Boldness of Mississippi State's move can't be overstated

0 Comments | USA TODAY, December, 2003 | by Jon Saraceno

The hue of Sylvester Croom's skin is not irrelevant, as some suggest, but that is not why Mississippi State made the right decision for its football program. In the end, the new coach's racial profile might do more for the beleaguered Bulldogs than any Crimson Tide booster over in Alabama can imagine.

Winners of a meager eight games the last three seasons and confronting NCAA scrutiny, the Starkville, Miss., college needed to do something dramatic, and it did, thankfully breaking with ingrained hiring practices among football programs in its conference. Tradition is supposed to be a good thing. But when it comes to veiled, exclusionary hiring policies based on race, it is an embarrassment and it is wrong.

Hell froze over for white supremacists across the Deep South...