<font face="georgia,palatino" size="2">A CBSCS spokesperson provided a clip of the interview to The Clarion-Ledger after it requested it last night.
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<font face="georgia,palatino" size="2"> </font><font face="georgia,palatino" size="2">"In our conference, it's pretty tough," Croom said. "It's driven by the Internet and the pressures to win and year in and year out the sentiments are different. What you did last year has no bearing on what happens in the next season. We had a great season last year. We're in the process of building a program. It was my hopes that we would continue to have an opportunity to move forward, but the powers that be decided otherwise. It was agreed that it was best for me to move on."</font></p>
<font face="georgia,palatino" size="2"> </font><font face="georgia,palatino" size="2">Back on Nov. 29, in a statement the university released, Croom said it was his decision to resign. Athletic director Greg Byrne agreed - but said State would honor the full terms of the buyout clause in Croom's contract, believed to be in the neighborhood of $3 million-plus. Earlier today, a MSU spokesman referred to the Nov. 29 statement in response to Croom's comments in this interview.</font></p>
<font face="georgia,palatino" size="2"> </font><font face="georgia,palatino" size="2">Croom again touched on the circumstances surrounding his dismissal when he was asked about the difficulty of recruiting to MSU.</font></p>
<font face="georgia,palatino" size="2"> </font><font face="georgia,palatino" size="2">"Well, it's tough, particularly when we were coming off probation," he said. "We had three years of probation. When I came here, the agreement that I had with Larry Templeton and Charles Lee, the president and athletic director who hired me, really, my contract and my accountability would not start until after the three years of probation. During the first three years of porbation, it was extremely difficult to get players to even visit from within the state. And almost impossible to get players from outside of the state. We've had two very good recruiting years back-to-back. Right now, as we were ending the season, we had the No. 21-ranked recruiting class by Rivals.com, even having won only four games. And we had three top prospects who we exepcted to commit in the near future that would really have given us three consecutive top recruiting classes. Basically, I took the approach when I came here, and I explained this to the people who hired me, in order to turn this program around I felt like that we had to start all over again from scratch and basically rebuild an SEC football team. They agreed with me. They agreed to give me the time to do it. But since then, things have changed, other thoughts and ideas, and they want to move into a different direction and it was agreed that it's time for me to move on."</font></p>
<font face="georgia,palatino" size="2"> </font><font face="georgia,palatino" size="2">Croom was asked what he'll be doing next. "Well, I really don't know," he said. "In my entire career, I've always believed the good Lord has always had something planned for me. I've never been without a job. I've never been without something to do. I know a lot of people. I think a lot of people respect the kind of job I've done as a head coach and an assistant coach. I still want to coach football. I've thought about a couple of things. I even thought about coming to work with you guys." He smiled and the hosts laughed loudly. One said "Come on, baby." Croom continued: "I think the competition is probably even tougher in your market than it was in my job. I think I'd rather stay on the field because i like working - I still love the game. Since I've had some time to rest, I guess about a week now, my wife has gotten me to - I'm doing a lot of honey-dos now, so I think it's probably time for me to get back to work. I'm just going to wait and see. I'm not going to rush into anything. I've been very fortunate to always be in a situation wehre I've enjoyed going to work. As long as I can be in a situation with coaching where I'm excited about getting up every morning and going to be involved with the other coaches and players, then that's what I'm looking for. I still love the game, I still think I have something to continue to the game and that's what I'm going to do."</font></p>
<font face="georgia,palatino" size="2"> </font><font face="georgia,palatino" size="2">Croom also said that he didn't think a Rooney Rule would work in college football and lauded a coalition of folks trying to promote minority hiring. He again said the key to hiring more minority head coaches is hiring more minority coordinators...
This ******** actually thought he had three years to piss in the wind, and then four more to boot..
Thanks CROOMS........</font></p>