Ole Miss: The country’s most bizarre National Signing Day

After a tremendous 2013 National Signing Day, it would have taken Godlike qualities (and a Nick Saban resignation) to have propelled Hugh Freeze to those heights.

Instead, the Ole Miss coach continued with another tremendous National Signing Day, solidifying his offensive line with a bunch of offensive linesmen, including four-starrer Rod Taylor, as well as Tyler Putman, and Jordan Sims. They’ll join JUCO O-Lineman Fahn Cooper, who enrolled early.

Defensively, Freeze got JUCO DB Tee Shepard, who had previously committed to Notre Dame and Mississippi State, before he decided to play in Oxford at the last minute. Shepard had said that he would be playing his sophomore year in a community college. Did that all change? We don’t really know.

Speaking of ‘not really knowing?’, did you hear the one about the recruit who sent LOIs to not one, not two, but THREE teams yesterday? His name’s Dacorius (DJ) Law, he’s a running back, and he sent papers to Ole Miss, Utah, and even East Mississippi Community College. We still don’t know if he’s going to end up a Rebel. Nor, it seems, does he.

(Later, Ole Miss released Law so he could go and play for Utah).

But there are two running backs who are DEFINITELY coming to Oxford: D.K Buford and Akeem Judd. We’ll see how they map out. They should be getting some reps bearing in mind that the excellent Jeff Scott’s now graduated. It should be quite a battle at that position – particularly with the talent that’s already there. Ole Miss will be frighteningly deep at the position (see last paragraph of this pre-season report from ‘Red Cup Rebellion’) (not Alabama or LSU deep, but still pretty deep).

Freeze will also be pleased that DB CJ Hampton, who also visited Alabama, Arkansas and Florida State before deciding to go to Ole Miss, kept with his decision to stay with Ole Miss.

Anyway, it was a good class with one recruiting site (247). And it was  17th with ESPN, too.  The Law incident just made it funnier. That – and the fact that Ole Miss failed to tweet out the first name of its first signing of the day correctly: DeMarquis Gates was re-named ‘Demarcus’. But it was early.