Editor’s Note: This is the third installment of a five-part series on the Mississippi State football team’s recruiting methods.
STARKVILLE — Mike Villagrana has done the math.
He looked at the roster the new Mississippi State football coaching staff inherited and noticed of the 116 players, 56 of them — 48.2 percent — are from Mississippi. That number goes up to 52.5 percent if you include out-of-state players that made a stop at an in-state junior college.
The amount of players on this roster from Mississippi, Alabama, Louisiana and Tennessee is 75.8 percent. Villagrana likes that proportion; he thinks it is the avenue to success.
As MSU’s director of recruiting, Villagrana has put an emphasis on Mississippi and the states that neighbor it. In an exclusive interview with The Dispatch, Villagrana explained how his recruiting department does it.
It starts with what he calls the recruiting department’s, “baby.” The grid.
The grid is a document Villagrana and the recruiting staff keep in their offices at all times, one that routinely gets updated multiple times per day. It lists each player currently on the roster and each recruit being tracked, from those MSU wants badly all the way down to those MSU will likely never offer. Each of those recruits is highlighted with a color coding: maroon for in-state, red for what they call the footprint (Alabama, Arkansas, Louisiana and Tennessee), gray for Southeastern Conference region (Florida, Georgia, Kentucky, Missouri and the Carolinas) and another for all other states.
Villagrana wants the grid to be mostly filled with maroon and red.
Recruiting data suggests those states may be all MSU requires to fill most of its needs. The Dispatch collected in-state recruiting ranks from the last 10 years from the 247 Sports and from Rivals, in addition to the last six years from ESPN, the only six years where rankings were available. In those rankings, the state of Mississippi produces roughly eight five- or four-star recruits per class: 7.5 per year in 247’s rankings, 7 per year in Rivals’ and 10.8 in ESPN’s.
The state has a particularly strong track record of producing highly-rated wide receivers and defensive linemen. Of the 75 five- and four-star recruits from Mississippi over the last 10 years according to 247, 19 have been defensive linemen and 14 have been wide receivers; in Rivals’ rankings, of 70 such recruits, 17 have been defensive linemen and 14 have been wide receivers.
Keeping those players in state and at MSU is important to Villagrana and company for two reasons. First, it is clearly benefitting MSU today, as Macon native defensive lineman Jeffery Simmons continues to rack up preseason All-American honors and the team’s top two running backs, Aeris Williams and Kylin Hill, are from West Point and Columbus, respectively.
Second, they feel they arrive in the state at the right time.
“He wants the kids in-state to stay here,” Villagrana said of Moorhead. “It starts with Coach Moorhead keeping that trend going and I think he’s emphasizing it more and more. Represent your state, this is your state school, this is not a stepping stone school.
“I just know we came at a really good time because the state is so rich with talent right now. People say there’s no more people under the radar, but to me, in this state there are. There are people you don’t see and I think we have a good system where we’re hopefully not going to miss a guy.”
As you expand to the footprint states, there is a precedent of MSU being able to entice recruits from those states in particular. Over the last 10 years, MSU has enrolled 76 players out of high schools from states other than Mississippi: 27 have come from Alabama, 16 from Louisiana and eight from Tennessee, combining to represent 51 of those 76 enrollees. Eighteen of those 76 enrollees — 23.6 percent — come from Birmingham and New Orleans alone.
When going beyond that footprint territory, Villagrana is considering the drive.
“Factor in what they’re passing. If you’re coming from Atlanta, you’re passing Alabama,” Villagrana said. “There’s some big schools there.”
Over the summer, Villagrana successfully made that point to Moorhead. When the new staff first arrived, it considered Georgia part of its footprint; as Villagrana got more time at MSU and came to understood its pipelines, he thought its efforts were best used if concentrated in what it now considers its footprint, Georgia not included.
“I felt like Georgia is good to us and can be, but it’s not our baby,” Villagrana said.
On top of it all, MSU feels like it has the tools to dominate those areas. Its director of high school relations, Brad Peterson, was a longtime high school coach in Mississippi before joining MSU; the recruiting department also recently hired Brandon Tate, who played at Noxubee County High School. Assistant director of recruiting communications Rod Gibson played for MSU and Villagrana said director of on-campus recruiting Andrea Hollis played at Northwest Rankin High School, winning a state championship there in basketball.
In the neighboring states, assistant coach additions of tight ends coach Mark Hudspeth and special teams coordinator Joey Jones will prove vital. Hudspeth is a Mississippi native who’s since coached at North Alabama for seven season and Louisiana-Lafayette for seven more; Jones has coached every year of his career in the state of Alabama, dating back to 1989.
When they and their staffmates hit the road, they won’t be going too far to do it. It’s all by design.
“The only guy that’s going to go national is the quarterbacks coach, (Andrew) Breiner, or maybe the offensive coordinator (Luke Getsy) to go see a guy in California,” Villagrana said.
Follow Dispatch sports writer Brett Hudson on Twitter @Brett_Hudson
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