They say we talk football in the Deep South year round.

But let’s just say there has unfortunately been a bit too much football talk at Ole Miss this offseason.

Talk about distractions — the NCAA investigation dragging on, a stinging lawsuit from a former coach, the current coach abruptly resigning from the job just two weeks before fall practice is about to start because of “moral turpitude?”

It’s all connected, of course, since Freeze is the thread ran through all.

But now we have turned the page and there is a new chapter in Ole Miss football history, with interim coach Matt Luke on board and the Freeze drama moving on somewhere else.

We wish him the best, but the fact that his program was plagued by talk of NCAA investigation for most of the six years that Freeze was on the job at Ole Miss says a lot.

We hope that storyline is coming to and end, with Ole Miss ending its dispute with the NCAA once and for all. Maybe then we can move forward, with a fresh start that keeps us tuned into football year-round, but not to the level we have recently experienced.

This has been more than even the hardest core football fans desire.