12/21/24
December 03, 2003
[E]arly this week, MSU did something that no other SEC school had ever done. It hired a black man to be head coach of its football team. This, at a school where -- in 1963 -- the all-white basketball team had to sneak out of town, in defiance of state authorities, to play an NCAA tournament game against Loyola, which put black ballplayers on the floor. Oh gasp, oh horrors. MSU lost that game but may have planted a seed.
Which has now grown into ... Sylvester Croom, the first black head coach of any SEC football team. This is a man everybody in America should be pulling for in the same way that Rush Limbaugh said the press was pulling for Donovan McNabb. One hopes, devoutly, that Croom takes State from the wilderness to some BCS bowl. Maybe against Notre Dame.
posted by Ufez Jones to football at 01:55 PM - 2 comments
I'm rooting for the guy, but I don't see much chance for him to turn Mississippi State into a big winner in a conference as tough as the SEC.
posted by rcade at 08:09 AM on December 04, 2003
Great speech. Best comment I heard all day yesterday (sick at home, you tend to hear so much more sports news): "Hopefully, a year from now, this won't be a story."