarts as it is. But this rising program that wakes up every day banging its head on a cement ceiling in the SEC West has brought this scrutiny on itself. After landing that monster class, Freeze was tired of the innuendo, so he knowingly sought going viral.

He vetted the subject of tweeting his message with school attorneys and Bjork. Then, when the responses started flowing in the school hired a powerful outside firm (William King ofLightfoot, Franklin & White ) to begin sifting through the responses.

"Whether it was right or wrong [to tweet out], as God as my witness, our coaches are doing it the right way," Freeze said Tuesday here at the SEC spring meetings. "If there is somebody out there who is giving us an advantage and it's an illegal advantage, I want to know. There's too much at stake. So tell me."

They have tried. So far, Ole Miss is clean after recruiting way above its pay grade. And there's probably not a coach under the Hilton roof who would have the stones to make the same Twitter dare as Freeze. Now comes the hard part. Freeze has to win. Get out of fourth place in the West, become a factor in a league has a clear and distinct caste system.

Clearly, Ole Miss is not one of the haves at the moment. It's going to be extremely difficult elbowing into the elite this year. Try a five-game stretch in September and October that goes -- at Texas, at Alabama, at Auburn, Texas A&M and LSU.

"Unrealistic expectations always produce frustration," the coach said. "That was my message to all these alumni groups. The reality is we could have a worse record and be a better team."

Either the Rebels come out of that forced march as the "it" team in the SEC, or beaten and bloodied. So, yeah, Freeze has a great recruiting class and all but the defense has to get better. Quarterback Bo Wallace has to improve. The offense may have to outscore people to compensate.

"The difference between us and Alabama right now is [Nick Saban's] got a bunch more Robert Nkemdiches," Freeze said. "We still look at our depth chart and we're not there yet. We're not at an SEC depth chart yet [compared to] LSU, Alabama, Georgia. But we took a step in a right direction."

That step included landing Nkemdiche, the nation's No. 1 recruit, as one of the four five-star recruits in the class. But even that didn't come about until the Rebels beat Mississippi State and won the bowl game to finish 7-6. The mandate from Nkemdiche's parents, Sunday and Beverly -- natives of Nigeria -- was that the program show improvement before Robert would come.

"They told us we needed to be in a bowl game," Freeze said. "They didn't say we needed to beat State but that's what it came down to [to get to a bowl game]. She's in charge, the mom in that culture. That's the queen bee, now. They want to please their mom. Her desires are very important to them."

About Jan. 1, Freeze decided the staff was going all in. There would be no backing off on their top targets. Freeze's staff milked relationships, recruited like mothers, targeted Jan. 25 as a date when they could get all their big recruits under one tent for one big last-push weekend. The plan is to do the same in 2014, two weeks prior to signing day.

This past February, top-ranked receiver Laquon Treadwell signed along with coveted offensive lineman Laremy Tunsil. It was somewhat of a holiday on Tuesday when Nkemdiche enrolled in summer classes. But the game is full of Coach Februarys. Freeze knows the next time isn't going to be as easy.

"Unfortunately, I don't think it will work as well next year because it seems like everybody else has ratcheted up their game," Freeze said of recruiting. "It sure seems like everybody has upped their aggression. Last year at this time I felt like we were pushing as hard as any. Now it's everybody -- Auburn, Tennessee.

"Last year we never really had to fight Auburn or Tennessee for a kid this early. That's changed."

It may be that Feb. 3, 2013, may be a once-in-a-lifetime recruiting confluence of factors for Ole Miss. It's what you do with those recruits that matters. The program hasn't won an SEC title in almost half a century. It has two winning seasons in the last nine. It took that furious finish in 2012 for Freeze to end up 7-6 in his first season with the Rebels.

There is almost no margin for error. None of the five starters on the offensive line missed a start last season. Three got injured in the spring.

"And we were awful," Freeze said.

Prior to Ole Miss, he had been most noted for being Michael Oher's high school coach ofbook and movie fame. Blind Side helped him get a job on Ed Orgeron's Ole Miss staff. That lasted three seasons.

"I'm better for being around Ed Orgeron," Freeze said. "I give Ed a lot of credit for my experience with him. We were really close on a lot of people in recruiting. Ed had a plan and you just don't vary from the plan. The problem with our plan is you have a tough time having a significant amount of Plan Bs. That can be a problem."

Plan Bs -- it should be noted -- are not those Plan As. And if the Plan As had not flocked to Oxford this year? Even a thinner margin for error.

"We'd be a little behind right now," Freeze speculated. "It would definitely be disappointing."

The 43-year-old Mississippi native arrived at this moment because he refused to let that cement ceiling stop him. How tough can the SEC West be when four years ago he was coaching at an NAIA school that no longer exists.

"I basically told my wife ... 'I'm going to go find the worst college football job and see if I can win,'" Freeze said. That was after not being retained by Houston Nutt at Ole Miss following the departure of Orgeron in 2007.

He found his bounce back at Lambuth University in Jackson, Tenn. The school shut down in 2011. Not before Freeze went 20-5 in two seasons with, according to the coach, "nowhere to dress, no facilities, no stands."

From there, he went to San Jose State briefly before getting the offensive coordinator's job at Arkansas State in 2011. By that time, Hugh Freeze was washed clean. He had won at a no-count NAIA program. He had won 10 games at Arkansas State and captured the Sun Belt.

He had, for one shining moment, become the best recruiter in the SEC.

The next significant date marked on his calendar should be Aug. 1. That's when the NCAA will start holding head coaches more accountable for wrongdoing in their program. It is considered a watershed moment in NCAA enforcement. With his Twitter feed, Freeze already has opened up a portal directly to his compliance office.

Up to this point, accountability hasn't been an issue. Now all Freeze has to do is win.