STARKVILLE – Football has taken Jay Hopson on a 33-year journey around the country – and then some – and provided him the opportunity to work under some legends in the game.

Steve Spurrier, Bob Pruett, Rich Rodriguez and Mike Leach are just a few of many he’s gotten to share the sidelines with, so there were plenty of stories to tell at Monday’s Starkville Rotary meeting where he was the guest speaker.

He played football at Ole Miss before making coaching stops at Tulane, Delta State, LSU, Florida, Marshall, Ole Miss, Memphis and South Alabama and even was the head coach of Southern Miss from 2016-2020 with a 28-23 record. Before taking the head job of the Golden Eagles, he was the head man at Alcorn State from 2012-2015 as the first-ever white head coach to lead a team in the SWAC. The Braves went 32-17 under Hopson and captured back-to-back SWAC championships in 2014-2015 and the 2014 Black college football national championship. Leach brought Hopson in 2021 as a defensive analyst and he helped coach the Bulldogs to a 7-6 season.

“I’ve been on the old gauntlet of college football … and it’s a rollercoaster life,” said Hopson, who has coached five different Mississippi colleges to bowl-game appearances. “A lot of ups and downs, but it’s been a great joy.”

Pruitt, Jeff Bower and Spurrier are the three coaches who’ve had the most influence on his life and one such memory he shared had to do with his time at Florida under Spurrier, “a man with a mind like a steal trap,” during the 1995 season.

Hopson was early in his coaching career when Spurrier sent him and some other assistants to a camp hosted by the Jacksonville Jaguars, who were then coached by Tom Coughlin. They were walking around the field during a practice when Coughlin got on a loudspeaker and told them to get off the field and sit in a little box off to the side and wouldn’t let them leave.

Needless to say, Hopson and the rest of the coaches weren’t pleased with their seating and reported that to Spurrier.

“Coach Spurrier said, ‘Oh, OK,’ and the meeting was over,” Hopson recalled. “Well, flash forward about five or six months later we had our pro day in Gainesville, and we had a bunch of NFL players at that time. We were the SEC champs, we were pretty good, and I can remember all 32 teams, their owners and head coaches, and they’re all out on the field. Then a Jaguars scout is walking on the field, and he goes, ‘Hey you, Jaguars. You have to go sit over there by the tree.’ So he sits him under the tree right there and he won’t let him get out from underneath the tree. I’ll never forget, I was a young coach working on the field, and he walked right by the guy and goes, ‘You tell coach Coughlin I can make ya’ll stay in the box, too,’ and he just kept on going. That was Coach Spurrier; he never forgot anything.”

Settling down

Life is much calmer now for Hopson, who’s made Starkville his home and currently serves as Starkville High School’s athletic director. The Vicksburg native helped oversee the school’s recent unveiling of its $5,209,800 investment into its athletic facilities. The money provided new playing turf for the school’s football field, baseball field, softball fields and the installation of a new video board at Yellow Jacket Stadium. New flashing LED lights were also added to the stadium to enhance the gameday experience. The new football field and lights were shown off this season during the Yellow Jackets’ 6-5 season.

“We’ve got a 7A program, a great athletic program tradition, (but) facility-wise there were some things we had to do to get it to a stage we felt like matched up with the other teams in our district,” Hopson said. “… One of my big missions here was to try to make sure we give our student athletes the best opportunity to be successful with the best equipment and the best facilities we possibly can.”

Another construction plan going on that will affect Starkville’s athletics is the recently announced move from its current location to the north edge of MSU’s campus next to Partnership Middle. Starkville Oktibbeha County School District board members voted in July to authorize borrowing up to $125 million in bonds for building the high school on university donated land.

Hopson said the move will not affect the location of play for Starkville’s football, baseball and softball teams, but some sports will likely be played at the school’s new home. He added that teams will take a bus from the NHS campus to the old one for practices and games.

“There’s a lot of things still to be figured out and done, but we’ve already put so much money into the football, baseball and softball playing surfaces, those will be our competition sites for sure,” he said. “Some of the sports will have to come over and practice at the competition sites where the high school is now and some of the sports are going to be able to stay at the high school when the new high school is built. There will be half traveling and there will be some sports that have to travel, but the good news there is that we’ll have a lot of practice space at the new high school for a lot of our sports just to stay put and come over on gameday.”