Biggest recruiting miss since 2009: Mississippi State
When Dan Mullen was given the keys to the Mississippi State program in early 2009, he inherited a recruiting class largely pieced together by former coach Sylvester Croom and MSU’s previous staff.
Nevertheless, the class still featured a handful of top talents from the class of 2009, including four-star tailback Montrell Conner, a player many expected to be the focal point of Mullen’s offense by the end of his career.
Mullen has coached four different 1,000-yard rushers in his six years in Starkville, but Conner was never one of them, resulting in one of State’s biggest recruiting disappointments in recent memory.
Conner redshirted in 2009 as current NFL star Anthony Dixon wrapped up his collegiate career with 1,391 yards and 12 touchdowns. After a year to watch, learn and develop, it appeared Conner would be part of the Bulldogs competition for the starting tailback job in 2010 along with fellow tailbacks Vick Ballard and LaDarius Perkins (who both posted 1,000-yard seasons before closing their college careers).
Instead, Conner transferred out of MSU and into Copiah-Lincoln Community College in Wesson, Mississippi, citing “personal reasons” as the reason for his departure.
Conner told local media member Kyle Veazey at the time “I felt if I wasn’t happy somewhere, I wasn’t going to play to the best of my abilities,” indicating he might not have felt at home in Starkville during his redshirt season in ’09.
He ran for just 50.6 yards per game and 3.8 yards per carry in one season at the JUCO level, then transferred to Troy University. Conner spent just one season at Troy and never logged a carry at the FBS level. Like the Bulldogs, the Trojans never got the return on investment they hoped for, and in 2011 they ranked 117th out of 120 FBS teams in rushing yards per game.
The Bulldogs had better fallback plans in the form of Ballard and later Perkins, but Conner’s unexpected exit from Mississippi State could have set its offense back years.
Being a four-star prospect certainly doesn’t entitle that prospect to success, but Conner’s lack of success at every stage of his college career makes him one of the Bulldogs biggest recruiting misses since ’09.