Talk to any coach and they will say college football recruiting is a war these days. The recruiters are the soldiers battling for the weapons they will one day put to use on the field-the athletes. In the Southeastern Conference that war is more heated and more competitive than any conference in the nation. Head coach Sylvester Croom once said, “All is fair in love and recruiting.”
“It’s vicious. Recruiting is just vicious. To be honest with you it’s a lot tougher than the games,” Croom said.
The first year head coach saw the muck of recruiting when he was an assistant at Alabama from 1976-86.
“I knew it when I left the conference,” Croom said. “It’s even more intense now.
“Everybody had talked to me about how the rules have changed and how much better recruiting is. I think it’s a lot tougher.”
Recruiters will use any means necessary to persuade student-athletes to sign with their university.
Before Mississippi State received its NCAA penalties last week, recruiters from other universities were exaggerating the uncertainty of the penalties. Mississippi State lost four players last year due to the overhanging investigation, an investigation that brought a rather light punishment for the Bulldogs, but was stretched to unimaginable lengths by opposing recruiters.
Now that the penalties are finally uncovered, MSU has another obstacle to hurdle regarding the recruiting war…its facilities.
Mississippi State’s football facilities are in the middle of the pack in the Southeastern Conference. Most of the football facilities lie in the outdated Shira Field House.
The Bulldogs’ weight room is shared by all MSU sports and State does not have any kind of lounge for its athletes. The training room is not up to SEC standards and the meeting room is mediocre compared to those at other universities.
LSU is an SEC Western Division foe that Mississippi State has to battle every year, but the Bulldogs not only battle the Tigers on the field.
They clash with LSU on the recruiting trail year-in and year-out. Not only do the Tigers have a tradition rich program, but they also house some of the finest facilities in all of college football, a plus during the recruiting war.
“When players come to visit and your competing with other universities and when everybody else has better facilities than you have-where they sleep and where they eat is better quality than you have-all those things are used against you,” Croom said.
The Tigers have a 140-seat auditorium that has state-of-the-art audio and visual components necessary for meetings, reviewing of game tapes and lectures.
LSU athletes have a lounge that they can relax in which features a 72-inch, big screen TV with a DVD player and an X-box game console, a pool table, a foosball table, a computer work station and six laptop computer hook-ups for players to work and check e-mail.
LSU houses the largest and most complete athletic training facility in all of collegiate athletics. Some of the features of the 23,000-square foot facility include an on-site X-ray room, an in-house pharmacy, as well as state of the art hydrotherapy pools.
The wheels are in motion on the campus of Mississippi State to equalize the facilities of the Bulldog football program to rival other universities and one day place MSU in the upper echelon of the SEC, starting with the new addition onto the Shira Field House.
The addition will be composed of two floors. A weight room, for football use only, will be on the bottom floor, along with a training room. The training room is supposed to include a number of whirlpools and a separate pool that is equipped with a treadmill running on its floor, head trainer Paul Mock said. New locker rooms and equipment rooms will be on the second floor.
“It’ll be a first class facility when it’s done,” Croom said of
the addition that was not hindered at all by the school’s loss of the SEC Championship game revenue and SEC bowl share money this year.
Last year that money estimated 2.7 million last year. “I think it will allow us to compete with most of the schools in this conference.”
Mississippi State will not receive that money because they are banned from post-season play this year.
Associate athletics director Duncan McKenzie said the addition will cost around six million dollars, although that number may fluctuate because some decisions on the equipment have not been made.
State got many of ideas for the building from NC State’s facility, which is one of the most luxurious football complexes in the nation, but Sylvester Croom says he is not after luxury as much as dependability.
“Remember when we talk about facilities were not trying to build the best and most luxurious facility,” Croom stated, “We want quality and long-term durability.”
The architect, Skip Wyatt, visited the campus of North Carolina State to get an idea for the addition to the Shira. NC State just finished building a 103,000 square foot state-of-the-art football complex, which includes high tech meeting rooms, a 7,000 square foot locker room and an enormous player lounge.
A key component of the addition to Shira will be the players lounge.
“It’s going to have a players lounge, where we can keep the players together and have more unity,” assistant athletics director Bobby Tomlinson said.
Tomlinson said Mississippi State will be able to show recruits around the new building by February, but the Bulldogs will not be able to actually move into it until the first of April.
“I have seen quite a few locker rooms (around the nation) and this is going to rank right up there at the top,” Tomlinson said. “It’s something we can be very proud of and compete, as far as facilities, with the rest of the conference.”
Other schools in the SEC have recently finished building football complexes.
Auburn University built a new indoor practice facility that houses a 40-yard artificial turf field. The facility, which measures 155 feet by 210 feet, has a heating system and is cooled by large fans.
The University of Mississippi has recently revamped their football facilities by building the Starnes Athletic Training Center, which has a 10,000 square foot weight room, new locker rooms and state-of-the-art training rooms.
“Believe me, in this country period, but especially in this conference, there is no stone that goes unturned and the smallest most insignificant thing could be huge in the mind of a 17 or 18 year old,” Croom said.
“Even if it’s not, a professional recruiter can make it seem significant in the mind of a 17 or 18 year old as far as making a decision,” Croom said.
Every year during the recruiting season a national war is transpiring. Although you cannot hear the gunfire, it’s still there. With the building of this addition, the Bulldogs have taken a step closer to winning the war.