ESPN college football insider Pete Thamel joined The Pat McAfee Show on Monday and discussed Clemson head coach Dabo Swinney calling out Ole Miss for what Swinney called “blatant” tampering.

Swinney and Clemson athletic director Graham Neff met with the media Friday and announced they turned Ole Miss head coach Pete Golding and the Rebels in to the NCAA for possible violations. Clemson accused Ole Miss of tampering with linebacker Luke Ferrelli, who was not in the transfer portal and was enrolled at Clemson and attending classes and team activities when the Rebels made contact.

In his press conference, Swinney called it a “whole other level” of tampering and said what Ole Miss did was “Tampering 301,” meaning an extreme level. Swinney also had a message to all the head coaches across the country, challenging fellow coaches to turn in tamperers and calling for his coaching colleagues to “be an example to young coaches in this profession and be people of integrity, or just shut your mouth and don’t complain again.”

Thamel broke down Swinney’s tampering allegations against Golding and says it’s rare for coaches to call out other coaches like Swinney did.

“I think the most important part of Dabo Swinney’s direct calling out of Ole Miss and Pete Golding is just how rare it is in the modern landscape,” Thamel said. “A, you don’t hear sitting head coaches, especially those who’ve won two national titles – he’s one of two guys who’s won two natties that’s active right now — just get in front of a microphone and lay out, piece by piece, allegations of tampering, giving specific examples of evidence in how the tampering went. That is the ‘wow’ in all this. That just does not happen in an environment in college football right now where tampering is par for the course, man. Tampering is first and 10. It is rampant, it is out there, and one of the reasons why it’s so rare that coaches call it out is a vast majority of them or their staffs are doing the same thing. Dabo is one of the few coaches whose backyard is clean enough that he can come and say, ‘Hey, look, this is happening. This should not be happening.’ If you talk to Group of Five coaches, FCS coaches, people like that – they could give you examples. What’s happened is generally on the landscape, coaches have become cavalier about this. They have not been careful. They used to use burner phones.

“Now it’s just, as Dabo alleges, pretty blatant. The head coach is texting, allegedly, the linebacker [Ferrelli] – who’s very good, by the way – in sociology class to say, ‘Hey, come here, and here’s what we’ll do and here’s how this will go.’”

Thamel added that Swinney’s comments about tampering have been “wildly applauded” around the coaching industry.

“So, around the industry, Dabo’s move was wildly applauded,” Thamel said. “Because in general, people want rules, right? In general, people want paradigms, guardrails, however you want to say it. People want rules and they want them to be followed. But college football, as we know, and college athletics in general, have a rich history of rules being made and people finding ways around the rules. It is the least surprising development in the history of college athletics that this iteration we’re in right now has followed along with that. That now the CSC [College Sports Commission] and the NCAA — people thought it was the NCAA that couldn’t enforce the rules, but the reality that we’re learning is nobody wanted to follow the rules, so they’re not going to until someone forces them to do it.”

The NCAA responded Friday night to Clemson’s allegations, with NCAA Vice President of enforcement Jon Duncan saying in a statement that the NCAA “will investigate any credible allegations of tampering and expect full cooperation from all involved as is required by NCAA rules. … We will not comment further on any ongoing investigation.”

Thamel says the Clemson/Ole Miss tampering case will be “a fascinating test case,” though Thamel doesn’t know how much of a difference Swinney’s comments will ultimately make in the grand scheme of things.  

“So, this specific case is going to come to the NCAA. I was told by NCAA officials on Friday that they processed 90 tampering cases in the last year. Now, that could include tennis or ping pong or whatever else. There have been, since the NIL era started, I would say there has been a distinct lack of high-profile tampering cases, considering how rampant it is in the environment. … So, this is going to be a fascinating test case going forward,” Thamel said.

“But let’s be real, say Pete Golding gets caught here, say he did what he’s alleged, and the NCAA finds evidence to charge him. Is that going to stop an environment where I would estimate 90 percent of the schools are doing some kind of tampering? My guess would be no. So, ideally, what Dabo did, people were applauding and they were behind, and there was a wave of enthusiasm for that. But until that changes the reality, I don’t know how much of an impact it’s going to have.”