You want a real college scandal? Mississippi has one.

While UNC awaits its next NCAA hearing in August, a controversy has broken out in the state of Mississippi that has a former football coach at Ole Miss suing his old school for defamation of character and a Mississippi State graduate uncovering a tawdry phone number that led to the resignation of the latest Rebels’ head coach. No kidding, all true.

It started the way most college scandals do, with some recruits being offered impermissible benefits to either attend a school or be taken care of while they are busy, ahem, matriculating. In this case, Ole Miss responded to the NCAA allegations by pointing fingers at former coach Houston Nutt who was succeeded in Oxford by Hugh Freeze, the architect of top ten teams allegedly built through illegal recruiting.

With lawyers from all parties and a Mississippi State alum who is writing a book on the scandal pouring over phone records and other evidence, one particular call to a 313 area code forced Freeze to resign. The call was to an escort service, which Freeze denied making but quit anyway.

Freeze had attempted to blame the recruiting violations on his predecessor, Nutt, a current CBS analyst who filed the defamation suit against his old school to clear his name. That’s when the embarrassing phone number was discovered and Freeze stepped down apparently to escape more bad news.

Smack dab in the middle of the whole mess is Steve Roberston, a Mississippi State grad and recovering addict with an MSU tattoo on his left hand. He was writing a book about the scandal, which is sort of like the N.C. State hackers who have made it their life’s work to find dirt on Carolina.

Robertson befriended the attorney representing Nutt and together informed the Ole Miss legal counsel what they had found; within a few weeks and without explanation, Freeze was gone. Obviously, there’s a lot more to the story.

This is all before the NCAA completes its official investigation and hands down penalties to the school. Sort of makes how Carolina conducted its business with the NCAA look highly professional, doesn’t it?

(Photo: David Quinn, AP)