Mississippi State will always have a special place in my heart. As John said yesterday (in the release), I have been part of this university for almost two decades, five years as a student-athlete and 14 years as a coach, and I was a fan before that. Mississippi State will always have a place in your heart, won't it? And I don't want to interfere with that in any way." Ultimately, the hiring of a new coach will be John Cohen's decision 100%. I feel like my role is if a candidate has any questions about any things that might come up I will be there to help answer those questions. And whatever part that I can play in that I want to do. And I want to see Mississippi State continue to do well. I still care an awful lot about Mississippi State. "I want to help make the transition as easy as possible for when they hire the new head coach.
Will you have any input on the hiring of a new head coach? It is a win-win situation for everybody." I can do all the things a father is supposed to do. I can be home every night and also take my kids to school. My wife and kids won't have to be worried about me being gone so many nights at a time. It is a great opportunity for my mother and father and my wife and kids. It is an unbelievable opportunity because my father will be able to help teach me the business. "Our plans are to move back to my hometown of Fulton and learn the family business. And that is fine but it had come to a point where I couldn't do what I needed to do at home." It is a great job with great benefits but it requires for you to be on call, basically, for 24 hours a day.
This job requires more than it did 10 years ago before social media was around. I never want to be doing a job where I wasn't able to give it 100%. But I felt it was the appropriate time for me and my family and for Mississippi State. "I have had 14 wonderful years at Mississippi State. It made it easy for me to tell him what my struggles were. But once he started talking about some of his personal experiences, we were extremely honest with each other. "No, I had pretty much made my mind up before I went into the meeting but I wasn't going to tell him yes or no right then. So, I didn't feel it was appropriate to put off what was pretty much inevitable."ĭid you tell John that you were retiring when you were talking to him in the meeting? It wasn't an easy decision to make but I had thought to myself if I would still be doing this five years ahead and I told myself no. So, we wanted to wait until after the SEC Championship to make that call. To keep it quiet for this long was something that we decided to do because I didn't feel telling our team then would help them as a team or help in recruiting. When did you make the actual decision to retire? At that point, I told him what was on my mind." I felt like he would have some good advice for me. He had just switched careers, going from coaching to administration. I knew he had gone through something similar. "In late January after a compliance meeting I asked John if I could have about 10 minutes of his time. When did you talk to MSU Athletic Director John Cohen about it? I felt like I couldn't do my job the way that it should be done as a coach or as a father. When you get into that situation, then it is probably time to do something else. I know what this job requires but you also feel like you need to be home with your family, too. The hardest part of coaching for me is the time on the road, recruiting, traveling and being gone three and four nights out of the week for sometimes three weeks in a row. Now that we have three children - our youngest is three and our oldest is eight - we have been talking about it for awhile. "This is something that my wife and I have been talking about for the last couple of years.
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