First of all no one is surprised that Ole Miss tried to do this right? And probably to players that they at one time claimed that they "didn't really want and had better prospects lined up". Add in the D1 angle and everyone with a brain knows that Mike Espy and Shay Hodge are not going to be pro-MSU. I knew that when that place opened and knew that it was going to probably become a hub for illegal recruiting.

Stuff like this is why the Egg Bowl rivalry is "toxic". You don't see Alabama or Auburn trying to take each others players. Or Florida/Florida State. And etc. Ole Miss actively tried to do it and then gloat about it. But those of us who have been around for awhile are used to this.

I don't think very many MSU players are ever going to go to Ole Miss and I don't think very many Ole Miss players will go to MSU via the portal. That said- my entire problem with this whole thing is the tampering angle. If one of our players truly legitimately wants to go there I can handle that. For example- I didn't have a problem with Burney Hutchinson transferring there for baseball. But when Ole Miss or anyone else is actively recruiting our players- that's an issue and not what the portal is really about.

And this is the whole problem with recruiting in general. All I ask is:

1. That recruiting be done legitimately. No backpacks, etc.

2. If.....OK, when- Ole Miss does cheat- don't complain when MSU cheats to level the playing field.

Seems reasonable. Which means Ole Miss will have a problem with it. I can hear the whining "But....but...?.Leo Lewis! You don't know the whole story!" Like that somehow gives them carte blanche to cheat.

Now, I've seen some Ole Miss fans compare this to KJ Costello but there's a MAJOR difference which is Costello would still be at Stanford if he had gotten into grad school there. He was only recruited by MSU once he didn't in. It's apples and oranges compared to "Hey, we invited a bunch of MSU players that train at D1 to a party with their former assistant coach who was well liked and a booster and tried to recruit them to Ole Miss."

The conclusion is this is a major win for MSU. I was asked on this board what I wanted MSU to do and MSU did it. Which was basically stand up to Ole Miss. Kudos to John Cohen and Mike Leach. This is actually a big moment for MSU IMO. Because in the past we had:

Jackie who had balls to stand up to Ole Miss but didn't have the administrative support.

Croom wasn't really a threat to Ole Miss.

Dan who had the administrative backing at least under Byrne for sure but I think Dan handled situations like this by basically telling the player to **** off and I'm so smart I can beat you with Brandon Holloway up the middle.

Joe could kick rocks.

Now we have Leach and Cohen and both have demonstrated that they will stand up for MSU against Ole Miss in football. That's big because Ole Miss has been trying to bully us for years. Now like most if not all people I have had to deal with bullies at times and the best way to deal with them more often than not is to stand up to them. Typically I have found that will cause them to stop. We'll see if that happens here. At the very least I suspect it will make it more difficult or make them think twice about trying to do something like this again. I think that they thought that Leach being in Florida and with his aloof attitude would just bow down and let the players go- and they were wrong.

Looking forward to the Leach era!