Sylvester Croom is building a house. Not just any house, a house of discipline, respect, integrity and success. The 49-year old first year head coach began laying the foundation for this house by installing a code of strict rules, thus establishing discipline in a team that needed it.
“We are going to do things the Bulldog way and I will not compromise,” Croom said.
He hasn’t compromised at all. Croom has shown, with his release of running back Nick Turner, it doesn’t matter how good of an athlete the player is, if he’s not following the team rules he will be either suspended or cut.
“It almost makes me sick,” Croom, said about suspending players. “It is absolutely the most difficult part of my job.”
Difficult or not Croom has taken an undisciplined football team and in only eight months completely changed their attitude and demeanor. Chris McNeil was one of those who was suspended earlier in the spring, but has been allowed back on the team for his final year to anchor the offensive line
“Ive been pretty pleased how coach Croom has did things,” McNeil said, still coughing up grass from Thursday’s practice. “In fact I made a mistake last spring, but I can say this, even though he is a hard disciplinarian the main thing he wants to see is you get better as a person.”
The discipline became so bad last year that even some players said that Croom’s iron fist was needed.
“I don’t have any problem with it,” junior running back Jerious Norwood said. “I feel like we needed that. It’s going to help us out down the road.”
It already is helping the Bulldogs out. There are no more players walking into meetings late, no more athletes skipping classes and making poor grades.
When Croom speaks the players listen. He came into Starkville with an iron fist and has brought discipline back to MSU. Now he’s working on the next step to this massive rebuilding process changing the team physically.
Croom has made it clear on multiple occasions that the Bulldogs are too big and too slow, mostly on the offensive line. This, of course, is a credit to MSU’s former head coach whose recruiting theme was always the bigger the better. Croom is looking in the other direction.
“We want to be a smaller faster team,” Croom announced. “We will be one of the best conditioned teams in college football.”
Although the Dawgs got burnt in almost every first quarter a year ago, they grew more sluggish as the game progressed and had no fight left in the final quarter. Starting center Chris McNeil said Croom has developed a system where that will not be the case this year.
“Every day after practice he’s running us,” McNeil said. “That’s what he said. He wants us to hit that wall and go all the way through it. That way come game time it will not be that big of a deal.”
It didn’t take long for Croom to touch on the depth and talent problems facing the Bulldogs during his preseason press conference.
“We don’t have a lot of room for error,” Croom began. “Our depth is not where it needs to be, our talent level is not where it needs to be, when you start talking about the upper echelon of the SEC. I’d say were in the middle of the road (of the SEC) as far as talent. But make no point about it we will be working to get out of the middle of the pack.”