Fair or not, Dan Mullen is ultimately responsible for Jeffery Simmons

HOOVER, Ala. — We all thought Mississippi State coach Dan Mullen would be answering some tough questions.

The Bulldogs dealt with their fair share of controversy during the offseason — specifically, the decision to allow Jeffery Simmons to enroll as a freshman. He became a YouTube sensation for all the wrong reasons.

Simmons, a coveted five-star defensive end recruit from the Class of 2015, can clearly be seen via cell phone video beating a defenseless woman during a dispute at a family gathering. His punishment from MSU? Little more than counseling and a one-game suspension for the season-opening clash against Cupcake State.

However, when it was time for Mullen’s Q&A on Tuesday at SEC Media Days, Simmons talk was largely swept away.

On the field, Mullen does indeed have an issue regarding the quarterback position. Finding a replacement for Dak Prescott, the best in program history, is a tall task for anyone. He might just be irreplaceable.

But like it or not, violence against women — particularly when the perpetrators are (allegedly) student-athletes — is currently one of the biggest conversations being held in this country. Baylor was forced to clean house. Tennessee ended up writing a seven-figure check. And those are just the big football schools.

MSU’s punishment of Simmons was considered lenient by many outside Starkville. Maybe even irresponsible.

Finally getting my chance in the main media room, I was as direct as possible with my question: “Coach, when the program handed down its discipline for Jeffery Simmons, did you believe that all parties would be satisfied, or did you anticipate the degree of backlash you received from people outside the program?”

Mullen answered clearly and concisely, even though his words shed very little light on this serious issue.

“I wasn’t involved as much,” he said. “It was a university decision, but I was just thrilled that we’re having Jeffery as part of our family coming in. As I said, I take a lot of pride as a coach on developing young men to be champions, not just on the field, off the field and every part of their life to be successful in whatever it is they do. And that’s not an easy process.

“I think everyone loves — coaches, we get judged a lot on a 60-minute game on Saturday. But our real job goes well beyond that. It goes — we have four to five years to make a positive impact on young people’s lives. And hopefully they leave better men in our program than when they came, and they can go out and have successful lives and be a successful part of — successful in their futures and make positive impacts in their communities.”

Credit: Butch Dill-USA TODAY Sports

To my amazement, there was zero follow-up on the topic from my fellow reporters for quite some time. Back to the softballs: “Two years ago, you were here and you were coming off the Liberty Bowl win over Rice …”

All the more egregious, according to Mississippi State’s current roster, Simmons was somehow assigned No. 36. That number had previously been retired in memory of Nick Bell, who played D-end for the Bulldogs — same as Simmons — before being diagnosed with cancer in 2010. He passed away tragically at 20 years old.

Just letting Simmons in rubbed people the wrong way. Now he’s given the number of a maroon-and-white hero?

Fortunately, Dan Wolken of USA TODAY was sympathetic to my cause: “Dan, when you recruit and enroll someone on your campus who has a violent incident in their past, what level of responsibility goes to the coach if that player then causes an incident on campus that turns one of your students into a victim?”

“I think one of the things you have to do, in any time a situation like that occurs, you have to have a great investigation into what happened, into getting as many details from as many people as you possibly can, to make good decisions,” Mullen said. “And you — because you are responsible in a very high-profile position.

“You want to make sure that everybody in the university is involved. It’s not a football decision. It is a university decision that we’re all looking at making. And we want to go out there, and to do that, we have to have as much information as possible.

“And in this situation, our university did a very, very thorough investigation into everything that happened within the situation there and came up with the conclusion that, you know, we felt that Jeffery deserved the opportunity to be part of our family. And that now we move forward in helping educate and develop a young man to become successful in his life.”

Even with his microphone taken away, Wolken asked a follow-up: “If it happens again, are you responsible?”

“We’re all responsible,” Mullen said. “If that happens, all of us, to be honest with you. I’m responsible for all of the actions for every one of my players. I’m responsible as a head coach. I can’t be with them all of the time. All I can do is be a parent. My wife and I try to be parents to every one of the kids in our program, not an individual. Just every single one of them. We try to be parents, and I take a great deal of responsibility of all of our players and actions that they do, good and bad.

“I’m proud of our guys, of all of our different players that we’ve had and the successes they had. Just like you are with your own children. We’ll have a lot of different players make mistakes. And when they do make a mistake, to be honest with you, I know for a lot of people it’s a story, it’s a blur, it’s a headline. For us, that’s a family member that’s making a mistake, that you’re trying to help them get through a tough time, help educate them, help them not make mistakes in the future and help them better themselves in life.

“And my wife and I take that very seriously with every single member of our team and every player that’s played with us, not just now on our current roster, but anybody that’s ever played for us at Mississippi State.”

We’re all responsible, as he said. But no matter if Simmons stars or sinks, the majority of that responsibility will fall on Mullen’s shoulders.

John Crist is the senior writer for Saturday Down South. You can send him an e-mail directly at jcrist@saturdaydownsouth.com or follow him on Twitter @SaturdayJC.