Karl Morgan is a big man with a big job ahead of him. He’s the first-year head football coach at Mississippi Valley State University. His mission is to do something that’s never been done in Itta Bena before: Win a Southwestern Athletic Conference football championship.
Morgan is a former college and pro football defensive lineman. At 49, he’s still an imposing figure. And he’s honest about the job ahead of him.
“I don’t read the newspaper,” Morgan said at Thursday’s meeting of the Greenwood Kiwanis Club. (Now that’s being too honest.)
He added, “What you’ve read is basically true about what we have and don’t have.”
The things Valley’s football program lacks include:
• Money. The school can only afford about 50 of the 63 scholarships the NCAA allows.
• Talented players. Morgan admits that part of that is the lack of scholarships, but adds, “That’s no excuse.”
• A home football stadium, at least for this season. Rice-Totten Stadium has been condemned and will need major repairs before the next game is played there. Valley officials decided to move three of their four home games 45 miles away to Greenville-Weston High School’s home stadium. The fourth will be played in Chicago.
Valley didn’t give Leflore County and Greenwood a chance to host the games. Wayne Self, president of the Leflore County Board of Supervisors, and Chancery Clerk Sam Abraham are among those in Greenwood who aren’t happy about it.
Morgan says he’s been focused on his team, not where the Delta Devils will play and the controversy surrounding it.
“Once they said Greenville, I said, ‘Hey, let’s go to Greenville.’”
Morgan said riding a bus to home games for a year will be worth it if it means a better stadium in Itta Bena. The proposed improvements include a brick facade for the stands.
Morgan described growing up in Houma, La., one of six children of a shoe repairman who only made it through the eighth grade. But Morgan said his father was determined that his children would graduate from college.
“He set the tone,” Morgan said of his father. Six of the seven children did graduate from college. Morgan laughingly admitted he’s the only one of the six who has just one college degree.
Morgan said that when he and his siblings received their college degrees, they had to take them home to their father.
“He collected them,” Morgan said. “... I didn’t get back my UCLA degree until after he passed.”
Morgan is the father of three sons, all of them college graduates.
It’s no surprise then that Morgan says the first principle his Valley program is founded on is graduating players. The others are: changing lives, serving the community, playing by the rules and winning championships.
Morgan says he emphasizes personal accountability. In most college football programs, assistant coaches discipline players. At MVSU, that’s the head man’s job.
“I’m the dean of discipline at Mississippi Valley,” Morgan said.
Valley doesn’t have much football tradition, but Morgan wants to make the school’s greatest player, Jerry Rice, a part of the program.
“We need to celebrate him,” Morgan said of Rice, who’s the NFL’s all-time leading receiver and touchdown scorer. Morgan says he uses Rice as an example when talking to his players, reminding them how Rice was a little-known prospect “from Crawford, Miss., and he walked where you walk now and he became the greatest receiver ever.”
Morgan says he has put in a call to Rice. “All I want to do is get him involved with the program,” Morgan said.
Valley’s new coach is relentlessly upbeat. Morgan said he “heard all the negative stuff” about the the Delta (“the mosquitoes”) and the Delta Devils program. But he says his research convinced him to take the job.
As for the Delta, Morgan said he and his wife, a registered nurse, “love the Delta. ... We’re enjoying our stay here.”
“I still feel confident and optimistic you can win here,” Morgan said.
Morgan admitted there are challenges at Valley. But he cited the examples of Miami and Kansas State, two programs that had losing traditions before experiencing success.
“You might not be able to sustain (success), but you can win anywhere.”
Morgan even sees a bright side to being picked to finish dead last in the SWAC East.
“Hopefully, we will have the element of surprise.”
Jackson Clarion-Ledger sports columnist Rick Cleveland wrote recently that Morgan “has the most difficult job in football.”
But it’s always sunny in Itta Bena as far as Morgan is concerned.
“I love the job more each day,” he says. “We’re going to get it done.”
• Contact Charles Corder at ccorder@gwcommonwealth.com.
