Tag: Mississippi State Football

Mississippi State RB Kylin Hill returning for senior season

Mississippi State running back Kylin Hill is passing up the 2020 NFL draft and will return to the Bulldogs for his senior season

One of the SEC’s top running backs is coming back to school for another year.

Mississippi State’s Kylin Hill is passing up the 2020 NFL draft, and will return to the Bulldogs for his senior season. He made his announcement via social media Wednesday.

Listed at 5-11, 215 pounds, Hill is a tough, physical running who put up big numbers for MSU in 2019. He racked up 1,350 yards and 10 touchdowns on the ground this season, and will be primed for another big campaign in 2020.

Don’t be surprised if Hill is among the top running back prospects in the 2021 NFL draft class.

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Mike Leach is disappointed Mississippi State ditched its ‘malicious’ visitor’s locker room

The new Mississippi State coach once said the Bulldogs’ visitor’s locker room was so awful it was brilliant.

Only a few months ago, Mike Leach described Mississippi State’s visitor’s locker room as the worst in college football. He told ESPN that the Bulldogs’ locker room for the visiting team was so awful that it was “the ultimate touch of brilliance.”

So when Leach — who was officially introduced as Mississippi State’s head coach Friday during a press conference — went to go check it out Thursday night, he said he was actually a bit disappointed. That terrible, brilliant locker room, which he called “literally a work of art” Friday, has since been turned into an office.

“I was slightly disappointed that the greatest visitors’ locker room of all time is no more,” Leach said Friday.

At the beginning of the 2019 football season when Leach was still the head coach of Washington State, he spoke to ESPN about Mississippi State’s visitor’s locker room and said:

“My heart swelled with pride because I knew that there may never be a better visitor’s locker room than this one. Every wall was concrete: The floor was concrete, the ceiling was concrete, everything was concrete. There’s no furniture, there was no benches, there was no lockers.”

Leach, of course, shared some in-depth views on the Bulldogs’ old visitor’s locker room:

“I wanted to go down memory lane to that old visitor’s locker room, the artistry of which I truly admire. I mean that sincerely. Maybe my taste and view on football and sports are a little different than others, but the old visitor’s locker room at Mississippi State was literally a work of art. And now it’s an office. …

“Obviously, if you’re the home team, you want to have most advantageous visitor’s locker room you possibly can. Nowadays, in these kinder and gentler days — it was utterly outstanding. Just the thought that went into it, the malicious intent, the ‘Hey, it’s tough to play on the road attitude.’ Yep.

“And I counted them and — if I recall right — 37 nails in a concrete block, two toilets with no seats or no lids in the middle. One roll of toilet paper in the middle. And I was convinced here I’d have the opportunity to enjoy the fruits of the locker room of that magnitude.”

Well, maybe not.

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Washington State RB had the best reaction to Mike Leach’s departure

Wazzu running back Max Borghi has a good feeling about this.

Mike Leach is known for a lot of things, particularly his quirks and peculiar in-depth analysis on things like which Pac-12 mascots (or coaches) would survive a battle royale.

On the football field, it’s all about his “Air Raid” offense with his aggressive passing attack. In Leach’s 18 seasons as a head coach at Texas Tech and Washington State, his offenses have led the nation in passing 10 times, and every season since 2013, the Cougars have finished ranked in the top five in both total passing yards and passing yards per game.

Despite a disappointing 6-7 2019 season, Washington State is No. 1 with 5,683 passing yards and 437.2 yards per game. (LSU is No. 2 in both categories and seems likely to pass the Cougars in total passing yards in the national championship game Monday.)

But Thursday, news broke that Leach is leaving Washington State for the SEC to take over at Mississippi State after the Bulldogs fired Joe Moorhead last week at the end of his second season.

A lot of people are excited about this news, including new Ole Miss coach Lane Kiffin and college football Twitter in general. But Washington State sophomore running back Max Borghi is too, judging by his response to a tweet from Leach.

The 5-foot-10, 197-pound running back from Colorado was Washington State’s leading rusher this season with 817 yards and 11 touchdowns and broke the 100-yard mark four times. But that’s nowhere near some of the most productive players in the FBS.

His total rushing yards barely put him among the top-100 backs in the nation, while his 127 attempts rank 144th. He did, however, finish the season with 86 catches for 597 yards, making him the team’s fourth best receiver.

Obviously, the Cougars don’t have a new head coach yet, and even if Leach’s replacement had a slightly more balanced offensive approach, it’s not like they’re going to abandon the passing game entirely. However, it is a good bet that Borghi will, in fact, rush more.

And he had a great reaction to that probability.

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The arrivals of Mike Leach and Lane Kiffin in Mississippi just made the Egg Bowl a must-watch rivalry

Mike Leach is taking over at Mississippi State, and Ole Miss recently hired Lane Kiffin.

Mike Leach is leaving Washington State to take over as head coach for Mississippi State, USA TODAY Sports confirmed Thursday. This is huge news for the 58-year-old coach who’s famous for his air raid offense and is approaching two decades as a head coach.

Leach had been with the Cougars since the 2012 season after getting his first head coaching job in college at Texas Tech and spending 10 years with the Red Raiders.

After a 6-7 2019 season, the Bulldogs fired Joe Moorhead Friday at the end of his second season with the program. Mississippi State lost in the Music City Bowl to Louisville in December.

Leach taking over means the SEC has yet another big-personality coach in the conference, particularly the SEC West. But while the always blunt and often entertaining coach joins Alabama’s Nick Saban and LSU’s Ed Orgeron in that category, perhaps the most entertaining aspect of this news involves the program’s rivalry with Ole Miss, which recently hired Lane Kiffin.

The Egg Bowl rivalry game between the two teams is often wildly entertaining, sometimes regardless of the score. And even the most recent on in November ended in absurd fashion with a last-second touchdown, a penalty for a player mimicking a dog urinating on the field and a devastating missed extra point. A dog urinating moment also occurred in the 2017 matchup too.

So how could a game with a history of ridiculousness get even better? Pitting Leach against Kiffin is a great start. So mark your calendar because the first Egg Bowl with these two coaches is November 26, 2020.

College football Twitter is rightfully pumped about this new element of the rivalry with Leach’s arrival at Mississippi State, and that even includes the former Alabama assistant and FAU coach.

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