Man of principle

Bulldogs' historic new coach has his team on the straight and narrow

Sylvester Croom spent 17 years as an NFL assistant before taking the job at Mississippi State. AP

SI Exclusive Flashback By Rick Bragg - April 19, 2004 History really was made here, in the college town of Starkville, Miss., not far from the Alabama line. One of the last unwritten taboos in college sports really was busted here, amid the dark pine barrens and clear-cut timber and nowhere roads, when Sylvester Croom became the first man of his color hired as a head football coach in the storied Southeastern Conference. Yet four months later if you ask players, fans or university officials whether history has been made, they tend to say much the same thing, at first: Mississippi State hired a coach, not a color. FULL STORY

BIRMINGHAM, Ala. -- Last week, a Mississippi State football player made the mistake of arriving 10 minutes late to his health and nutrition class. After sneaking through the side door and settling into an unclaimed seat near the front of the room, any thought he might have had about getting away with it was soon dashed when he heard a familiar voice in the back asking the professor a question.

"I couldn't help myself," new Bulldogs head coach Sylvester Croom said. "They were talking about eating disorders and losing weight -- and I was really interested in the losing weight part. I sort of got into the discussion.

"[The player] about fell out of his chair."

An SEC-record media contingent of more than 700 reporters flocked here Wednesday to get a glimpse of the conference's first ever African-American head football coach. The news, however, is not the color of Croom's skin. Nor is it his rejection last year by alma mater Alabama. After spending time with him, it's clear what really makes Croom's story unique: He's a college football coach who cares about the college part.

Raised by a minister and a teacher and a disciple of legendary coach Bear Bryant, Croom was disgusted at the lack of discipline among his players upon taking the Mississippi State job last November. At his first team meeting the day of his hire, two players arrived late, several slouched in their chairs. Another was writing something while he spoke.

Most galling of all, though, was that he would soon find out many of his players weren't attending classes.

"The idea of not going to school in my house? My dad would spank you raw," Croom said. "We had the value of education hammered into us at an early age. There was never any question we were going to college."

And so, while the typical first-year coach can usually be heard yapping about things such as conditioning and toughness and the need to recruit better athletes -- especially one trying to rebuild a program that's won a combined three conference games in the past three years -- Croom has devoted more energy to academics than any other area. His schedule packed full of speaking engagements and media appearances, his sleep reduced to three hours per night, Croom has still found time to periodically attend classes to check up on his players. His staff receives daily reports on each player's class attendance, and no player can live off campus unless he maintains at least a 2.2 grade-point average. Anyone who skips class does 5 a.m. detention runs.

Last February, one of the first major decisions he had to make as coach was determining the fate of leading returning rusher Nick Turner, who had struggled academically and had plead guilty to passing counterfeit money. Croom ultimately dismissed Turner from the team but allowed him to keep his scholarship for the spring semester so he could leave the school in good academic standing. "If a kid doesn't get that degree, it's going to affect him, his family, the kids he's going to have," Croom said. "That's a heavy burden to have. I agonized over that decision for a week."

This would all sound like lip service, if not for the fact that everything about Croom seems to ooze principle. Portly but distinguished, serious but funny, the deep-voiced 48-year-old was an All-America center at Alabama, where he became one of Bryant's favorite players and the namesake for the team's "Commitment to Excellence Award" given each spring (the one current Tide coach Mike Shula unwisely renamed for a short period last spring).

After playing just one game in the NFL with the New Orleans Saints, Croom spent 11 years as an assistant at Alabama before moving with then-Tide head coach Ray Perkins to the Tampa Bay Bucs in 1987. Over the next 17 years, Croom would serve as running backs coach or offensive coordinator for Tampa Bay, Indianapolis, San Diego (with which he went to Super Bowl XXIX), Detroit and, for the past three seasons, Green Bay, where he worked under Mike Sherman.

During his time in the NFL, Croom says he watched one too many players get cut and, having never attained their college degrees, wind up in dire straits, thus providing an inspiration for his educational emphasis at Mississippi State.

"I don't want a Mississippi State player to play four years for us and not be capable of supporting his family," Croom said. "Twenty years from now, they won't remember the scores. But they'll have kids, they'll have mortgages, they'll have car payments. If they're capable of dealing with that because of what we went through during this time, then it's all worthwhile."

Croom's priorities make him a seemingly ideal fit for the collegiate ranks. And yet strangely, he'd probably still be a professional coach if not for Mike Price's rapid exit in the spring of 2003.

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Back then, Croom wasn't on anyone's head-coaching radar, pro or college. He hadn't pursued any college openings because there was only one he wanted: Alabama. That long-awaited opportunity was nearly in hand when, following the Price debacle, the Tide went looking for someone within the 'Bama family. Shula and Croom became the most popular candidates. Faced with a chance to make that historic first black hire, however, the school instead went with Shula -- the candidate with considerably less experience.

Croom went back to Green Bay figuring he'd lost his one chance to return to the South. Little did he know that his failed bid had caught the attention of one of 'Bama's SEC West rivals, one whose head coach, Jackie Sherrill, was squarely on the hot seat following two straight losing seasons and impending NCAA sanctions (Sherrill would retire midway through the season).

"He [Croom] was on the list, but I'm not going to lie to you, the thing at Alabama put him in the forefront a little more," Mississippi State AD Larry Templeton said. "In talking to people around football, they never had a negative comment about him."

Templeton and university president Dr. J. Charles Lee traveled to Green Bay twice to visit with Croom. Going into the second meeting, "I had made up my mind I wasn't going to take the job," Croom said. "I had never intended to coach anywhere in college but Alabama."

All that changed, however, when Lee started sharing his vision for the job and the university, how he wanted to change the often-unflattering image of their state and university, how he wanted a to find a football coach who would act as an ambassador for both the academic and athletic sides.

Finally, Croom brought up his biggest reservation.

"I told him point blank, 'If you're hiring me because of my color, you've got the wrong guy.'"

These days, it's the media alone that's focused on his color (for what other reason would the season-opening Tulane-Mississippi State game be on national television?). From day one, Croom has refused to play the role of trailblazer. Asked at Wednesday's news conference if he had any thoughts about being "the first African-American to stand at that lectern," Croom bluntly replied: "Nope."

Meanwhile, any concerns that a southern school's fans and alumni wouldn't support a black coach have, predictably, been proven ludicrous.

"He could run for governor of Mississippi today, he's that popular -- and he hasn't coached a game yet," Templeton said.

The school is even printing up 50,000 t-shirts for the Tulane game that read, "Maroon -- it's all that matters."

"I'm just glad I had one year left to experience it," Bulldogs receiver McKinley Scott said.

SEC commissioner Mike Slive watched Croom's media address from the back of the room. Asked later about the significance of the moment, Slive paused and smiled.

"I knew when he was hired that it was a historic moment," the SEC commissioner said. "Today, I was saying to myself, '"This is another historic moment.' And the best story of all is that next year, it won't be a story."

Stewart Mandel covers college sports for SI.com.