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Ole Miss commit Willie Gay is at Mississippi State instead of Oxford this weekend

One report suggests foul play.

By Jeff Gray
Student Sports

On Thursday night, Ole Miss commit Willie Gay, a four-star linebacker who recently announced he'll be playing in the Army All-American game, suggested on Twitter that he'd be in Oxford this weekend for the Rebels' high school football camp.

It was another good sign that Gay, a Starkville native who committed to the Rebels back in mid-June, was resisting the hometown pressure and sticking to his pledge to Hugh Freeze. But rumors started swirling the next morning that Gay wasn't going to make it to Oxford, and by Friday night he was instead on campus at Mississippi State for its Big Dawg Camp.

So what happened to change Gay's mind? In a since-deleted tweet, Scout.com Ole Miss recruiting newshound Yancy Porter showed what he claims is a Twitter DM from Gay suggesting foul play by State.

This allegation should, of course, be taken with a grain of salt. For starters, Porter is the only one who's reported this publicly, and he himself quickly deleted the tweet (interestingly enough, however, he later retweeted the above tweet from Brad Logan). Then there's the fact that Gay himself might not be the most reliable source. This is a teenager who is probably feeling enormous pressure to appease a lot of different people, and it's not farfetched to imagine a scenario in which, after giving into pressure to attend the hometown camp, he exaggerated the situation to Porter to avoid disappointing folks in Oxford. Hell, maybe he just wanted to stay in Starkville on Friday night because he had a date or he wanted to play Pokemon Go.

Either way, Gay's supposed message raises a lot of questions. How could State threaten to fire a coach at Starkville High? So whoever supposedly made this threat didn't want Gay in Oxford for this camp but was OK with him, ya know, committing to Ole Miss in the first place? Does "so that's done" just mean Gay was giving up on attending the camp, or does it mean he's backing out of his commitment entirely?

We'll update this if more info becomes available.