Sure the dude coaches the bulldogs, but you
can tell he bleeds Crimson. Nice article ... enjoy!
Rick
Croom On Planning
Mississippi State Coach Sylvester Croom
By Kirk
McNair
Date: Jul 28, 2005
In the spring of 2003, Alabama Athletics
Director Mal Moore had to find a new head football coach for the
Crimson Tide. He interviewed three former Bama football players. Later
Moore said the hardest thing he ever had to do was tell two of them he
was not going to hire them.
In May, 2003, Mike Shula was introduced as head football coach
at Alabama.
Athletics Director Mal Moore had selected Shula over two other former
Tide players who–like Shula–were also assistant coaches in the National
Football League. They were Richard Williamson of the Carolina Panthers,
who had been a teammate and coaching associate with Moore at Bama, and
Sylvester Croom, who had played center for Bama when Moore was the
offensive coordinator and who had later coached with Moore for the
Tide.
On Thursday, at Southeastern Conference Media Days in
Birmingham, Croom–who is beginning his second season as head coach at Mississippi State–was
asked what advice he would give to new coaches. Croom, a native of
Tuscaloosa who had been running backs coach at Green Bay when he was
tapped for his first job as a head coach, had a surprising answer.
“Any young coach who aspires to be a head coach, as he goes
through the developmental process, should put on paper what he believes
in and whatever his plan for being a head coach is. I think that is
critical. That way he will be prepared when the job interview comes.
That way he’s prepared the first day he walks into the job and lets his
staff and his players and the administration know exactly what he
believes in. And I think he can better articulate his plan if he has
already done that.”
Croom learned that lesson through experience.
He told reporters gathered to hear SEC coaches and players
talk
about the upcoming season, “I haven’t told a lot of people this. I
think what’s happened in my life as far as career and what has happened
in the careers of a lot of coaches, very little is planned.
“My first opportunity to become a head coach came at an
unexpected time. My interview with The University of Alabama came at an
unexpected time.
“For years I had known exactly what I wanted to do when I got
to be a head coach. But when that interview came, it was not on paper.
It was not on paper. The night before I went for the interview, Mike
Sherman (head coach at Green Bay) and the guys at Green Bay did a great
job of helping me as I scrambled to get some things on paper.
“As it turned out, I didn’t really need it at that interview.
But after that interview and when I didn’t get the job, I thought I
might never get another chance to be a head coach. But I decided that
if I did get another chance, I was not going to be caught short.
“So that summer I spent my entire vacation putting down on
paper everything I believed in, everything I expected the coaches to
do, what kind of uniforms we were going to have, everything. All of it
was done the summer I didn’t get the Alabama job. That’s what I did on
my summer vacation the summer before I went to Mississippi State. It
was all on paper.
“There was no hesitation about what we were going to do. None
at all.
“So that’s my advice to young coaches. When you become a head
coach you had better believe, you had better have a plan, you had
better totally believe in your plan.
“And that’s why we won’t ever deviate from the plan. We have
to win, because I believe in it.”
Croom had some other references to Alabama. He noted that he
had
recently had a conversation with another coach regarding players. Croom
said the coach was talking about the players on Alabama’s 1992 national
championship team. “He said that Alabama had about 10 players starting
that his school had not offer scholarships to. The point he was making
is that you don’t always have to have the great blue chip prospects.
Find your kind of guys, find the guys that want to be in your program.
Find the guys who believe in doing things the way you want to do them,
coach them up, get them ready to play and then go out there and win
football games.
“That's what we want to do. We're going to find Mississippi
State type people. We're going to find guys who believe in doing things
the Bulldog way. Our way is not the only way. Our way may not be the
right way, but it's our way. And anybody who doesn't believe it needs
to be somewhere else–coaches, players, anybody. But the guys we put out
there, they are going to believe. They are going to go out and fight
for it every time they go out there.”
Cr
