STARKVILLE — Joe Moorhead sat down beaming, with the Golden Egg trophy resting beside him.
“I can’t see you over this trophy,” Moorhead said after the first question a reporter asked him after Mississippi State’s wild 21-20 victory over Ole Miss in the Egg Bowl on Thursday.
A man who has been reserved for much of 2019 was anything but on Thanksgiving night.
“This is my team, my school and my program,” Moorhead said. “They’re going to have to drag my Yankee ass out of here.”
Before Ole Miss and Mississippi State even kicked off, social media ran rampant with speculation Moorhead would be fired from MSU, win or lose, and the school would anoint Louisiana’s Billy Napier as the new coach later in the weekend. The validity of those rumors seems very much in question.
“Was it Bob from Bogue Chitto?” Moorhead quipped addressing the speculation, doubling down that he’s never paid any attention to outside noise leading into a game week.
“The only (opinions) I care about are the ones in that locker room,” Moorhead said. “Everyone else can go kick rocks.”
A few hours after Twitter exploded with rumors, Ole Miss receiver Elijah Moore did his best to ensure Moorhead remained MSU’s coach in 2020 by pretending he was Bully the Bulldog on a leisurely stroll, lifting his leg to mock a dog urinating after scoring a touchdown with four seconds remaining. That drew a 15-yard unsportsmanlike conduct penalty, and Luke Logan missed what would have been the game-tying extra point, clinching the Bulldogs’ victory.
Moorhead received a $50,000 bonus for getting the team’s sixth win, guaranteeing the program will go to a bowl game for a program record 10th-straight year. When you think about it, it’s pretty wild that Moorhead’s bank account gets fatter because Moore wanted to pretend to pee on the turf of Davis Wade Stadium. He probably owes Moore half of that bonus. Fair is fair.
Nevertheless, one could make a valid point Moorhead’s team underachieved this season. Seven to eight wins were the expectation, not six. Ten players getting suspended for eight games because of what’s become known as ‘Tutor-gate’ wasn’t a great look for the university either.
That said, it would just seem almost unfair to fire a coach that has gone to a bowl two straight years and beaten Ole Miss twice.
“The knee-jerk reaction of ‘Say this, say that’ in year two, go pound sand, I don’t care,” Moorhead said. “The only people I care about are the ones in that locker room. Everyone else can go kick rocks.”
Continuing his self proclamation he’s the right fit for MSU, the second-year coach boasted he has the full support of the locker room.
“If you ask (the players) who’s the right man for this job, they’re going to tell you it’s me,” Moorhead said. “I promise you that.”
He wasn’t lying.
His star running back Kylin Hill came to a staunch defense of his coach.
“I feel like there’s no coach in the country who loves their players like coach Moorhead does … He’s the guy for the job.”
MSU quarterback Garrett Shrader, who decided to come to Mississippi State largely because of Moorhead, echoed similar sentiments.
“He has a certain set of beliefs of how the program should be run,” Shrader said. “He gets guys to buy in, that’s the biggest thing. I actually believe everything he says and does. I plan on him being my coach and winning a lot more games.”
Whatever chance there was of MSU athletic director John Cohen pulling the plug on Moorhead seems miniscule now. But if for whatever reason Moorhead coached his last game with the Bulldogs on Thursday, he went down swinging.
“It put an exclamation point on the narrative that was floating around that I’m not the right man for this job and that I can’t coach in this league. That’s not the case,” Moorhead said. “I’m damn proud of this team.”
Hodge is the former sports editor for The Dispatch.
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