I'm not sure that's relevant here. Mullen and his staff should know whether the guys they recruit have a chance to qualify or not. That's part of their job. They have access to their grades, just like every other coach in the country does. If they don't know where their recruits stand academically, then they aren't doing their job. I trust him in his judgement on guys like Sanders that people said had very little chance to get in if he does get them to commit. If it doesn't work out, that's on him and his staff.
I think it would be an issue if you somehow had holding rights on guys that commit to you out of HS but have to go the JUCO route or even the prep school route, but that's not the case. Once those players go to Hinds or wherever, they're fair game. We could very well sign a recruit or two out of Ole Miss's class in a year or so. It's happened before several times and has gone both ways- Smoot committed to Ole Miss out of HS, and then us after JUCO for example.
Regardless of the rules, Mullen has to be able to find the best 25 players that he can get and make sure that he can get them to Starkville.
I think what's going to happen in the future is this, because like you said there are always going to be guys that are borderline and won't qualify or whatever- you're going to simply see schools say "Look, we know you're going to go JUCO, but we like you as a player and just know that we're going to have a spot for you after your two years at Jones." The biggest difference is these players won't be listed as commitments like in the past.
I seriously doubt that Nutt recruited those guys without any intention whatsoever of getting them into their program somehow, at some point. And if he did, then that was a bad move on his part.