Road Dawgs Tour makes ‘home' stop
In the midst of the yearly Mississippi State caravan around the Southeast dubbed the Road Dawgs Tour, the Bulldogs finally got a home game.
For the first time, MSU held a stop on its annual spring tour right on its own front porch Monday morning. Director of athletics John Cohen and head football coach Joe Moorhead spoke to approximately 150 members of the Starkville community at the Leo Seal Jr. Football Complex to address the upcoming football season and the state of MSU sports as a whole.
The main event of the morning was Moorhead. The man Cohen hired just last November entertained the crowd with his tales of adjusting to life in Starkville as well as his plans for the football program moving forward. Moorhead will continue sharing his vision over the coming days as the 10-stop tour rolls on, but Monday morning was particularly special to him.
“This was the best leg of the tour so far because it's home,” Moorhead told those in attendance.
While much of Monday morning was focused on the future, Moorhead also had the opportunity to reflect back some on the recent past. MSU is nearly a full month removed from Moorhead's first spring and he told reporters he was excited for how things went.
“I always had to catch myself through the process, kind of thinking that it's not year three with the Penn State offense or year three for (MSU defensive coordinator) Bob Shoop at Tennessee and so on down the line," Moorhead said. "In all three phases, I thought we were where I thought we would be, (and) maybe even a little bit ahead.”
While spring football has come and gone, the work never ends for Moorhead. MSU doesn't kick off for real until September, but the Bulldogs' head man is already getting things organized for what lies ahead.
“This summer, it will be summer (film) cut-ups,” Moorhead said. “It will be summer prospect camps, it will be fall camp preparation, and just in terms of playbook installation, we'll get our meeting notes together.
"We'll do a three-day opponent study and (put together) preliminary game plans for our first three games.”
Mississippi State players will report for fall camp on August 2. In some ways that's not much time, but there is plenty to do between now and then. First on that list is to complete the Road Dawgs Tour. Following Monday morning's Starkville stop, Moorhead and MSU also hosted events in Tupelo and Memphis later in the day. The tour continues through Thursday with instate visits to Meridian and Biloxi, as well as three out-of-state treks on the agenda.