Mullen digging himself in deeper hole
Published 7:13 am Wednesday, July 13, 2016
<span class="R~sep~ACopyBody">HOOVER, Ala.— After Tuesday you have to wonder if it’s possible to start off a season already 0-1 from the preseason.</span>
<span class="R~sep~ACopyBody">Mississippi State should quickly be back to 1-1 once it disposes of South Alabama in the opener — even without the services of controversial Jeffery Simmons.</span>
<span class="R~sep~ACopyBody">But right now Bulldog head coach Dan Mullen is 0-for-1 in damage control after blowing his press conference at SEC Media Days.</span>
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<span class="R~sep~ACopyBody">What? Did he think the Simmons matter was not going to come up at an event with various media hanging from the rafters of the joint?</span>
<span class="R~sep~ACopyBody">It was mind-boggling.</span>
<span class="R~sep~ACopyBody">Mullen was going to have a hard time glossing it over. But Tuesday he just kept digging a deeper and deeper hole.</span>
<span class="R~sep~ACopyBody">OK, technically Tuesday won’t go on State’s won-loss record — and hopefully Simmons’ own record will be clean from this point forward.</span>
<span class="R~sep~ACopyBody">To recap, Simmons is the pride and joy of Mississippi State’s incoming recruiting class, a rare 5-star prospect for the program at an important position, defensive end.</span>
<span class="R~sep~ACopyBody">But then, in March, videotape emerged of Simmons, all 6-4, 297 pounds of him, repeatedly pounding on the face of a young woman who was already on the ground.</span>
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<span class="R~sep~ACopyBody">Mullen had already dodged the issue once.</span>
<span class="R~sep~ACopyBody">When the caveat of the one-game suspension for letting Simmons enroll and play at Mississippi State was originally announced, it came late in the afternoon on the Friday of the SEC meetings in Destin in late May. It came shortly after Mullen vacated the meetings, safely out of comment range back in Starkville.</span>
<span class="R~sep~ACopyBody">That’s the oldest p.r. ploy in the world for delivering bad or controversial news — the late Friday dump, hoping it will be forgotten over the weekend.</span>
<span class="R~sep~ACopyBody">It wasn’t, of course. Not in this day and age.</span>
<span class="R~sep~ACopyBody">Tuesday Mullen could run but he couldn’t hide, no matter how many non-answers he gave to questions and their follow-ups.</span>
<span class="R~sep~ACopyBody">Finally, he was asked what his reaction would be if it had been a member of his family, say a daughter or his wife, on the receiving end of the repeated pounding on the video.</span>
<span class="R~sep~ACopyBody">“I don’t think it would be my family,” Mullen said. “I don’t deal in hypotheticals … but anybody, I mean, in the video, I don’t know that my family would be in that situation, to be honest with you.”</span>
<span class="R~sep~ACopyBody">Say what?</span>
<span class="R~sep~ACopyBody">Mullen’s family is immune to this kind of unfortunate unpleasantness?</span>
<span class="R~sep~ACopyBody">Not to be snarky here, but it would appear he certainly upped the odds on it while inviting Simmons to be “part of a family. Every guy on our team we treat as part of a family.”</span>
<span class="R~sep~ACopyBody">Nobody is suggesting that Simmons should have been summarily kicked to the curb.</span>
<span class="R~sep~ACopyBody">If you want to go the rehab route, fine. He won’t be the first kid with talent given a second chance. He’s certainly young enough to see the light and walk the straight and narrow.</span>
<span class="R~sep~ACopyBody">Maybe he’s a good kid who made a big mistake.</span>
<span class="R~sep~ACopyBody">It kind of fits in conveniently with SEC commissioner Greg Sankey’s distinction a day earlier that incoming freshmen should maybe be judged differently from what could still be called juvenile mistakes — as opposed to adult crimes after getting to college.</span>
<span class="R~sep~ACopyBody">But a mere one-game suspension?</span>
<span class="R~sep~ACopyBody">Apparently at Mississippi State the buck doesn’t stop at the head coach’s desk.</span>
<span class="R~sep~ACopyBody">Mullen spent much of Tuesday distancing himself from the school’s penalty phase of the decision.</span>
<span class="R~sep~ACopyBody">“I wasn’t involved as much,” he said when he asked if he didn’t expect the backlash on the matter. “It was a university decision.</span>
<span class="R~sep~ACopyBody">“But I was just thrilled that we’re having Jeffery as part of our family coming in.”</span>
<span class="R~sep~ACopyBody">This is a incoming freshman you’re talking about. No guarantee he was going to contribute much in the season opener anyway. Maybe not this entire season.</span>
<span class="R~sep~ACopyBody">In one of his rambling answers, Mullen spoke of the joy he took as a coach with the ability to help young men make good decisions.</span>
<span class="R~sep~ACopyBody">He spoke of counseling that “every time you make a decision in life there’s going to be consequences and you have to think how it’s going to affect you, how it affects your teammates, how it affects your family, how it affects our football program.”</span>
<span class="R~sep~ACopyBody">So where, pray tell, are the consequences here?</span>
<span class="R~sep~ACopyBody">One game — one game that State can presumably slide through without Simmons’ input?</span>
<span class="R~sep~ACopyBody">Why not one season — plenty of true freshmen redshirt anyway.</span>
<span class="R~sep~ACopyBody">Maybe it’s not hard to figure out.</span>
<span class="R~sep~ACopyBody">Mississippi State doesn’t land a lot of 5-star recruits, and those guys generally have other options unless extended jail time is involved.</span>
<span class="R~sep~ACopyBody">But if it was, say, a season’s worth of punishment, who’s to say Simmons wouldn’t have bolted Starkville and let somebody else give him the famed “second chance” after a classic “error in judgment?”</span>
<span class="R~sep~ACopyBody">Somebody surely would have.</span>
<span class="R~sep~ACopyBody">Maybe State didn’t want to come out and say that, but, oh, it got worse.</span>
<span class="R~sep~ACopyBody">An alert Mississippi writer noted that Simmons had been assigned jersey No. 36, which is somewhat sacred with the Bulldogs.</span>
<span class="R~sep~ACopyBody">No one has worn it since Nick Bell lost a battle with cancer in 2010 while still a member of the team.</span>
<span class="R~sep~ACopyBody">“That’s not finalized yet,” Mullen said, but adding that “the best way you can honor numbers is to have someone wear them.”</span>
<span class="R~sep~ACopyBody">So Simmons is not only allowed back, he’s honored with a special number?</span>
<span class="R~sep~ACopyBody">This story could still have a happy ending.</span>
<span class="R~sep~ACopyBody">But in distancing himself from the decision, this day Mullen did little to distance himself from those light-hearted comparisons between himself and Cousin Eddie of “Family Vacation” fame.</span>
<p style="text-align: center;"><span class="R~sep~ACopyBody">—</span>
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