Weekly Football Press Conference

Athletics Director Pete Boone

Opening Statement

Good afternoon, I thought I would start this off. Some of you may have read about some incidents we have had at hotels, so I thought we would go ahead and get that out of the way and talk about it. A couple clarifications, one is there were two hotels, 20 total people. Not one person did it twice. I think there was at least one article that insinuated that some stole some items twice and that is not the case. Second thing I think you need to know is that there are no other hotels that we have had communication with at all regarding this same sort of issue. You are welcome to do your freedom of information request and we will answer it in 14 days, but the answer will not be any different that what I am telling you right now. The other thing I think that is important to know is these really are some good kids. As a matter of fact I looked down the list, and I do not remember seeing any of their names on absentee for classrooms or any other issues so it did surprise me to see their names in this list. These are very good kids, and what I feel like is it could happen to anyone, and maybe some of you did some things in college that you wish you had not done. But they are young good kids that made a very immature decision, and it is as simple as that. They are not bad kids and that is the reason we are not releasing any names, and that is the reason we will take each one of them individually. The punishment that Coach O will have regarding each of them will be on a personalized basis and will be done internally. That is all I wanted to say. Are there any questions?

Q: Did they say why they took the items?

No they did not. But let me mention one other thing. It is a strange situation. We actually heard back from the Auburn hotel before we heard back from the Tupelo hotel. Had we gotten information back from Tupelo earlier before we went to Auburn, then Auburn would never have happened because it could have been addressed. We did not get that information until after we received the information from the Auburn hotel, but I did not talk to them. Coach O did.

Q: When did you know about each instance?

It was two weeks ago. It was right after the Auburn game that the Auburn hotel informed us of some missing items, so whatever that date was. It was either a Monday or Tuesday. Either Wednesday or Thursday of that week, we got an invoice in from the Tupelo hotel that indicated some items were missing. The reason why we have not said anything until this point is because we wanted the young men to pay for these, and we did not want to pay for it ourselves and then get the money from them. We wanted them to pay us, get all the money in, so we would be writing a check to the hotels from money they had given us to pay back the items. That is the reason we waited, and that was not done until Thursday or Friday of last week.

Q: Are you concerned that other players not identified will be guilty by association?

No I do not think that. I would not have thought about it until you brought it up.

Q: Did you know about this before you gave your endorsement to Coach O?

It absolutely does not change anything. This again could happen almost anywhere at anytime. Coach O reacted in a proper way. I think the kids responded in a proper way and that is all one can do.

Q: Is there a concern about the image of the program?

It is always a concern about the image of the program when you have to announce that items have been stolen, no matter if you have a good year or a bad year. No matter whether you are winning or losing, that is a hit to the image of the university. That is one of the things Coach O and I talked about with regards to these young men. They really need to understand what I feel like is some damage done to Ole Miss, not just Ole Miss Football, but to Ole Miss for these kinds of things to happen. I just cannot imagine this ever happening again because of the way we are approaching it and the fact that these young men really have not done anything negative since they have been here.

Q: Has this thing happened before at Ole Miss?

Not to my knowledge. That does not mean that it has not happened. It could very well have happened with a lot of other schools but not to this degree. But that does not make it right. I do not want to insinuate that it makes it right. It does not. There is no excuse for what happened.

Q: Did you think about suspending players?

There are a number of things that we do have policies for, but I am going to tell you the suspensions so far have overwhelmingly been for class attendance. And that is how serious Ole Miss athletics and Coach Orgeron are with regard to disciplinary actions on every front. There has been nothing that has been that major at all. It has been minor things, but it got to where our policy kicked in, and Coach Orgeron suspended them.

Q: How did this come to your attention?

I believe the way happened is they sent their invoice in with additional charges, and being financial calculators that we are, we wondered what those additional charges were.

Q: Has law enforcement been involved in anyway?

No. Again, these items ranged from $15 to $40, and they have been paid back so that matter is closed.

Q: Do you anticipate future problems with hotels?

No. I don’t think it is that serious. 

Q: Was anything else missing other than pillows and radios?

There were two types of pillows, and there may have been a clock radio at one hotel and an i-pod type radio at another one. But those two were the general items.

Q: Why isn’t this an NCAA violation?

First of all, these are acts by individual players, and even had they not paid it back, it still had nothing to do with any NCAA rule. If we had paid it for them, it would have been an NCAA violation. We could have paid it and then gotten the money back from them, but we would have had to go through a process of declaring them ineligible and then getting them re-instated. That is the reason we took as long as we did to make sure they paid us before we paid the hotels.

Q: Could anyone be suspended for Friday?

No. We would have already done it. We looked at these players individually and not as a group, and what I saw there were young men that had been good in everything they have done up until this immature decision. So you have to take each person, each case on its own merit and make decisions based on that.

Q: Why does class attendance merit a suspension more than stealing?

When you get to a class attendance suspension, you are dealing with something that had occurred over a two or three month period of time on more than one occasion, and you can not get their attention. So it is a different concept.

Q: There were 20 people. Was this planned?

That is getting a little bit beyond my expertise. Here is what I do believe as I said earlier, had we gotten the bill in from Tupelo right after we were there and disciplined them right then, Auburn would not have ever happened. However we did not get it in and we did not know it had happened. And I am sure that one or more of them said something to one of the others that they had gotten a clock radio or pillow and nothing happened. And so maybe that is what happened, because this has never happened before with this group of kids or even in the last six years that I have been here. So something had to have happened between the two to make the second one happen. They thought nobody was checking up on them and again they are 19 and 20 year old kids.

Q: Do you know the breakdown of what was stolen from where?

I think the value is about $650 in total value, and I think the value is less than $200 for Tupelo and the rest was from Auburn.

Q: Does the large number have to do with not suspending anyone?

It absolutely does not. I do not think the number of kids has anything to do with it. In fact we had already agreed on how we were going to handle it before we even knew about Tupelo, not knowing that there were more out there just so we could be consistent.

Head Coach Ed Orgeron

Let me just thank Pete for what he said. I think it was very accurate. He and I work hand and hand and have a great working relationship, and I appreciate him being here today. I want to say as the head football coach that that was totally unexpected behavior from my team. We were embarrassed by the fact that we went to the hotel, usually when we go to hotels I get nothing but compliments on my team on how well behaved we are and how professional we are. So that was totally unexpected and will not be put up with. We handled it in house, and we are going to move on.

Q: How serious did you consider suspension?

Every time something comes up, there is severity of the situation and I talk to Pete about it. The guys that were suspended before on our team have always have been warned. When this situation happened, they were warned. They know that this behavior is not going to be accepted and anything else they do they will face severe penalties. So I treat it the same way I treated the other guys.

Q: What was the mindset of your players heading into games if they were stealing?

I’m going to totally disagree with you. I am with my team always, and I felt like we were ready to play against Auburn. I do not believe that every one of my team members were discussing what they were going to take out of a hotel room. I think this was an immature decision by a group of young men, and we regret it and move on. But as far as the focus on the football game and what we do in the hotel and the preparation, I am completely confident that the focus was there.

Q: Does it concern you that it was 20 people?

Whether it was one or 20, it was wrong. We know the young men that did it, and we are going to treat every situation on an individual basis.

Q: How long in advance do you have to book these rooms?

You get into something we do not need to discuss here. A lot of people want us there. I do not think we will have any problems getting a room. People love Ole Miss. We are a first class outfit. I think everything should be fine.

Q: Were they starters or reserves?

Like I said, we are going to keep everything in house. We handled what we were supposed to handle, and we are moving on.

Q: Did any of the guys steal from both hotels?

Like I said, we are going to keep everything in house. We handled what we were supposed to handle and we are moving on. As far as we know, no.

Looking at the LSU game, we had a lot of positives from our football team. First of all offense, offense gained more yards than anybody this year on LSU’s fantastic defense. I want to compliment my offensive staff. They worked really hard. I want to compliment the play of the offensive line. We had some stupid penalties that I am not proud of, but they did a good blocking of Dorsey and the blocking of a very good defensive line. I thought those guys did really well. Shay Hodge made some good catches. It was good to see Dexter back with the big hits he makes and the catches. He is just a tremendous competitor. And then the play of Brent Schaefer, he did a lot of things well, and you could see his athletic ability. He has a lot of things to improve on, but I thought he brought a spark to our offense. Negatives are obviously the turnovers in the red zone. Just some key plays there. Like I said, there is no one I trust the ball with more than BenJarvus, and I need to say this: when we took Brent out during that drive, it was the right decision. There were some things that happened within that drive that made that decision the right decision. The wrong decision was to throw an interception. We should have never thrown that interception regardless of who the quarterback was. He should have thrown the ball away.

On defense, I really want to praise the play of the defensive line. I did not feel it during the game but after looking at the film, Marcus Tillman, Peria Jerry and Greg Hardy really had a dominant game. Those guys played the best since they have been here, and we had some help with Jeremy Garrett who played about 60 plays. He really helped us. Our defensive backs didn’t play a fantastic game, but they did not give up the deep ball. The negative was the last two drives. We started with bad field position. People say well did the guys quit?’ No they did not quit. They played with all they had. We just did not fit the plays right and we did not tackle and that was really disappointing. The first drive, we had them on the one yard line, and the two last drives, we gave them three touchdowns. We did not play well. On special teams the punt return of Marshay Green was fantastic, and I thought our punting game was excellent. There was a good plan by Coach Freeze. The kickoff to Holliday was a negative part of the ball game. We missed out assignments. We probably should have squibbed it, but hindsight is 20/20. We tried to onside kick, but we did not get it. We tried to pooch kick it, but we did not get it. Our kickoff team did not perform what we expected, but overall I thought our guys came to play a very good LSU team.

Moving on to Mississippi State, we practiced this morning. We accelerated our practice. I wanted to give our scouting reports out since we are playing on Friday. This is a good Mississippi State football team the best Mississippi State football team I have played here. Obviously on offense I think Anthony Dickson is a fantastic player. He is a hard runner. He is 240 pounds and quick. They are doing some good things with him. He was tough to bring down last year. Tony Burks is a receiver we tried to recruit. He has 30 receptions. I think the key to their offense is Wesley Carroll. He had a big day against Arkansas throwing the ball. They could not stop him in the second half, He is very accurate with the ball. They have a good scheme, and they are well coached on offense. On defense Titus Brown is probably going to be one of the best defensive linemen we have seen. He is a big player. Those guys have made some plays, made some picks and are a very good football team. This is going to be a big time battle, but we know we are going up against Mississippi State and we have to have our best game to beat the Bulldogs. We are fairly healthy. We are looking forward to putting the LSU game away.  We’ll have to put behind us what other people would call distractions and really test the intestinal fortitude of my football team. We have to focus in on the task at hand.

Q: What is the status with Dexter McCluster?

Dexter has been playing with an injury the last four games of the season, and most guys would be out. He gets banged up a little, but he is tough. He was out at practice today, and he will not skip a beat. He is one of the toughest players on our team.

 

Q: Do you look for Mississippi State to come straight at you?

They have. Last year in the second half, they had to throw the ball a little bit. Dixon is tough to stop. Their offensive line coaches are one of the best in the business. J.B. Grimes does a good job of coaching, and I think they have a good scheme and I expect them to try to run the ball right at us.

Q: Why has Mississippi State been successful this year?

I think they won a couple games on the road. They went out there and beat Auburn, and I think they beat Kentucky on the road. I think those are two big road games for them. They made some plays. They beat some teams they were not supposed to beat, but I think it is the success in their quarterback. I think the coach is in his fourth year. He has his players believing in his system, and you can see they are winning their close games.     

Q: Who will you start at quarterback?

Obviously it looks like Brent is going to be the starter. We have not named the starter yet, but if I had to say today, it would probably have to be Brent. It’s obvious with his performance in the game on Saturday but he has to improve on some things.

Q: Did Dexter practice today?

Yes he practiced.

Q: Do you see something in Wes Carroll that you think you can take advantage of?

I have not watched all that much film on them because it is still early, but I did watch the second half of the Arkansas game where he was playing fantastic. He is not a very tall quarterback and I think that you can put some pressure on him, but he is very accurate.

Q: Can you talk about Brent Schaeffer’s progress?

He just had to straighten up on a couple of deals, class attendance, being intent on the task at hand. He’s adhered to the team rules, and hopefully that will help him the rest of his career as a player or a professional, whatever he chooses to do. Hopefully he’s learned you have to do some things and give it an honest days’ work, and you have to adhere to team rules. He’s done that, and hopefully he will have a great game. I thought for the most part he had a fantastic game against LSU. Brent has always been a good quarterback. We just hope he can play very well if he is the starter. We’re not going to count Seth out. He’s done a lot for us this year. He’s a good leader. You’ll probably see him in there some against Mississippi State.

Q: What would a win over Mississippi State mean for the program?

It would make a good ride home I’ll tell you that. We are looking forward to something like that but just first of all, the team deserves a win. They have worked hard, and they deserve it more than anybody you can talk about. These guys come back week after week, Monday after Monday. We follow the system win, lose or draw. We put it in the closet, and we move on, and they have and they have stuck behind me. Let me say this, this is going to be a hard fought football game and to win we will have to play our best, and it would mean a lot to them. And that is all that matters is that the team can feel that they win. And I know how much it would mean to all the alumni for Ole Miss to beat Mississippi State, and I think that is important too.

Q: Did you have new plays for Schaffer against LSU?

We put a couple of new things in, but not much. We spread it out a little bit. We have been toying with that. We may be headed in that direction sooner or later. It worked against LSU. We are definitely going to put in a new wrinkle or two this week and see if he and the offense can handle it.

Q: Will a good week of practice make Schaeffer the starter?

Yes, that’s it. I’m just trying to keep everybody guessing a little bit. That’s always fun.

Q: Do you ever think what could have been with Schaeffer?

I think we are so busy here, I never have had a chance to think about what could have been. I know when I recruited him, I know what I saw, and I saw some of that on Saturday. I would like to see more of that Friday.

Q: When you look at the improvement Mississippi State has had, does it just take time?

I think so. Every program is different. You just don’t know. Obviously the logical answer is yes, but you don’t know. Every program is different. Obliviously I think next year we are going to have a good football team, but I believed we were going to have a good team this year. I do believe it takes time. I know this is going to be my third full recruiting class. If you were at the game on Saturday, you saw we had a house full of prospects. I feel that we are way ahead in the game in recruiting.

Q: What do you remember about the last Egg Bowl in Starkville?

I remember it was close for a while. Jerious Norwood was really tough that day. I remember they didn’t look anything like what I saw on film. They were a lot better football team that day than I saw on film. I remember the crowd yelling for Mississippi State and nobody yelling for us. I remember the cowbells. I remember getting outphysicaled. It was a tough day. It was a long ride home. The thing I remember most is going out recruiting the next week. I will be out recruiting next week. It’s my first week to be out in the homes. I will be out in the homes Sunday. I think I have 18 or 20 home visits next week. I believe those will be good home visits.

The University of Mississippi Athletics

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