Pete Golding responds to Dabo Swinney tampering accusations over Luke Ferrelli: 'I think there’s two sides to every story'

Ole Miss head coach Pete Golding responded to Dabo Swinney’s tampering accusations from January regarding Luke Ferrelli. Ferrelli, a linebacker, flipped his transfer commitment from Clemson to Ole Miss after originally committing to the Tigers on January 6th.

Just 16 days later, Ferrelli re-entered the portal and Swinney accused Golding of blatant tampering to get him to Oxford. However, Golding broke his silence as spring practice continued on Tuesday.

“Obviously, I think there’s two sides to every story,” Golding said. “I’m not going to sit up here and use the podium as a grandstand and all that. That’s why there is enforcement. That’s why we have a compliance office, that they do all that. So, the bottom line, the recruitment of Luke, he came on an official visit 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. And that spot’s not going to be available until we have one available.’

“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.’ 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’s not the way Swinney saw it. Ferrelli was barely on campus with the Tigers for two weeks, sparking Swinney to directly call Ole Miss out months ago.

“Listen, this guy has been a head coach for four weeks,” Swinney recalled saying, when detailing the tampering this winter. “I said, ‘You reach out to the GM. I’m going to give him some grace. And you let him know that we know what’s going on, and if he doesn’t cease communication, I’m going to turn him in.’ I really thought that would be the end of it, but it wasn’t.

“…There’s tampering. And then, there’s blatant tampering,” Swinney said at the time. “Tampering 101 is when you’re talking to kids who aren’t in the portal, Tampering 201 is when you’ve already negotiated the deal with the kids not in the portal.

“Tampering 301 is when you’ve got a kid who’s going in the portal to sign somewhere, move there, going to classes and you’re texting them while they’re in class. That’s like a whole ‘nother level of tampering.”