Charles Huff Pre-Camp Press Conference - July 29

Opening Statement...
"One, I appreciate everybody being here. Today is like the first day of school where everyone is excited. Every team in the country that reports yesterday or today is undefeated. There's a lot of hopes, dreams and also a lot of work to be done, so I appreciate you guys for being here, appreciate everything you guys do. I know getting over here from your respective places of business is not always the easiest thing, but I appreciate your guys' coverage of our program, our university, obviously our young men and student-athletes in our program. Just to kind of recap the summer, the phase we just came out of. A really productive summer. Probably the one of the better summers that I've been a part of as far as what we were able to get accomplished with all the things involved: 80 new players, new transition, weather adjustment as well, but a really good summer. A lot of credit to [director of sports performance for football] Ben Ashford and his staff for the physical improvements that have been made. Tremendous job of what he's been able to do with our team in the months of basically June and July. It's been basically his program as far as the bulk of the work has been strength, conditioning, mental conditioning, mental toughness building, body transformation, all of the above. Cannot be more appreciative of our administration that starts with [university president] Dr. [Joe] Paul all the way down to his board and his staff all the way to [director of athletics] Jeremy [McClain] and [senior deputy athletics director/chief operating officer] Shawn [Jones] and our administrative staff here on the athletics side for the nutrition investment that was made. A huge piece to the puzzle that often goes overlooked or unfunded. For them to be able to make that step to help our guys be fueled throughout the entire summer – a complete training table, three meals a day on top of supplementing some of their pocket money to be able to go out and supply food at their homes. I know we talk about nutrition, back when I went to college, you went to the cafeteria for three meals a day and that was kind of like everybody gave you a pat on the back, but you do get hungry at night. I know from myself that rummaging through the cabinets looking for a snack or looking for something to eat when you get home matters, so for us to be able not only to supply three quality healthy meals a day for those guys and to be able to supplement a lot of our guys that live in apartments, so obviously you don't have just free peanut butter just laying around so you have to be able to supply your living quarters. Ben Ashford and his staff do a phenomenal job of teaching our guys how to eat. I know it sounds very simplistic, but you can't fuel the body the right way unless you're taught how to do that. So, we teach them how to grocery shop, portion, size, portion management, what their plate should look like, what different types of foods go into their body to produce a certain response, how to curb some habits that you may not be happy with. I have to take some of that knowledge myself and figure out how to curb some of my sweet habits, but the total transformation, it's been a total collective push. It was not just us. It was the administration, the players listening to what we instructed them to do in order to affect their body change which ultimately affects their movement, their skills, their ability to stay healthy, all of those things have been phenomenal. Just some overall numbers that were extremely impressive. The beauty of it is, we've got about 25 players that were able see going into basically year two of Coach Ashford's program, so you can really see some true growth and development. Now, we've brought a lot of new players in and we don't really know what they were doing a their previous institutions, so it's a little harder to track how far someone has really gone in a two-month sample size, but those 25 guys that we've kind of got a year's sample size on now, some of those guys look a lot different than they did when we got them here in December and that's a credit to Ben Ashford and to them for putting in the work. Plus-25 percent body mass index change across the whole team, which is phenomenal. Some of the o-lineman body fat percentages are way below, we use the NFL combine national average that's supposed to be the Olympics of football, those guys go off and train for months to change their body so we kind of use those numbers as some road marks or guidelines. Obviously our guys are not going to hit those numbers because that's a four-year plus three-or-four month focus, but just to kind of guide some guys so, plus-25 percent change across the team has been phenomenal. Over 75 percent of our players have hit PRs in all three of their major lifts, which is squat, bench and power clean. Some guys are snatching stuff off the floor at an unbelievable rate and then 20 percent of our guys are hitting PRs in two of those. You talk about just the growth in a short period of time, again hats off to Ben Ashford and his staff. That's a little bit of the work that's done in the dark that no one really gets a chance to see that shows up on Saturday. Now, we've got to translate it, right, so going into the fall camp our focus is going to be to establish the foundation of discipline: what it takes to win. There is a discipline carryover to going to class, showing up on time, doing what you're supposed to do when you're supposed to do it the way it's supposed to be done and then there's a football piece, right. If I have an assignment, I have to play that assignment with the right technique every time. I've got to communicate every time, right, so we've got to establish that foundation now, which is carryover from what we've been kind of preaching since we got here. We want to continue to develop the mental and physical toughness piece and we get to put Riddells on now. If we were running around cones, we would be competing for the national championship and I would say bet the house on Southern Miss, but running around cones is a small part of it, so now we got to translate that to the physical part. We actually have to hit people and be hit and respond from that. Improve our basic fundamentals within our schemes. There's always a technical piece and then there's a tactical piece that comes with this. How you do your assignment is just as important and what to do, so we got to start replicating that at a rapid rate. We wanted to continue to come together as a team. This the is the next phase of it. We've added some guys two months ago in June to get to our team group, so we've still got to continue to develop. There's a little bit of ok, we cool, we hang out, we lift together, but you've got to execute when you get out here when you get out here with me, and there's some accountability to that. I've been at places where guys will kick guys off the field if they don't know what they're doing, so that's the next place in coming together as a team: how do we hold each other accountable? Not only on showing up on time, going to class, doing what you're supposed to do, but your assignment and how your assignment affects the cohesion of the entire group. Big piece of what we got to start working on now, we've got to develop honesty and trust between coaches and players. One thing for a coach to say, 'hey we trust you' and for a player to say 'hey I trust you coach' but it's another thing for the player to go out and execute consistently. That develops a football trust that we need between each other, not only form coaches to coaches but players to coach. Players have to trust that what we're asking them and telling them to do – techniques, fundamentals, scheme-wise – is going to benefit them, help them create value, that comes through practicing over time. We want to be able to give everybody an opportunity to contribute to the team. Everybody has a role. You get a chance to establish your role. Now that we're actually playing football, you get a chance to enhance your role as we start to stack these days. Day eight, day nine, day 10 start stacking on each other, maybe you started as a guy that was a rotational guy, you've shown some consistency overtime, now all of sudden you become the guy that runs out there with the first group and how do you handle that? We've got to start to develop that and then ultimately, we've got to start developing the pride in our team and our university. For the last seven or eight months since we've been here, we've been a collection of guys. We've been from multiple schools. When we put those helmets on tomorrow afternoon, we become Southern Miss and we got to have pride in that. We got to have pride in each other. We got to have pride in this university in order to go out and fight the battles we're going to need to fight. We can't just go out there as 80 individuals, some from an SEC school, some from Sun Belt schools, some from other places. We've got to come out there and fight as Southern Miss and I think that as this college football culture starts to change a little bit, that that's the piece we can't forget. Years ago, you went to school and the black and the gold meant something to you. We still have to establish that. It still has to mean something that when these fans fill this stadium, that we're actually playing for them. It still has to meant something that this university is giving all of us an unbelievable opportunity and we owe it to them to repay them with how we take advantage of that opportunity. So, a lot to do in the next 30-some odd days, but I'm really excited about the opportunity though. Really excited about the group of young men. Again, we haven't hit anybody, we haven't been hit, we haven't been out in the temperature yet, we haven't been pushed in for a storm and had to go back out, so there's a lot things that we have to go through in order to be ready to play here in the next weeks."

Q: I know you and I spoke a little bit last week in New Orleans about the discipline. Is your nutrition, is that the first step toward developing discipline with the guys at least coming through the season and how they shop, how they do things like this, developing the program?
"The first step in discipline is demanding it. That's the first step, in everything. It's just as important for these guys to go to the grocery store and purchase the right stuff, come in here to our nutrition center and eat the right stuff, as it is for them to go to class on time, as it is for them to show up to meetings on time, as it is for them to be respectful in the community. A lot of times, discipline at some places is very individual: 'Hey I want you to be disciplined on the field, but I don't really care what you do as long as you pass the class, I don't care if you go on time.' To us, it's all-encompassing. There's no switch. Either you do or you don't. You've got to do what you're supposed to do, when you're supposed to do it the way it's supposed to be done, and you've got to do it that way all the time because every time you're not disciplined, you're basically training the habit of undiscipline. It just reenforces that everything's important, that nutrition is important, and I get it, I mean we're not talking vegetarians or people that are very disciplined in their meal, we're talking about guys making better decisions with the things that you like to eat. Hey, I like to go to Qdoba, just don't load it up with the cheese. You can still go to Qdoba but moderate yourself. One of the big things that we talk to our guys about is sometimes when people talk about discipline and nutrition factor, you think all of sudden you've got to go from not enjoying a pizza sometime to completely eating whole grain everything and everything's got to be fresh and that's not what we're talking about. We're just talking about making better decisions. Don't eat the whole pizza is what we're trying to get our guys to understand and then how do we show them how it benefits them. All of sudden, we're 25 percent down in body fat percentage so now you can have a tangible result to their discipline. And the guys who were better at it were lower. The guys who were not as good at it didn't get as far down as they wanted to and we were able to show them why.

Follow Up: Do y'all have a weekly checkup? (xx)
"Our guys weigh in daily. Obviously for a couple reasons. From our athletic training and training staff, to make sure hydration wise guys aren't losing too much weight too fast. Our guys weigh in daily, so again Ben Ashford can address a lot of time they come in on Monday or Friday and they're great, they go home for the weekend, and they come back four pounds heavier. Well, your actions are speaking louder than your words. You say you didn't do anything; you didn't eat anything over the weekend, but you gained four pounds. Now, the air don't have calories in it, so something happened. It's a way for us to check their habits and routine and for them to know I got to step on that scale every day. I know either one, I'm doing the things that I need to do, or I have to modify what I'm doing."

Q: You obviously have had a lot of recent success, last year winning the Sun Belt at Marshall ... Coming in here, when you look at the roster, you've got guys who some guys chose to stay here, you've got guys who are new recruits that came in, you have students that you brought in with you from where you were and then you have some new transfers as well, in this age it just seems like that is common to have these new mesh of people, what do you think is the biggest challenge to getting them to bond at this point when you're starting something new here with all the people coming from different places and how do you kind of make that happen and overcome that?
"Well first, let me say this. We live in America, so this is a free choice. None of these guys were hit over the head and forced to come anywhere, and I think that's the beauty of the country we live in. I think that's the beauty of the transfer portal. I think that's the beauty of where we are in college athletics. Do we need some guidelines to kind of help guide these guys, yeah, but they have freedom. The biggest thing is when you have freedom of choice, that means you're choosing everything that comes involved with it. So, getting guys to understand if you come here and you want to play on this team, part of the program or part of the steps you need in order for you to create value for yourself is you've got to get connected. One of the biggest things that we've learned that we have to try and make sure these guys understand is how to communicate. This generation, which is probably going to be one of the best generations in the world from what they're able to do with technology and now AI has come in this thing, they're going to be able to do some really awesome things, but because of that, some of the personal skills have been lost. Most of our guys communicate through text. That's how they communicate, that's the world they live in, so it's a little difficult to text a linebacker and say watch the run in the game, so you have to actually teach them how to communicate. We have to teach them how to decentralize command. How do I communicate with you: one, to get to know you, so I have to be vulnerable enough to tell you my story, open up and talk, that means we have to spend time together, and then two, I have to learn how to communicate with you so you don't feel attacked or you don't feel like my words are demeaning you. So, we teach them how to do that. We spend a lot of time in the summer working on communication, getting to know each other. One of the big things that we do is we force them to spend time together outside of this building. The city of Hattiesburg is great for that because there's a lot of things to do where large groups can go and hang out. We were able to go paint ball. Some guys have been to some of these apartment complex pools to hang out. We've had some barbeques at coaches' houses, so there are things that these guys can do on their own to spend time with each other. Again, any time of relationship you're trying to build, it's old as day is long, you have to put time in. You can't have a relationship and be void of spending time together. That's what we really preach. That's what we really show them. I think a lot of times it's assumed that they'll come together, it's assumed that they'll talk. One of the things we do in our locker room is we split it up to where it's white, black, white, black, white, black, offense, defense, offense, defense. In your locker room, that's where they're going to spend most of the time together in a non-defensive mode. They're not getting ready for practice, they're not in a meeting, they're not in the classroom. The locker room for all of us who have played sports is like the greatest place in America, but a lot of times what happens in locker rooms is the O-lines' lockers are all together, so they spend time together, they laugh, they joke, they hang out. The D-line's lockers are all together, so typically your locker room is broke up by position. We try to break it up a little bit more nontraditionally. Racial divide, offense/defense divide, it's not O-line to D-line but O-line, DB, right, because how many times at practice or in a weight session or even in groups on the field is the O-lineman really spending time with the DB? So, we put a lot of intentional focus into that because that is probably the biggest underlying piece. I tell the team when we started in June there's going to be two teams hat play every game this year. There's going to be one team that plays together, they wear the same uniform, they run out of the same tunnel, and then the other team is the team that plays for each other, and the only way that you can play for each other is you've got to get to know each other. You've got to get connected, I've got to open up, I've got to be able to tell you some things about me that's maybe not the first thing I put on my IG page or on my Twitter handle. We've done a really good job of that. Different phases create different levels of connectivity. This next phase is going to be a big level of connectivity. The reality of it is, they all know each other are good players because they've run around cones together, but when you put that Riddell and you step in between the circle of truth which is that gridiron, you learn a lot about a person without even having to say anything, and that will help open up some lines of communication. Hey man, you do a really good job once you catch the ball, but when you struggle seeing the signals, lets watch the signal tape together. Hey man, you do a really good job when you know what to do, but when you don't know what to do, you're a little bit slow, let's talk about communicating better. I think there's phases that go into it. It's got to be a really intentional focus. You can't just throw these guys in a locker room and think that it's going to naturally happen. Twenty years ago, it happened over the course of four years. You came in with a class, you spent three years together, you had to spend time together. Twenty years ago, we didn't have the technology. Now these guys can go back to their room, put a headset on and play Madden with somebody in Canada. We didn't have that. They have Doordash, so really you can go to your apartment and shut the door and never see another teammate until it's time to come to the meeting. When we went to school, you had to go order the pizza downstairs and by the time you got back to the fourth floor, half the team had ate your pizza. That was just the reality of it. So, it's changed a little bit so we can't assume that it just naturally happens, and I think putting an intentional focus on it really helps."

Q: You had some key components of your football team rehabbing during the Spring, can you speak to some of those guys and the progress they've made since then?
"This is the first time since me being a head coach where we're going to start the season with everybody fully healthy. Now, there are some guys that we've got to make sure they've done a really good job rehabbing. [Head athletic trainer] Aaron [Estes] and our athletic staff are phenomenal. They're on them every single day about taking care of their bodies. That's another step, once you add the nutrition, the strength and conditioning to strengthen the body, then you've got to educate on how to take care of your body. I read a deal where Derrick Henry spends $250,000 along on just food a year. CeeDee Lamb spends a cuckoo amount of money on just taking care of his body. A lot of times in college, the guys don't know how to take care of their body. They go in the training room once they're hurt, they treat it like and ER. Really, you have to treat it like a library. You've got to go in there and research and rehab and stretch, come back in, research and rehab and stretch, so that you can prevent some. We feel really good about where we are starting. Obviously, there's going to be some things that happen throughout camp that we've got to manage. The reality of it is that's the one thing we can't predict, so we could be sitting here all excited and then we run out of the tunnel on August the 30th and we don't have some guys, it's going to change our ability to play at a high level. But right now, we're in a good spot."

Q: As you guys work your way through fall camp, who are some guys you're expecting a big camp out of, guys that you saw in Spring that you're really looking for reps out of now in fall camp?
"I think it's more units. I'm excited about the D-line. We brought in 20 of those guys in June, so a lot of those guys we haven't seen in pads yet, so that's going to be interesting. [Redshirt senior defensive lineman] Isaiah Gibson (Springfield, Ohio) being back healthy is going to be big for us. He was a guy that was limited this spring. Him being back healthy is going to be big. Again, whenever you're talking about guys that you expect to have big years, you're talking about a lot of your veterans, and I think [redshirt senior quarterback] Braylon [Braxton] (Frisco, Texas) continuing to take the next step. This would be the third time he's going through and learning the system now, so it should be a little bit more fluid for him. The O-line, they're probably the one unit that was here mostly in December that went through this spring together so now they've had a chance to gel. We added about five guys to that group, so it'll still be some competition in that. Our [freshman] punter [Jack Murley] (Cranbourne North, Victoria, Australia) coming from Australia will be here Thursday. I'm interested to see, we jumped through a lot of hurdles to help him get visa clearance and all that, so he better be able to punt. There's a lot of when you're talking veterans, so the groups are what I'm really interested to see because it's really about cohesion. You guys are going to write about the wide receiver that caught the long touchdown, you're not going to write about the left guard that had to reset his hands and keep the guy from pressuring the quarterback. So, you're not going to write about the O-line cohesively sliding to pick up a blitz so that we could get the ball off. You're not going to write about the D-line caging the quarterback, you'll write about the sacks, but caging the quarterback so he couldn't escape, he had to step up, he couldn't see, so now all of a sudden, we get a turnover or we get an incomplete. The cohesion of the units is probably what I'm most excited about."

Q: You as a coach, you've really been a guy that's embraced the transfer portal, and I know a lot coaches haven't. At what point in the development of the portal and NIL and transfers, what point did you say, okay, I really like this, or I decided to embrace it where there's lot of coaches are still fighting it, but you took that time to embrace that, what point when you were coaching did that happen?
"When they implemented it. In coaching you have to adapt and the longer it takes you to adapt, the longer it's going to take you to have success. There's some things there's no need to fight, like we're going to pay taxes. There's no need fighting it, we're going to pay taxes, nobody likes it. We can sit around and talk about how it's killing college football and how it's changed the game, or we can talk about the amount of money that we're making off TV deals now compared to what we were making 50 years ago. We can talk about the amount of suites that we've sold that are completely sold out. Twenty years ago we didn't even have suites. So, the change has been good if you adapt. If you don't adapt then you're going to struggle, so I would say as soon as they made the rule, ok this is it. If they tell us August 30th that we're playing with 12 [players], awesome, we're playing with 12, there's no need fighting it. If they tell us on August 30th we've got to play at 9 o'clock at night, we're playing at 9 o'clock at night, and I think the quicker you're able to adapt rather than fight – now don't get me wrong, there's still some work we need to do to get some guardrails on it and that's part of what we do as coaches, we figure out how to make what's been told to us the best, but as soon as it happened, we adapted. We adapted our philosophy, we looked at what ultimately we had to keep the same. A lot of people say, 'Well Coach, you're heavy in the transfer portal,' but we're signing 15-20 high school guys a year. The issue is, you just don't see those guys as quickly because of the transfer portal, it takes those guys a little bit longer to develop, hit the field. We've had to adapt our development model, we've had to kind of speed up the maturation of some of those guys to get them a role on the team quicker so that they feel like hey, I'm progressing. As soon as it happened, we adapted, found the best way to manage where we are and don't get me wrong, if I'm at Georgia or Texas, I've got a different type of adaptation, but we adapted at the other place and hit the ground running."

Follow Up: What did you think of the new rules where they're taking the third party out as far as NIL deals and maybe cutting out some of the going behind and somebody talked that doesn't need to be involved and maybe does the NCAA need to come up with a clearinghouse for agents for that purpose?
"I thought about that for about three seconds and then I realized I'm the head coach of a 1-11 team and I got way bigger problems, so if somebody at the NCAA level or the congressional level can tell us how to flip the script, I will listen. But those things, there's a lot of really really bright intelligent people that will figure it out and once they figure it out, they'll tell me and then we'll adapt. My opinions on those things don't help move the needle on 1-11 because that's not something that's ultimately going to get us better today. I've thought about it for about three seconds and then I was like, 'Woah, you're the head coach of a 1-11 program, you better get back to work." So, that's the reality of it. Obviously, there's going to be change that comes. I think back when Title IX came in, everyone thought that was like changing the college athletics landscape. It turned out to be one of the best things that ever happened. We now have female sports that are doing phenomenal things just like some of the male sports, so I think change is good. Adaptation is what we focus on.

Q: What are you goals for this season in a first year, what are, for you, coming in a lot of fans obviously want to see a turnaround, to have immediate success with things happening so quickly, but how do you define success when you're looking at what this season can be?
"Well, I want to win every game, I want to win every day. No one runs out there and says hey guys, let's just try. Success for me is a little bit different because success for me is do we improve every single day? Do we improve every single week? If you put a number on it, hey if you win x amount of games, we could win that amount of games and not be successful. We could not win that amount of games and be successful. What do you mean coach, well if, knock on wood, if 38 guys get hurt tomorrow, our success is going to look different on August the 30th than it would if everybody stays completely healthy. If we don't get to practice our normal plan because the Good Lord says, hey it's going to storm every day for 24 hours, our success is going to look different on August the 30th and throughout the season. So, there are some things that are out of our control so success for us is: are we getting better every single week? Whether we're running the best football player out there or we're running a freshman or we're running a guy that doesn't have the physical talent as some of the other guys or whatever it is, is he improving? Are we improving as a program? Are we improving as a university? Are we improving as a fan base? Are our ticket sales continuing to go up? Is our stadium continuing to be full? Do I have to go to Jeremy and say hey look man, we got to put another level on here because our fans are selling this place out at such a rate that we've got to find a way to get more in. That's improvement, so that's what success looks like for me. Every week is going to be different because every week is going to be different adversity, every week is going to be a different challenge, so I don't have a number where if we reach this number, hey we have had a successful season. I've been on teams where we played horrible and won the game and everybody would write man, they won the game and you would go back and look at the film and we didn't play with discipline, we didn't take care of the football, we didn't tackle well, we busted assignments, but we won the game. Success for me, and I get it, trust me, I know how I am evaluated, trust me, but success for me and how I relay that to the coaching staff and the weight room or the coaching the staff and the locker room is that each week we go out and improve. Do we go out tomorrow and have the best first practice we've ever had? And then can we have the best first meetings we've ever had? And then Wednesday or Thursday, can we replicate that, can we get a little bit better, and that to me is what success is. At the end of the year and you look back and say hey, we were able to improve every week? Yes or no. Hey, the improvement that we did make, is that what we were capable of making or did we miss the boat. Did we not do some things or take advantage of some opportunities that we could have?

Q: What can playing a team like Mississippi State, an in-state rivalry, do to start off a tenure?
"I wish we didn't play them first. They're in the best conference in the world. They're in year two. [Mississippi State head coach Jeff] Lebby's a good coach. They're going to be much improved. I know it's easy to write or easy for Vegas to make a prediction, but you look at any team in any sport and year two they improve. That's just the nature of it. Especially when you have good coaches. The good thing for us is, it allows us to prepare with a very intentional focus. We know we're getting an SEC football team very soon, so every day matters. Every day this summer matters. Sometimes when you open up with an opponent that the players may look at and say hey, we should beat them, you have to kind of push them a little bit in camp. Hopefully with the team we're opening up against, our guys are seeing red and know we have to play a phenomenal game in order to have a chance to win. That should drive us to have phenomenal practices. From the onset, I appreciate the administration at Mississippi State because of what it's going to do for the city of Hattiesburg, what it's going to do for this state is phenomenal and a lot of schools in states aren't taking advantage of this. I think this state and our administration, their administration has done a phenomenal job in realizing, hey we can have two really really good programs play each other, create economic value in an area where a lot of our fans will be able to come, their fans will be able to come and ultimately generate some revenue in this new world that we're going to need to be able to stay alive in. So, I'm very appreciative of Mississippi State doing that. I'm really appreciative of our administration for scheduling that game. I wish they would've scheduled it number two, but it's going to be a plus, it's going to be a plus. Obviously, we're going to battle and we're going to give them our best shot, but wholistically what that's going to do for this region, for this city is going to be at a really high rate."

Q: When you're implementing a new offensive coordinator and a new defensive coordinator, how important is it to have guys like [redshirt senior quarterback] Braylon [Braxton], like [redshirt senior cornerback] Josh [Moten] on defense to kind of lead those rooms, that have been there before and have seen it, how important is that?
"The carryover helps. There's a lot of offline or behind the scenes conversations that go on with those guys. Moten (Waldorf, Md.) with the defensive guys, Braylon with the offensive guys. What does coach want in this, what is he expecting, hey how do we get to this adjustment, where did this come from? I think it carries a lot of weight because there are some times it's natural where a player may not feel comfortable asking a coach a question and he may go ask Moten and Moten may be able to answer that question. Or Moten may be able to say, no you need ask coach that question. Any time you have familiarity with a process or a system or a scheme, it helps. I think it helps our guys who are very much new to this have a different approach. If Moten's got it, okay I feel like I can get. If Moten's got a question on it, maybe I have a question on it, so I think the familiarity helps."

Q: With everybody that you've brought in, has there been a couple players that make you turn your head and go I didn't expect that or make you think you've found a gem?
"I'm hard to impress because consistency is the key. If you ask me how many one-handed catches have we had out here, I'd probably say 500, but then we'll drop a hitch, so I don't get excited about the one-handed catch. What's been really impressive to me is to watch the body transformations, that's the woah moment. Some guys, [sophomore safety] Corey Myrick's a guy, who was a young guy who came in and transformed his body drastically. Even some of the older guys, you look at Braylon and where he was in the spring he was a little heavier, he's transformed his body. So, I'm a little bit more on the consistency part. There have been some guys that have been ultra-consistent. If you write their name, they'll go out there tomorrow and piss me off, so I won't get into that, but there has been some guys that have been really consistent. We've got a good football team, so there's going to be some aha wow moments, but as a coach you learn to fall in love with the consistency – who can you count on. We talked about that trust between players and coaches, who can I count on to consistently execute, that's what these next 30 days are going to answer."

Q: Recruiting question that [2026] is front and center, you've got the deep south high school pipeline of Florida/Georgia, how has Mississippi going to factor into that?
"We've got to start with Mississippi, and I think we've got a little bit of an advantage because of two things. One, this university has a name in this state. It's not a fly by operation, it's got a name in this state, and two, there's really good talent in this state that loves to stay home, so we've got to create a program or a product that makes them want to stay home. You go back and you look, there's been a lot of really good players that have left this state but end up coming back. We will start with Mississippi. We've got a huge jump on our '26 class. Obviously, we were a little bit behind just coming in and trying to get in the portal, but we've got a really good jump with our summer camps and our spring recruiting has been really helpful. The other thing that I have been reminded of since coming back is the high school coaches in this state are really really good. And when I say good, not only Xs and Os, but helping their kids through the process. Hey, you need to look at Southern Miss because from your skillset, what you can create from a value skillset, that's a place where you can go, your family can come watch you play and you can go on to chase your dreams at the highest level. So, the high school coaches have been great, which is sometimes if the high school coach is not helping push guys or at least have guys aware of your school, it makes it tough, but I would say we have to start here. The players in this state love to stay home, which is awesome, and then obviously the high school coaches have been phenomenal in helping remind kids that hey, this is a really good option."

Q: When it comes to high school recruiting, does it change how you recruit high school with the transfer portal, if maybe the high school kid can maybe develop more because of that or is it going to make them develop less? Did it change anything for you in the aspect of coaching?
"I don't think it changed, what you really have to look at is I think a couple of things. The high school athlete is more developed now that he was 10 years ago because they've got trainers and they've got weight lifting programs at all these schools. They're more developed physically. The one thing that has changed, you have to stick to your plan. Our plan is to replace our outgoing seniors with a high school class, so if we lose 20 seniors to graduation, we're going to bring in 20 high school guys, that way you keep a foundation. You don't have to go out every year and try and get 80 transfer portal guys. Now, there's going to be some times you lose six guys at a position, and you can't fill them with six high school guys, but as a general philosophy, we want to keep that foundation of a high school class in. Because ultimately, once you get this thing rolling, we're in a position here where we should be able to retain some of our players. [sophomore linebacker] Chris Jones (Byram, Miss.) is a perfect example. High school kid, came in, had a chance to leave, able to retain him, obviously progressing at a really high rate from a physical standpoint, should have a phenomenal year. Well, he should be at a situation where he wants to stay here and if you can get, out of 20, if you can get 10 of those in each high school class, then you're ultimately doing what we were doing 20 years ago where you're keeping most of your high school recruits in your program, so that's kind of our philosophy. It changes, you've got to adapt. If all these guys say, you know what, to heck with Coach Huff, we're going to transfer then you have to change, you have to change course. You set a plan and you work the plan until you're forced to change."

Q: The community college system in Mississippi is one of the best in the nation. I know you've talked about high school, but as far as developing a relationship with the community college coaches, and Southern Miss has a proven history of having guys from that system...
"It's really unique. There's two ways we look at it. The player, we look at as in the transfer portal line because you're talking about a player that has some college experience, if that makes sense. So, when we talk transfer portal, we count junior college players in that line. But from the junior college coach's perspective, they still get influenced like a high school guy as far as hey, this is a good option, hey you need to look at Southern Miss. So, I think us being in this state, we kind of get the best of both worlds. We get a more developed player, meaning he's been in a college system for a year or two, but we still get the guidance of their coach or their position coach or their head coach of the high school guy saying hey you need to look at this. We get transfer portal players from the SEC schools, and I mean, Lane [Kiffin] isn't telling them hey man, you should probably look at Southern Miss when a kid walks in and says I want to transfer. They're saying ok, wish you the best and best of luck and whatever it is, so we kind of get the best of both worlds. We get the alignment as a transfer body, meaning a college player with experience, but we still get the support from the so many junior college coaches who have either played here, coached in this state or at least remember when this place was really really good and that they know it can create value. So, we kind of get the best of both worlds."

Closing Statement…
"Thanks guys, I appreciate it. I look forward to seeing you guys out at practice throughout camp and then I also look forward to seeing you guys August 30th. To The Top!"

University of Southern Mississippi Athletics

Charles Huff Pre-Camp Press Conference - July 29

Players Mentioned

Chris Jones

Jack Murley

Corey Myrick

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