SOUTHEASTERN CONFERENCE MEDIA DAYS

July 28, 2005

Sylvester Croom

COACH SYLVESTER CROOM: Great to be here in Birmingham again. Being in the company of our talented writers here and first of all, I want to say to all of you I appreciate a lot of you. First time I met you was last year. I appreciate working with you and the way that you cooperated with me through my initial season as a head coach in this conference. It's a lot different coming here this year because I get to talk about football instead of myself. That's very exciting. As far as our season goes, we're really looking forward to the football season this year. It's a lot different for me and for our entire football team as we go into this season. We have a better understanding of who we are now and where we're headed. A stark contrast from last year. Last year we were trying to put systems in and learn each other. Going into this season, I know the players' names now so that's a big help as well. We're looking forward to the season with great anticipation. A lot of that's because I feel like we're much improved over the end of last season. I don't think there's any question that we're better than we were at the end of last season. I base that on the attitudes of our players through the offseason, through spring practice and through the course of this summer based on where our strength coach has told us has taken place in our off-season program. I think we're closer to being a team. I think we have a better idea of the concept of oneness, of team, whereas last year we didn't. Not at any time last year did I feel like we were a football team. We were trying to find our way, trying to develop into a team. A group of individuals looking for a way to win. We didn't believe we could win. The latter part of season we started to thinking that we could win. As we go into this season I think our players believe that they can win now. By know that we're going to have some tough struggles as we go through this season. We do have some weaknesses, we have a tough schedule, but we're not intimidated by any of that. We're truly looking toward to this season, just to see how we stack up with other people because we have paid the price during the course of the offseason, our players have confidence, individually and collectively that we can compete with the other teams in this conference. I am pleased that I think as I said earlier that our players do have a better attitude. We're not selfish like we were last year. And no greater indication of that's a number of position changes that we had during the spring. We moved Quinton Culberson through the course of last year -- when we came also year Quinton was a corner; he moved to safety. He moved to outside linebacker; now he's our starting linebacker and probably the heart of our defense. That's a big transition convincing him that that was the best spot to help us and also give him the best chance to move to the next level. We moved Deljuan Robinson to defense end to defense tackle, big switch. I once thought about moving him to the offensive line. We talked about it. I told him I would never talk to him about it again unless he brought the subject up. I am glad he hasn't brought it up because he's going to be a fine defense tackle for us. We moved Titus Brown, one of the toughest decisions I think I have had to make since I have been at Mississippi State, from middle linebacker to defense end. When we started spring practice I didn't feel like we had a bona fide genuine leader in the defensive line group. Deljuan has emerged to be that, but the main reasons I moved Titus to that position was I wanted somebody in that group that I knew was going to battle for 60 minutes every time he went out there on the field, practice or game, or knew he was going to get his best, for a guy who was all ACC freshman going into his sophomore year and moving him to that stop was a tough decision. Titus is a natural pass-rusher, I think he will an big plus for us. The thing he brings to us at that position is intensity and a relentlessness that I want to be characteristic of our defensive line. We moved Demario Bobo from corner to free safety to give us range and speed in the secondary. Got some young corners coming in that we want to get in the rotation give them a chance to play in. Overall I think that that indicates changing guys around and trying to get them in the best position, knowing their strengths and weaknesses, gives us a better chance to win. We moved Jason Husband from wide receiver to tight end, gives us some more vertical stretch up the field. That's a big plus for us. Probably our most improved player in the spring. Right now, that attitude change is the thing that makes me more excited going into the season. The other thing I am excited about is I think we had a good recruiting year. I think our talent level particularly at the skilled positions is going to be much improved over last year. The downside of that is they are going to be freshman. We're counting on them to help us come in and play. We all know that's tough in the Southeastern Conference. But we don't have a choice. Right now they give us some depth. They improve our talent greatly over last year and we're going to give them every opportunity to play and we're counting on them to play. We're going to have to do an outstanding job of coaching and it's a great challenge to myself and to our coaching staff to bring those young men along as fast as possible without putting them in a situation where they lose their confidence. They are mature individuals. This class is coming in, mature people, they showed that during the course of the recruiting to sign with us, a great many of them committed to us, didn't take any more visits, could have gone anywhere in the country but they had the vision and the belief in our program that we could be more than what we were last year. And it's that vision by those young men that I am counting on to really be the building blocks for the future of our program. I think our players believe in our philosophy now. That was a hard sell. Doing things the Bulldog way, playing as a team, playing tough physical football, playing smart football, being in the best possible condition that we can be in. Never ever giving up. That's our attitude. It has taken some time to buy into that, some guys to buy into that philosophy. Some did not buy into that philosophy. They chose to go elsewhere. We wish them well. But the ones who stayed believe now in our way of doing things. So as I stand here today with the beginning of practice only about a week away, we start practice our players report next Wednesday, we will start practice on Thursday, even if we have to work around exams on Thursday and Friday, we will be practicing at different times during the day, just to get around exams and the toughest thing about it is getting our freshman caught up as fast as possible because they are going to have to play. But we're excited about it. Looking forward to it despite that a lot has been mentioned about the toughness of our schedule, the stretch in there where we have got Georgia, Florida, LSU. Hey, that's playing the SEC, if you want to run with the big dogs that's what you got to do. Our players are not afraid of it and I know I look forward to the challenge. Our coaches look forward to it and at some point, they will be worried about playing us instead of us worried about playing them.

COACH SYLVESTER CROOM: First thing you have to -- a lot of it goes into the kind of players you recruit and things are going to happen in college football. Any of you guys who of covered it for a long time, you know things have happened. There are things that happened when I was playing, that went unreported, nobody ever found out about it. That's a whole lot worse than what these kids are doing now. It's just different now. Everybody, you got the intensity of the media scrutiny, the expectation of the fans, everything goes, nothing happens that's not reported. A common fight gets in the media. I mean you are going to have fights in college. Guys are going to have fights. There's always fraternities and the players, you know. As a head coach you don't condone it, you try to make players understand that this is the society we live in today. You try to avoid those situations, try to recognize bad situations and stay out of them. You try to have enough discipline try to teach them to have enough discipline to walk away from things. Now we're in summer school, we're having anger management seminars, having different conduct seminars from our resource people on campus to try to teach our players how to walk away from bad situations. But things are going to happen. Now, you makes the rules, in your program and when they do cross the line, the key is at a head coach is to discipline them in a fair and just manner.

COACH SYLVESTER CROOM: Oh, yeah, that's right. Now we're probably going into the season we're -- instead of being in our 81 maximum that we're allowed based on the probation, we're probably going to be at about 75. This is something that we just have to deal with at this particular time. It's something that I knew going into -- when you are trying to build a program, those players did not choose me as their head coach and some of them, I knew they were not going to necessarily agree with our philosophy and might decide to go elsewhere. Two of them I was very -- I totally understood them. Kenny Kurn (phonetic) and let's see who else, Kurn was one of them, and he left because they just weren't going to play. They were backup players and we had one or two players we wanted to change positions on and that I felt like would help us as a team and also give them a better chance to move to the next level and we couldn't come to an agreement on. They wanted to go somewhere else and play. I have no problem with guys wanting to go and play the game, particularly as they get into their senior years. That was not going to happen in our place.

COACH SYLVESTER CROOM: Jerious is our best football player, particularly on the offense side right now and definitely one of our best leaders right now. I expect a great season out of him. I think he was right around a little over a thousand yards last year and should have had about 3- or 400 more but that's par for the course when you first get into a new offense. Aman Green (phonetic) had the same problems his first year when I was with him at Green Bay, little things on players as far as understanding blocking schemes. I expect them to have a better feel for the blocking scheme and anticipating where the holes are. He will be a lot better this year than last year. As far as our offensive line goes right now, that's probably our biggest weakness right now as far as our offensive tackle. We're going to do some things to shore that up. We're going to move Brian Andersen to left tackle, Johnny Wadley will be our starting left guard, Avery House will go into starting right tackle. What that does with McNeil at center and Strauder at guard that gives us the five offensive line that I have the most confidence in that will compete, will practice hard and compete every day in practice and go out and give us the best chance of winning ball games. We'll also count on some of our freshman to give us some depth there. Moving a young man we signed Mike Gates out of Atlanta who we signed as a tight end and we signed him at about 260 pounds; right now he's at 295 pounds with 20% body fat. I say, "Son, you're a left tackle." So he's going there. Calvin Wilson, big offense tackle, we hope will compete for the starting right tackle position. At some point those two young men's development is going to be a key for us as far as development of our offensive line. Dunning (phonetic) is another young man and John Carpenter both from here and Alabama, we think have the talent to be very good players in this conference. Their development will be key to our success in the offensive line. Our offensive line coach has a great challenge ahead of him but he looks forward to it with great anticipation. I am glad he's our offensive line coach because I know he will get it done.

COACH SYLVESTER CROOM: It's part of our philosophy as far as in recruiting. We like to recruit the best possible athletes and then the best athletes and guys who we feel like can compete then we're going to put the best 11 guys on the field regardless. When we were recruiting we tell players we try to recruit as many two-position players as we possibly can, guys that can play defense and offense, if you are offensive linemen, I like to recruit guys that can play tackle guard and center. So we can get the best 11 guys on the field at all times. We're not going to sign many guys that can only play one position. If that's the case he better be the best at that position.

COACH SYLVESTER CROOM: Until you asked that one I thought I was going to get through this one without that question. It still comes up just, as you brought that one up this morning occasionally. But it's a lot better. As I said in my opening statement I am I am glad it's not about me now. This is the day that I look forward to. I knew last year that that was part of the first year that I was going to have to answer that question throughout the course of the year. And I am glad that's over now. Now we can talk about building the program. I feel a lot better than last year. To be very honest with you, I don't know how I survived last year. As I look back on it. It's tough now. Being a head coach in college football is a difficult job. It's a 24-hour-a-day job. Last year I think I must have been working on 36 because there was never enough time. My coaching staff did a great job in handling the football part of it and now I can get more involved in that and do the things I really do enjoy as far as spending time with our players and coaching the game.

COACH SYLVESTER CROOM: I think the biggest thing that young coaches have to understand as they -- any young coach that aspires to be a head coach as he goes through his development process, I think he should put on paper what he believes in and whatever his plan is for being a head coach he should put it on paper as he develops through the course of his career. That I think is absolutely critical. That way he's prepared when the job interview comes, that way he's prepared the first day he walks in as far as letting his staff and his players and administration know exactly what he believes in. And I think he can better articulate his plan when he does it -- if he's already done that. To answer your question, I am going to say this, I hadn't told a lot of people this, when -- everything that's happened in my life as far as a career and I think in a lot of coaches's lives very little of it has been planned. The opportunity to become a head coach came at an unexpected time. The interview when I interviewed the University of Alabama came at an unexpected time. For years I had known exactly what I wanted to do when I got to be a head coach. But when that interview came it was not on paper. It was not on paper. I went to the interview, and I scrambled the night before we went down just to try to get some things on paper, Mike Sherman and the guys at Green Bay did a great job of helping me put things together. When we got there it wasn't needed but I knew right then when that interview was over after I didn't get the job. I said, I may never get another chance to be a head coach but I am not going to get caught this time, so that summer I spent my entire vacation, I put everything I believed in on paper, everything, what I expected the coaches to do, what kind of uniform we were going to have, all of it was done the summer after I didn't get the Alabama job. That's what I did in my vacation when I went to Mississippi State, it was all on paper. So there was no hesitation about what we were going to do. None at all. That's my advice to coaches. Because when you go as a head coach you better believe, you better have a plan and you better totally believe in your plan and that's why we won't every deviate from the plan, we have to win because I believe in it.

COACH SYLVESTER CROOM: Speed is a key ingredient in our decision-making. A couple of things I look at. First of all, is to get winning football players on the field. Part of my biggest job is -- as far as recruiting, getting the type of people in the program that I think will give us a chance to win and then once we get those players into the program after we see them perform on the field is making sure we get them in the right positions. We want to get the best 11 football players on the field continue given time. I have even told Amos Jones our kicking coach, I said, if we don't have 11 back-ups in a kicking situation I want -- we're not good enough to waste a play just trying to get a backup player on -- if Quinton Culberson is the best guy to go, down and cover a punt then he's going to be out there doing that. He's going to have to get a lot of rest because he's going to cover that punt. If Jerious Norwood is our best punt returner gives us the best chance to win he's going to be back there. We're going to put the best 11 guys on the field. That's one of the biggest things that I have to do is change guys around and get them in a position where we can do that. Now, the key ingredient in that is recruiting players who trust our coaching staff and trust me to make those decisions. That's why in the recruiting process -- I was recruiting a player, a couple of players last year, and right down to the end you go through all the stuff about facilities and chance to play, but the bottom line in recruiting comes down to this, I tell the prospects all the time at some point you are going to have to decide that you trust me and our coaching staff more than you trust the other team and their coaching staff. Quite frankly if you can't do that then you need to go to another team because somewhere during the course of your four-year career I am going to ask you to do something you are not going to understand. If you don't trust me you are not going to do it then we have got a problem.

COACH SYLVESTER CROOM: I think he will handle it with no problems at all. Jerious and I have sat down and talked about it. Even this week we had a long talk the other day, came over to my office and we talked about some things and about the possibility of NFL career, I have had some scouts call me and ask me, they were very impressed with him. The thing I told him with this and I think my NFL experience will help, about agents, the discussion went like this: Don't even think about agents right now, not even pro football because the business at hand is playing the game. Don't get the cart before the horse. If you play well, all of that's going to take care of itself. No agent is going to get you into the first round of the NFL. You are going to get yourself into the first round in the NFL by playing. How I play is going to be a factor. We will worry about that agent stuff in spring. Let's focus on the here and now. You can't worry about next spring because you can't do anything about that right now. Focus on the game in hand and those games. The future will take care of itself from there. The big thing about it, I want him to have fun and enjoy the senior year. He has earned this opportunity to be in the spotlight and that's what any great talent does. Now, he -- another thing I mentioned to Jerious, to all our players, he's going to get advertisements from companies, pay millions of dollars for this year. Take advantage of it. Right now you are the president of Jerious Norwood, Incorporated. Take every advantage of the media attention. Sell yourself. We have media seminars and we have etiquette seminars. I want our players to understand that every time they step in front of that camera, every time they get an interview they are advertising for their company, themselves. They are the president of that company. I want them to conduct themselves accordingly because never again will they probably get this free advertisement that they are getting right now. That's what college football does for them. Maybe some of them get a job, might get one of your guy's jobs.

COACH SYLVESTER CROOM: No, no. We will let somebody else do that. No, no. You can't, the coaches challenging is fun because you get to get make sure things get checked that you want to get checked, but I don't think it's feasible in college football because the thing that quite often goes overlooked is the technology and the cost of the technology. You have to think about all the games that are not televised, every state, every stadium, you would have to have enough camera angles in that box that whoever staff member is up there making that call can see it in about 8 to 10 seconds and then have the head coach throw that towel. I did that at Green Bay and even in the NFL system I was hesitant quite often to make that call because you don't want to give up that timeout. It's probably more important in the NFL because the NFL -- you can't burn timeouts in the NFL because you are going to have to have them in the last two minutes because the clock keeps running. Because of the expense in college football that it would take to get the proper camera angles for a coach to make that decision I don't see that ever happening in college football.

COACH SYLVESTER CROOM: The first day I came in I told them, this is, you know, asked them if they want to win and then asked them how many wanted to pay the price to win. This is the way I think it will be, that I know we're going to have to win. We're not going to always be the most talented team in the conference. We're going to recruit hard but we're recruiting against some tough people. We have got Alabama right next to us, Ole Miss up there, there are going to be some years that we may not be will most talented but we're not going to write that season off and say we can't win. I had an interesting conversation with a (inaudible) coach recently and he said the years he went to -- the last time Alabama won a National Championship that they had about 10 players starting at Alabama that he didn't offer scholarships to and he said you don't always have to have the great blue chip players. Find your kind of guys, find the guys that want to be in your program. Fine the guys that believe in doing things the way you want to do them, coach them up, get them ready to play and then go out there and win football games. That's what we want to do. We're going to find Mississippi State type people. We're going to find guys that believe in doing things the Bulldog way. Our way is not the only way. Our way may not be the right way, but it's our way. And anybody that doesn't believe it they need to be somewhere else, coaches, players, anybody. But the guys we put out there, they are going to believe that we're in that room, it's important they are going to go out and fight for it every time they go out there. I believe we get enough talent, we're going to get it, might have to go to Korea to get it but we're going to get it.

COACH SYLVESTER CROOM: I thought it was going pretty good until I took that step up over there. It is better than -- I had a little relapse about two weeks ago, a little tendinitis in the quad tendon and I got scared, it popped a little bit and then I didn't do anything for about two weeks and so I lost a lot of the work that I had done, but it's gotten a lot better this week. Our trainer has -- we got this new thing over there, in our training room with the treadmill called a hydro-works, whatever it is, but it is a treadmill down in some water, you get in there and you run on the treadmill in the water. One of the greatest things in training that I have ever seen. We're glad to have it in our new facility.

COACH SYLVESTER CROOM: Oh, yeah, it's harder than I thought. You go in with rose-colored glasses on. Actually I forgot who it was, I think it was Cecil asked me, "no matter how bad you think it is, it is going to be worse." Yeah, it was tougher because changing attitudes, changing peoples' heart, getting people to be unselfish, getting people to sacrifice for others, for a common goal, I think is the most difficult thing you can do, I don't care what organization it is, because we by nature are selfish people, all of us. We look out for our best interest. To get us to put our interest aside for the good of others, to get players to move from a position that they dream about all their lives of playing -- I went through it too. I always wanted to be -- he never exactly said why he wasn't moving me in different positions, but I trusted him. I believed in him. The worst mistake in my career was not moving to center when he first asked me to. So when I talk to the player, I relay that to them. I understand how they feel when that dream of playing a certain position has to change for the good of the team. And they have to trust me and the staff that we're also going to look out for their best interest.

COACH SYLVESTER CROOM: When I played at Alabama, you never thought about losing. You expected to win. There are stages, you hope you can win, you think you can win, you believe you can win and you expect to win. Last year we didn't even think we could win. Didn't even think we could win.

COACH SYLVESTER CROOM: No question about it. One of the shocking things, you asked me earlier on when I walked into that room the first day when we had the press conference when I took the job, I knew then that it was going to be tougher than what I originally had thought because you could see in the way our players sat in their seats, that we were defeated. That went on even when we won the -- be honest with you I was surprised we won the Tulane game because we just didn't -- talent level was down but the talent level aside we didn't believe we could win. We're not the most talented team in the world now, we're going to win some games. People don't think we can win because our players think they can win. Part of that's in my terminology, they have been through the fire now. That offseason program our spring practice was very, very intense. They are going to get a little heat here in the next two weeks to pick it right where we left off this spring but they know it's coming. They are actually looking forward to it. I can see the look in their eyes, the smile on their face, the work doesn't scare them anymore. They embrace it now. They are willing to pay the price. They have got confidence in themselves when they look around in that room. They know those other guys got something too because they all went through it together. That's what is different about us now. I don't know what our record is going to be. But I know we're going to be a better football team than we were last year.

COACH SYLVESTER CROOM: Something that I would like to see the coaches have some even some more organized drills. We try to do things as far as -- we have academic meetings all the time, seminar-type things that we have. Our coaches have to go spend a certain amount of time with their positions as far as just seeing how they are. When we go, we don't talk football at academic meetings. I would like to engage in instructional drills. Every other sport has it. So we can be around the players in the offseason more than we are right now. I think this is one of the things, I know when I was at Alabama I refer back to that it was one of the things that I always liked about coaching there, he always would come around and just sit down and talk to you about things other than football. And spend time with the players and that's what made him a successful coach. Because he knew his players and that's the thing that we're trying to do with our players as well as spend time with them, make yourself available to them. Our coaches have their players over their homes all the time. Whenever I get mine finished it's been a year now I am going to do the same thing.

COACH SYLVESTER CROOM: I think we made tremendous improvement during the course of the spring, something that we weren't very good at last year was our three and five-step drop game but we improved tremendously on that during the course of the offseason and it takes a while. Not only for Omarr but even our coaches. A lot of our coaches had never been in the system before, they have been used to doing certain things, we had our meetings this week and I can tell just a big difference. We're all speaking the same language about the offense now and that's a lot better. Some of them had to get used to it because they never been in it. But it's what we're going to do. It's who we're, and I was the same way when I first -- when I first went to Green Bay I took the approach I tried to wipe my mind of everything and start over again and that's why I was able to pick it up and that is why I believe in it so thoroughly now. Our coaches now have done that and I think we will be a lot better for it now.

COACH SYLVESTER CROOM: Eric Butler has tremendous ability when I was at Green Bay, I thought -- he should be one of the best tight ends in the country. Right now he's playing at about 60 percent of his ability. He has got to play a lot better than what he is capable. He should be right now particularly with our young wide receivers, our starting -- the most explosive guy for us should be Eric Butler. He's a key part of our offense, the tight end position gets the success of that position, is critical to the success of the West Coast offense. Those are the guys you go to in clutch situations, of course they are one-on-one those are the guys you go to in the red zone. He has got to make plays.

COACH SYLVESTER CROOM: Well, we have to recruit out-of-state a lot. Last year over half of our signing class and a lot of it was because of academics. A lot of the players the top players in Mississippi last year were not able to qualify and with the new APR rules and with the new academic changes in the core requirements, something we do in our recruiting is we try with our academic staff about mid-October, we try to predict whether we can get those players in or not and also predict our academic staff has to tell us not only can we get them in, do we think they can graduate. And if they can't tell me 90% assurance that that's going to occur, then we let -- inform those players that we can't sign them. In our offer letter, that's in there that the offer is based on academic performance. So we have to go -- we figure out how many people that we're going to recruit at each position and the academic requirements predicting those guys can get -- this is a key ingredient in that. We signed some players last year that we knew we weren't going to get in. We felt like they were good people. We wanted them in our program. We had alternative plans for them to bring them back at some point. We had two others who we thought we were going to get in. Probably going to miss it by less than a point or one grade. That's some of the chances you take sometime. But the academic capabilities is always figured into us why while we are recruiting. We have to recruit foreign wide. We're competing with other teams, our neighbors and the recruiting gets pretty intense. But fortunately we have done very well in Georgia, we recruited in the Houston area and Louisiana. We have got some very good connections out on the coast in California and so we recruit all across the country to find our kind of players that can get in school and also we think can predict a high percentage that they can graduate as well.

COACH SYLVESTER CROOM: We're very fortunate right now in that most of the players that left our program were eligible when they left. This is something I brought up at our SEC meetings and coaches. The way the rule is currently set up I think it really does handicap coaches going into programs who are trying to instill a disciplined way and players decide that they don't want to be there and they leave, you can in some ways handicap. What I worked consistently with our compliance and our academic staff to try to gauge that, but at the same time my approach has been this: Particularly right now-we may have to -- hopefully we stabilize and we won't lose anymore. And as I said most of them that did leave were eligible when they did leave but you are going to lose a point anyway because they left. But whatever we have to do now to get our program where we need to go even though we may have to, hey, realistically my theory is we might have some probationary years down the road. This is something I have to deal with. But my philosophy, bottom line is this: I am not going to compromise what I believe in to worry about losing a scholarship, bottom line. If we have to play with 50 and we got 50 guys that I believe in then we'll play with 50.

COACH SYLVESTER CROOM: We didn't stretch the field enough offensively. That's something we have to do better this year because we do have an outstanding running been and there are going to be eight or nine guys at the line of scrimmage and our receivers are going to be out there with single coverage on their corners and we're going to need speed to run by people. We're going to put the ball down the field this year a lot more than last year. We couldn't do that because we didn't have the speed to go deep. We got some speed now. We're going to stretch the field a little bit more. If those kids are going to load up on Jerious, go right ahead and do it. We welcome that opportunity. That's the primary thing offensively. Defensively I think we're in good shape. We made those moves to get Quinton and O'Neal on the field last year. I think we're going to be a lot better -- our speed on defense, our overall team speed is a lot better than last year. We're definitely going to be a lot better tackling team than we were last year.