Mitchell: This class his most important
Wednesday night, before Stump Mitchell pulled a shocker on the football-loving crowd at Southern University by unveiling the new white helmet his team will wear this season, the third-year coach reeled off his latest list of signees.
This, after all, was National Signing Day. Inside the Smith-Brown Memorial Student Union, the new recruits were the main attraction.
And this group of 15 players, Mitchell said, is full with young men who can play in the Southwestern Athletic Conference — not as fifth-year seniors, not somewhere down the road. Many of the signees, Mitchell said, will play immediately.
“It’s my third class. It’s the most important class,” Mitchell said.
“Our second class last year was better than our first, and I think this class is definitely better than the first two. We addressed the needs we needed, in order to be better than next year, and I’m excited about it.”
He needs to be right.
Mitchell heads into the final guaranteed year of his contract, fully believing — no, knowing — that if he is to stay on The Bluff, his team must do better than it did the past two seasons, posting a 6-16 record.
“There’s a couple coaches in the NFL who went 8-8 this year and got fired. I understand that. That’s what the business is about,” said Mitchell, who added that coaching is “a traveling business.”
Over the past few months, Mitchell and his staff has certainly done a little traveling. They brought in seven players from Florida, three from Louisiana, two each from Georgia and Tennessee, and one from Alabama.
Wait. Seven from Florida? And only three from Louisiana?
This year’s class marked another sharp decline in local signees, down from 14 in 2010 and six in 2011.
Mitchell addressed the matter, conceding it won’t go well with everybody.
“Because there’s so many negative things being said about Southern University, plain and simple. ... A lot of people say, ‘You don’t recruit Baton Rouge.’ Well, we do,” Mitchell said.
“The only problem is that (the recruits) turn on their TV, or they read the paper. So that’s a negative for us. So we have to win from outside in.”
Hence the influx of Florida players.
The coach noted that some of them have ties to the Jaguar Nation; the father of Miami wideout Willie Quinn, for example, is a Southern University alumnus.
Mitchell also confirmed that alumni in south Florida and Memphis, Tenn., helped turn the coaching staff onto prospects in their areas.
“They come with Southern love,” he said.
And most of them come filling some desperate needs.
Mitchell said Greg Pittman, the kicker, was the most important player in Southern’s signing class.
A senior at Helen Cox in Harvey, he figures to add consistency to an area that needed it (SU, which finished 4-7 last season, dropped three games by three or fewer points).
Pittman himself said it also doesn’t hurt that he effectively has two kicking coaches in Bryan Powers, a graduate assistant, and former SU kicker Breck Ackley, who has returned to the staff after a one-year stop at Southeastern Louisiana.
After that, Mitchell said, there was little doubt about the other position most in need of depth: defensive tackle.
Southern signed four of them.
“We wanted to get some guys that have some girth inside,” Mitchell said. “We did not have much of that last year.”
The official signing class numbers 15 players.
Two more running backs, McKinley’s Lenard Tillery and O.P. Walker’s Anthony Scott, don’t count as signees because they’re coming to Southern on academic scholarships.
That leaves the program with about four more athletic scholarships to give, Mitchell said.
That is partly by design. The program, he said, needs to have a spot for potential late finds like linebacker Jamie Payton, the former Dutchtown standout who transferred to SU last summer after three years at Lambuth University. He led the team in tackles and was the Jaguars’ only first-team All-SWAC selection.
This time around, what would Southern look for in a late pickup?
“We’ll probably try to get some veteran guys on the defensive line. ... If there’s a junior-college guy that can come in and play, we’ll go after him,” Mitchell said.
With that, Mitchell wrapped up another signing day — his third on The Bluff, and his most important.
“It gets better every year,” he said. “Hopefully, the season will, too.”