It's been about nine weeks since the rant of the off season, and we've finally got a rebuttal.
Back in late January, during a press conference meant to welcome back Chad Morris as the new offensive coordinator at Clemson, Dabo Swinney instead maximized the opportunity to drop a detailed, blow-by-blow account of how Pete Golding and Ole Miss tampered with a transfer linebacker in Luke Ferrelli who was already enrolled and taking classes at Clemson.
In fact, according to Dabo, Ferrelli was getting texts from Golding about making the jump to Oxford while he was in class!
“Tampering 301 is when you’ve got a kid who’s going in the portal to sign somewhere, get them to move there, going to classes and you’re texting them while they’re in class. That’s like a whole other level of tampering,” Swinney shared back in January.
With spring practices opening up at Ole Miss, Pete Golding found himself in front of the media for the first time in weeks and was asked about those tampering allegations directly related to Ferrelli.
"Yeah, I mean, obviously, I think there's two sides to every story, right? And so I'm not going to sit up here and use the podium as a grandstand and all that, right? I mean, that's why there is enforcement, that's why we have a compliance office, right? They do all that."
"The bottom line, the recruitment of Luke—he came on an official visit, right, prior to the Fiesta Bowl, and I told him, 'Hey, I want you to be our green dot Mike, but right now we got a green dot Mike, right? And that spot's not going to be available until we don't have... you know, until we have one available.' And so, I want you... he wants to be here. I said, 'But right now there ain't a spot available.'
"So if that spot becomes available, it's yours, right? So it's a kid that wanted to be here, that we wanted to be here, that at the end of it came open, and he's here and we're happy to have him."
That bit about "I'm not going to sit up here and use the podium to grandstand" certainly seems like a shot across the bow at Dabo, who did precisely that during the introductory presser of Morris that was then dwarfed by his allegations.
Hear Golding's full response in the clip.