Clemson head coach Dabo Swinney has turned the Ole Miss football program into the NCAA for alleged tampering, he says. Swinney held a press conference Friday afternoon in Clemson, S.C., and spoke openly about the Rebels’ recruitment of linebacker Luke Ferrelli.
Ferrelli committed to Clemson out of the transfer portal from Cal earlier this month. Swinney claims Ole Miss doubled Clemson’s $1 million offer to Ferrelli and he decided to re-enter the portal and commit to Ole Miss. Swinney says Ole Miss coaches were contacting Ferrelli after he had enrolled and attended classes at Clemson.
Ferrelli is currently on the Ole Miss campus in Oxford and is attending classes.
Swinney said that Ferrelli’s agent, Ryan Williams, told Clemson that Ole Miss was still in pursuit of Ferrelli, even after he had attended classes. Swinney then said he told his general manager Jordan Sorrells to contact Ole Miss GM Austin Thomas to tell him Clemson would turn Ole Miss in for tampering, if it continued.
“The GM (Thomas) assured Jordan that he had communicated to the agent that he wanted no part of this and that his relationship with Jordan was more important to him than Luke Ferrelli, but that ‘Pete Golding just does what he does,'” Swinney said.
Ole Miss has yet to release a statement on the matter.
Swinney alleges that Sorrells met with Ferrelli and learned that Ole Miss head coach Pete Golding had inquired about his buyout. He also said that Ole Miss quarterback Trinidad Chambliss and former Ole Miss QB Jaxson Dart contacted Ferrelli, too.
“Sorrells met with Luke face-to-face in his office and Luke communicated to Jordan and Ben Boulware that Pete texted him on Wednesday morning, the head coach at Ole Miss, when he was in his 8 a.m. class,” Swinney continued. “And he said the text message said, ‘I know you’re signed. What’s the buyout?’ And Luke said that coach Golding also text him a picture of a $1 million contract. Luke also mentioned to Jordan and to Ben that Coach Golding had Trinidad Chambliss call him from his phone and that Coach Golding was there continuing to talk on his phone to push him to re-enter the transfer portal. He also said that Jaxson Dart had reached out and called him. But Luke again assured Jordan that he had no intention of leaving.”
Swinney called the situation hypocrisy.
“It’s total hypocrisy, because all this is going on while they on the other side are trying to fight their defensive end from going in the portal,” he said in reference to Princewill Umanmielen, who recently transferred to LSU. “They have accused publicly others of tampering with their roster and their players, while they are over here tampering. This is just a really sad state of affairs and it’s, to me, we have a broken system. If there are no consequences for tampering, then we have no rules and we have no governance. This is not about a linebacker at Clemson. I feel sorry for the young man, to be honest with you. I blame the adults. If you want to have adult world, there needs to be adult consequences.”