In a day and age of when high school recruiting has become a circus and verbal commitments of prospects are more or less taken with a grain of salt, it is very refreshing when a player honors his commitment to a school after a long period of time. That was the plan for West Mesquite’s Chason Virgil who committed to Mississippi State early in the process and planned to graduate in December so he could enroll for the spring. That was the plan until head coach Dan Mullen switched it up on Virgil. Mullen decided to pull Virgil’s offer and instead offer him a “grayshirt”, which provoked his head coach to take to Twitter.
Miss St. pulls scholarship from our QB Chason Virgil w/16 days til graduation. Classless move by "coach" Dan Mullen
— Jeff Neill (@neill_jeff) November 21, 2014
@kenthodder @Sir_Roflcopter yep and he's turned away schools bc of his loyalty to Miss St. And they pushed him to grad early.
— Jeff Neill (@neill_jeff) November 21, 2014
Chason Virgil -35 tds/6int passing -8td rushing. One of the best young people I've ever coached -only flaw was trusting "coach" Mullen.
— Jeff Neill (@neill_jeff) November 21, 2014
Guessing #HailState won't be recruiting any West Mesquite kids anytime soon #txhsfb
— Matt Stepp (@Matt_SteppTOC) November 21, 2014
This is pretty bush league by Dan Mullen and Mississippi State. Usually you see offers get pulled from recruits when they aren’t going to make the grade to get into school or if the school decided to offer the scholarship to another player. Neither was the case there, and that has left Virgil confused and his coach furious.
I’ve followed high school recruiting for years now, and I will be the first one to tell you that it has turned into an absolute circus with the way players flip flop on choosing schools. Here you have a kid who committed to you early, honored his commitment, and you pushed him to graduate early so he could get to campus faster. He complies with all of your wishes and now you want to screw him a few weeks before he graduates and heads off to college? That’s about as low as you can get as a college coach. A grayshirt offer at this point is no kind of consolation prize for this kid and he and is coach have every right to be pissed off with Mississippi State.
The crazy part about this whole thing is that Virgil is actually a good player and not some scrub you just want to cast away. He had plenty of options before he shut it down and chose the Bulldogs. One thing I know for sure, Mississippi State won’t be recruiting any kids out of the Mesquite area any time soon. Any time you pull something like this, high school coaches will shut you out and not allow you to recruit there kids, trust is a huge factor in recruiting.