Discipline looming at Mississippi State

When Joe Moorhead took over as head football coach at Mississippi State following the 2017 season one of his main objectives was to create a championship standard.

While that’s still the primary goal, there’s a new obstacle in the way of achieving said goal.

On Friday, the MSU football and men’s basketball programs were sanction to three years’ probation by the NCAA. The action taken is the result of an investigation concluding that a tutor committed academic misconduct in aiding 10 members of the football team and one from the basketball team in an online general chemistry course during the fall semester of 2019.

Mississippi State has avoided any kind of postseason ban, but will have to vacate wins, among other penalties.

So, as the Bulldogs get ready for Saturday’s season opener against the University of Louisiana at the Superdome, half the battle is finding a way to maintain that championship standard off the field. “It really hasn’t changed anything from my standard. I mean ultimately at the end of the day, you work in a profession where 18- to 21-year-old kids are forced to make decisions on a daily basis. And they were presented with a situation, made a poor choice and had to deal with the consequence. And at the end of the day, this — I’m going to say incident or episode — it hasn’t done anything to quell my belief or desire to achieve great successes at Mississippi State. Nor has it affected recruiting or anything else. So to me it was something that happened, it was acknowledged and we’re going to move on from it.”

Any kind of disciplinary action taken against the players involved won’t be known until game day. The Bulldogs will kick things off against the Ragin’ Cajuns at 11 a.m. Saturday from New Orleans.