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Five days after one of his players became the story of the NFL draft, Mississippi coach Hugh Freeze spent Tuesday playing golf and speaking at a church in southwest Georgia.

Some days, he said at a Fellowship of Christian Athletes fundraiser in Albany, Ga., are more difficult than others. A few of them lately, Freeze was quoted as saying by the Albany Herald, were like being "hit right in the gut with a punch from right field."

Around the time last week's draft began, meant to be a celebration for Freeze and three foundation-block but controversial Ole Miss players, someone later described as a hacker posted on tackle Laremy Tunsil's verified Twitter page a video of the player wearing a gas mask with a bong attached to it. Tunsil's Instagram page later posted screenshots of text messages in which the player asked football operations director John Miller for rent money and cash for his mother's utility bills, a violation of NCAA rules.

"Those are true," Tunsil said in verifying the text messages. "Like I said, I made a mistake of that happening. They happened."

Almost immediately, the spotlight shifted away from the former Ole Miss player and onto Freeze, his program and the mighty Southeastern Conference — all three perhaps made vulnerable by a sequence televised nationally and shared thousands of times on social media. Freeze, whose four years in Oxford, Miss., have been marked simultaneously by a stirring program turnaround and rumors of recruiting impropriety and an ongoing NCAA investigation, has walked a tightrope since taking over a wounded program in 2012.

Whispers have surrounded Freeze, who has improved the Rebels' win total each season, upset Alabama in consecutive seasons and last year reached No. 3 in the national rankings. How did he turn the fortunes of Ole Miss — which finished 2-10 in 2011 — so quickly? How did he lure three five-star prospects — Tunsil, wide receiver Laquon Treadwell and defensive lineman Robert Nkemdiche — from out of state to Oxford after Freeze went 7-6 in his first season leading a major-conference football program?

The rumors quieted for a while, in the shadow of the Rebels winning 10 games in 2015 and reaching the Sugar Bowl. After Tunsil's confession, the questions are back, notably this one: Was Freeze aware his assistants sometimes distributed money to players, and more important, did he authorize it?

"He's going to have some explaining to do," said Pat Dye, the former longtime Auburn coach. "It might've happened; it might not have happened. But there'll be somebody [who] gets fired before it's all over with."

An Ole Miss spokesman declined an interview request for Freeze and Athletic Director Ross Bjork, deferring to a university-issued statement that said the school was aware of Tunsil's remarks and their implications and would "aggressively investigate and fully cooperate with the NCAA and the SEC."

Three years ago, Freeze surprised college football observers by landing a recruiting class ranked No. 7 in the nation by Rivals. Among the 27 prospects were Tunsil, Treadwell and Nkemdiche, blue-chip talents capable of altering the trajectory of a program that had posted back-to-back winning seasons only once in the previous decade.

"How did Ole Miss get the No. 1 player at three different positions outside the state of Mississippi?" said Anthony "Booger" McFarland, a former Louisiana State player who's now an SEC Network analyst. "If there were perception issues of how that happened, now we know. Now we have an inkling of how he got it: When Hugh Freeze has a good class, well now we know how he got them. ... The perception becomes more reality."

Rival fans suggested Ole Miss paid Tunsil's family or offered his girlfriend a scholarship, and Treadwell posted (and then deleted) on Instagram a photo of several $100 bills, reportedly photographed during his recruiting visit to Oxford. Nkemdiche, the nation's top-ranked recruit in the 2013 class, signed with the Rebels after a long commitment to Clemson; ex-Ole Miss coach Houston Nutt had offered Nkemdiche's older brother, Denzel, a scholarship, and Freeze capitalized on his predecessor's clever but perfectly legal recruiting-trail maneuvering.

"I know the way we're doing it," the coach told ESPN in 2013, "and we're doing it the right way."

Tunsil was suspended seven games for receiving impermissible benefits, and Freeze stood by quarterback Chad Kelly, who, after being dismissed at Clemson following an arrest, was involved in an altercation at a bar shortly after signing with the Rebels in 2014. In December, Robert Nkemdiche was suspended after falling out of a fourth-floor window at an Atlanta hotel, and a month later, not long after the Rebels blasted Oklahoma State in the Sugar Bowl, the NCAA sent the university a notice of allegations outlining 13 NCAA violations committed by the football team, including nine during Freeze's tenure.

Freeze has recently sparred with other coaches over the appropriateness of "satellite" football camps, and last year the Freedom From Religion Foundation accused Freeze of pushing his Christian faith on players at a state-funded university. This week a columnist at the Orlando Sentinel suggested Freeze wasn't considered to replace Will Muschamp at Florida, one of the nation's top programs, because of rumors of an NCAA investigation.

"You climb a ladder in a program," former college and NFL coach Butch Davis said, "you bring an awful lot of scrutiny on yourself."

The Rebels were winning, though, the currency that matters most in the ultra-competitive SEC — representatives have won eight of the past 10 national championships — and in January the school rewarded Freeze with a contract extension that raised his annual salary to almost $5 million.

Last week, Freeze traveled to Chicago to stand alongside Tunsil, Treadwell and Nkemdiche as they made the leap to the NFL. The players moved on to begin their professional careers; their coach headed toward home, where more difficult questions seem to be waiting on the horizon.

"His credibility," Dye said, "is going to be damaged. It'll take some time for him to overcome that to me. It may not be with the Mississippi fans and the players and so forth, but as far as the general public, it's going to be the public perception from around the nation."

The former coach went on. Last Thursday was supposed to be the beginning of something. Instead it turned into something much different.

"It could be the end of a run," Dye said.