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When Southern Miss football elevated Blake Anderson from offensive coordinator to eventually the head coach, Anderson felt a sense of relief wash over his body. Relief came first, excitement came second.
Anderson interviewed for the position after former coach Charles Huff left Hattiesburg for the same position at Memphis. He felt confident about the meeting, but was not given any assurances. It was not the first time Anderson wanted the Southern Miss coaching job and his past experience taught him not to get his hopes up.
From 2008-2011, Anderson coached the Golden Eagles on Larry Fedora's staff. When Fedora left for North Carolina following a 12-2 season in which Southern Miss won the Conference USA championship game, Anderson fought hard to replace him. Instead the Golden Eagles hired Ellis Johnson, and Anderson followed Fedora to Chapel Hill.
"It wasn't the right time, for whatever reason," Anderson said.
Now, it's the right time.
Southern Miss athletic director Jeremy McClain pulled Anderson aside and told him he would be the Golden Eagles' next coach prior to a team meeting before he would go over the game plan with the team for the New Orleans Bowl matchup against Western Kentucky.
"I fought for the job, I wanted it back then," Anderson said. "It's kind of crazy, the turn of events where you end up, 15 years later, back here. I'm excited to be in the shoes that I'm in."
After the bowl game loss to Western Kentucky, Anderson had almost an entire roster to retool. Southern Miss had more than 30 seniors graduate and 38 players entered the transfer portal. Eleven of them followed Huff to Memphis. Huff had money to spend, and he made that clear to his players at Southern Miss.
"I don't know that I fully understood just how big this transition was and how much attrition we were going to be dealing with," Anderson. "It was a larger scale than we probably expected, but we knew it was coming and we knew we were going to have a challenge."
That challenge included bringing in over 70 new scholarship players. This took a feverish recruiting effort in which Southern Miss hosted 85 visitors in 21 days and signed 67 of them. Anderson said he felt like Bill Murray in "Groundhog Day," going through the same schedule and eating the same meals for three weeks straight. Much like Murray in the movie, he tried everything on the menu. After a three-week trial period, the ribeye became his go-to meal.
"It was all great and Blue Jazz did a phenomenal job. The kids didn't know anything different, it was the first time they'd seen that place. But us as the staff, we were there every night for 21 nights."
Every day, anywhere from noon-2 p.m., five to 10 recruits would arrive in Hattiesburg and would spend the day getting to know the staff, talking football fit, exploring the city and going to dinner at Blue Jazz. The next morning, recruits would do exit meetings with the coaching staff and then leave campus around 11:30 a.m., giving Anderson and his staff 30 minutes to an hour to review film and call other transfers to set up visits before the next group of recruits arrived on campus.
"There was never an opportunity where you just said, 'Hey, today's a down day,'" Anderson said. "No, you had another group the next day that was just as important as the day before. It was an unreal grind. We did a year's worth of recruiting in literally 21 days."
Southern Miss signed over 60 players to the roster in January and added the rest over the course of the spring.
Roster turnover is not unique in today's college athletics, but the scale at which it happened at Southern Miss will be a challenge to overcome right away. Anderson and his staff kept a balance between taking younger players with multiple years of eligibility remaining and more experienced players who may just have one year left.
"We were not afraid to take guys that were younger," Anderson said. "Not that we were, in any way, saying that this season doesn't matter, but we want to make sure there's guys that we can develop. We took some high school guys, we took some guys with three years, we took some guys with two and we took only a handful of one-year guys, but only in positions where we knew we could plug and play.
"I think we did a pretty good job of diversity in that sense."
Davis Wilson covers Southern Miss athletics and Hattiesburg news for the Hattiesburg American. Email him at [email protected] or find him on X at @Davis_Wilson.
This article originally appeared on Hattiesburg American: Inside Blake Anderson's first offseason as Southern Miss football coach
Continue reading...
Anderson interviewed for the position after former coach Charles Huff left Hattiesburg for the same position at Memphis. He felt confident about the meeting, but was not given any assurances. It was not the first time Anderson wanted the Southern Miss coaching job and his past experience taught him not to get his hopes up.
From 2008-2011, Anderson coached the Golden Eagles on Larry Fedora's staff. When Fedora left for North Carolina following a 12-2 season in which Southern Miss won the Conference USA championship game, Anderson fought hard to replace him. Instead the Golden Eagles hired Ellis Johnson, and Anderson followed Fedora to Chapel Hill.
"It wasn't the right time, for whatever reason," Anderson said.
Now, it's the right time.
Southern Miss athletic director Jeremy McClain pulled Anderson aside and told him he would be the Golden Eagles' next coach prior to a team meeting before he would go over the game plan with the team for the New Orleans Bowl matchup against Western Kentucky.
"I fought for the job, I wanted it back then," Anderson said. "It's kind of crazy, the turn of events where you end up, 15 years later, back here. I'm excited to be in the shoes that I'm in."
How Blake Anderson rebuilt Southern Miss football
After the bowl game loss to Western Kentucky, Anderson had almost an entire roster to retool. Southern Miss had more than 30 seniors graduate and 38 players entered the transfer portal. Eleven of them followed Huff to Memphis. Huff had money to spend, and he made that clear to his players at Southern Miss.
"I don't know that I fully understood just how big this transition was and how much attrition we were going to be dealing with," Anderson. "It was a larger scale than we probably expected, but we knew it was coming and we knew we were going to have a challenge."
That challenge included bringing in over 70 new scholarship players. This took a feverish recruiting effort in which Southern Miss hosted 85 visitors in 21 days and signed 67 of them. Anderson said he felt like Bill Murray in "Groundhog Day," going through the same schedule and eating the same meals for three weeks straight. Much like Murray in the movie, he tried everything on the menu. After a three-week trial period, the ribeye became his go-to meal.
"It was all great and Blue Jazz did a phenomenal job. The kids didn't know anything different, it was the first time they'd seen that place. But us as the staff, we were there every night for 21 nights."
Every day, anywhere from noon-2 p.m., five to 10 recruits would arrive in Hattiesburg and would spend the day getting to know the staff, talking football fit, exploring the city and going to dinner at Blue Jazz. The next morning, recruits would do exit meetings with the coaching staff and then leave campus around 11:30 a.m., giving Anderson and his staff 30 minutes to an hour to review film and call other transfers to set up visits before the next group of recruits arrived on campus.
"There was never an opportunity where you just said, 'Hey, today's a down day,'" Anderson said. "No, you had another group the next day that was just as important as the day before. It was an unreal grind. We did a year's worth of recruiting in literally 21 days."
Southern Miss signed over 60 players to the roster in January and added the rest over the course of the spring.
Roster turnover is not unique in today's college athletics, but the scale at which it happened at Southern Miss will be a challenge to overcome right away. Anderson and his staff kept a balance between taking younger players with multiple years of eligibility remaining and more experienced players who may just have one year left.
"We were not afraid to take guys that were younger," Anderson said. "Not that we were, in any way, saying that this season doesn't matter, but we want to make sure there's guys that we can develop. We took some high school guys, we took some guys with three years, we took some guys with two and we took only a handful of one-year guys, but only in positions where we knew we could plug and play.
"I think we did a pretty good job of diversity in that sense."
Davis Wilson covers Southern Miss athletics and Hattiesburg news for the Hattiesburg American. Email him at [email protected] or find him on X at @Davis_Wilson.
This article originally appeared on Hattiesburg American: Inside Blake Anderson's first offseason as Southern Miss football coach
Continue reading...
