Black and gold runs deep in my veins. I am a third-generation Southern Miss student, and I even grew up just less than an hour from Hattiesburg. I’ve also joined the Student Eagle Club for what I can afford. My grandfather brought me to football games when I was little, and it was always our thing. As of this week, just from memory, I’ve attended 41 Southern Miss football games over the last 17 years. But something has to change with this team.
It’s always fun to hear my grandfather talk of games coached by legends like Jim Carmody, Curley Hallman, and Jeff Bower, with players like Reggie Collier, Sammy Winder, and Brett Favre. For a period between 1975 and 2011, Southern Miss was a football team that didn’t let their guard down. In those 36 years, Southern Miss beat 40 Power 5 teams on the road and at home. The Golden Eagles also had a record of 82-31 against rivals Tulane, East Carolina, Louisiana Tech, and Memphis in this time. The Golden Eagles also won four Conference USA Championships in this time. So what happened?
Following Southern Miss’s historic 2011 season that saw the Golden Eagles finish 12-2, with their fourth Conference USA Championship, Head Coach Larry Fedora and his staff departed for North Carolina, where Fedora was hired as the head coach of the UNC-Chapel Hill Tar Heels. Southern Miss hired a search firm who pulled in Ellis Johnson, a defensive wizard in the SEC. Johnson had also been a Defensive Coordinator for the Golden Eagles in the late 80s. This seemed like a great hire and 2012 seemed like a peak for the Eagles, with a majority of players from 2011 returning.
Ellis Johnson led the Golden Eagles to an overwhelming record of 0-12. Johnson and his entire staff were fired following the season. The Golden Eagles had been outscored 236-454 in 2012. All sides of the ball was a disaster.
Over the next four years, Todd Monken and Jay Hopson spent a lot of time rebuilding Southern Miss football, with there being no losing seasons between 2015 and 2019. However, after one game in 2020, Jay Hopson resigned, leaving USM with a 28-23 record. 2020 was another disastrous year that saw the Golden Eagles go 3-9 and run through 3 head coaches. However, by the end of the year, Will Hall, who had seen much success at Division-II schools, was hired by the Golden Eagles.
Hall’s tenure at Southern Miss proved a bigger liability than an asset to Golden Eagle athletics. Hall did make a bowl game in year two and won, but his ending record at his 2024 firing was 14-30. The Golden Eagles were then taken over by Reed Stringer, who has been at USM since the Hopson years.
I wrote that history lesson for this:
Southern Miss was a football powerhouse in SEC country for years. We beat coaches like Bobby Bowden, Bear Bryant, Gene Stallings, and others regularly. We also played SEC teams every year between 1964 and 2005. We played tough schedules. And still produced against them.
And I know you’ll say “Andy the game today is different. Players are paid now.” Yet we got players like Tate Rodemaker, John White, and Frank Gore, Jr. to come play here.
This program, in a matter of only 12 years has gone from “Are we gonna beat a Top 10 team in the conference championship?” to “Can we beat this FCS team in Week 2?”
The decline is horrible in Hattiesburg. The Eagles have made five bowl games in the last 10 years, only winning three, there have been nine players drafted into the NFL in the last 10 years, and we’ve been through (counting interims) six head coaches in 10 years. The Golden Eagles are seeing a great decline in attendance too. You know how embarrassing it is to go to a 36,000-seat stadium to only see less than 20,000 in attendance?
What happened to winning 7-8 games a year and making a bowl game? Or even a conference championship? This team has seen too many hard times over the last 112 years to just accept anything less than mediocrity.
Hire a coach and a team with big aspirations, who knows what he’s doing, and maybe someone who’s obnoxious. This team needs someone with nothing to lose and everything to gain. Softness will not win the Sun Belt
David Stafford | Nov 3, 2024 at 7:27 am
Where is the problem? Can a bunch of good coaches all be wrong? Do we need a new AD? Or is it a political problem? Do State and Ole Miss have a lid on Southern that can’t be lifted? Obviously, the problem is major and needs to be solved. Southern is a world class university in many respects and while athletics should not be its main concern, neither should it be noted for being an embarrassment. I would like to see a small group of former players and current USM officials form a task force to investigate and develop recommendations for improving the program. David Stafford, Alumnus, Class of 1960.
carl znaquin | Oct 31, 2024 at 10:11 am
College football is a GAME, it is NOT the university, or anything except a GAME! don’t take this crap seriously, My wife is an LSU graduate, hates the football game and saw how much was wasted in resources for a stupid ass game! it’s entertainment nothing else!!
David O'Dom | Oct 31, 2024 at 10:05 am
Don’t call out defense nasty bunch if they can’t play any better it’s embarrassing to the original nasty bunch that I was part of and one of the original nasty #13 David O’Dom they need to bring back someone who can teach them how to be Nasty,and play the way with pride and joy in being a winner if I have to come back I will gladly
James Stringer, Ed.D. USM | Oct 31, 2024 at 4:00 am
It hasn’t been USM football since they let Jeff Bower go. He was a winning coach but as I understand they wanted someone that could work with the press etc.
I haven’t cared whether they won another game or not
Now I am interested in the team as I have a student who transferred in to play.
When the game had been decided early in the second half of one of the first games- almost 40 points difference- the coach could have played some of these guys standing on the sideline. The starters could rest and the second string could get some playing experience. But they stood there the entire game.
If you’re interested in building a team, let them all have an opportunity to play. It will give the young ones motivation to work harder, knowing they may have an opportunity to play.
Drew | Oct 30, 2024 at 11:11 pm
Oh yeah, that’s another thing. I still remember from the years 97-2010 (tho the attendance in the Fedora years wasn’t what it was in the Bower years, we still basically filled up the stadium), but I remember playing Jackson State when Nix was there and breaking attendance records to the point they were having to turn ppl away, I mean back then every game was packed whether it was a mid day game, Thursday night game, whatever. I went this year to SE LA, and ofc theyre not the best, but I remember going to ffs games back in the day and it didn’t matter, stadium was packed, crowd was rowdy (especially the student section), and it felt like a real team and fans wanted to be there cause we always knew we had a chance to win. I mean I could maybe name on 1 hand games that weren’t completely full in the 2 decades almost I went to games growing up, and it was later in the Fedora era I’m pretty sure. Whem Bower was there we were always full hell.
Drew | Oct 30, 2024 at 11:05 pm
Yeah, your story sounds like mine. From the time I was old enough to go and enjoy games my grandpa took me to USM to watch football. From about 97 or so until literally 2012, when he’d finally give up. He had been a season tickets holder from id guess at least the 70s or 80s until 2012. That year hurt a lot of us tbh. And this year with me still being the only fan left following the team is hurting too. Thank goodness the game I chose to go to was the SE Louisiana so I did at least get to see our win lol.
But also my grandpa was getting to where it hurt him too much to make the long walks and drives from Pachuta (or meridian if he took me back home, which I usually stayed the night so didn’t have to). But it breaks my heart that he give up on them (tho tbh it has more to do than just football, also some decisions the university made as well).
But man, I remember growing up and seeing guys like Adalius Thomas, Patrick Surtain, Derrick Nix, Sherrod Gideon, Todd Pinkston, John Eubanks, Damion Fletcher, DeAndre Brown, Austin Davis, Jalen Richard, and I could go on and on. USM to be a small school has produced not only great players but produced great teams who could at any time, compete with the best of them.
In 2000 we beat Bama 21-0 (I think we were ranked top 15 and they were top 25), 03 beat Nebraska, Beat FSU and Bobby Bowden worse than they’d ever been beat (I’m pretty sure my goal said is what he said), if im not mistaken the last home game Bear Bryant had was against Southern Miss and we won. I remember in 04 being at the Southern Miss v Cal game where Cal was ranked 2 I think and we just lost by 10, which they lost their ranking cause they barely beat us (which I find to be kind of a dig at us, but oh well lol).
Point is Southern always had good talent and at least a winning season, if there was anything you could count on it was that we’d win at least 6 games (with it usually being 7 or 8). To the point we held the longest season winning streak in college football if I’m not mistaken. And after 2012 that all went downhill and sadly other than a good year 3 Monken and ig under Jay Hopson we had decent seasons as well, but I felt with the talent we had, we should’ve did better than we did, with out best records since 2012 I think being 8 wins.
But yeah, I had a feeling that under Hall things were going to go exactly how theyve been going tbh. Again, we had a bunch of talent and just not the right guy to lead them and to make the right decisions. I just hope whoever we hire next can get us back on track and maybe we can have some stability at HC for once, and be someone who gets us back on our winning ways tbh. I’m well never have a coach to stay as long and win as regularly as Bower, but if we could get someone to do half what he did, we’d be in decent shape. And I hope we can find that person to come in and motivate those guys and get us back on track cause this year has been embarrassing honestly. I haven’t even watched more than an hour of all of the games on ESPN+ (other than the one I went to), cause it just looked bad tbh. So I’m hoping for a turnaround, some good recruiting, and someone to get these guys into shape and make good calls and get this school back to what it used to be.
Tho I will say I was always mad back in the day when all the other schools went to the American/Big East and we got left behind, especially since we had dominated all of those schools as far back as I can remember tbh. Which when the CUSA started going downhill (not long after they left), I said we should just go Independent, and make our own schedules or however it works when you’re independent and not these ffs schools for one and go back to playing sec schools, and either losing or find a damn way to compete/win.
Ryan | Oct 30, 2024 at 8:19 pm
I agree. Unfortunately, USM missed it’s opportunity to change and grow with the 2012 season. Some might say UAB took it away in 2011 because a win there would have put them on the national stage against Michigan. The really now is that USM has made a transition. It is an elite baseball school now. Football will not return to the glory days. The TV money and the addition of all the mid majors in their footprint just doesn’t give them access to the number of high mid major & SEC caliber athletes needed anymore. The pool of available money and athletes is just too thin.