NFL cities. SEC outposts. Los Angeles. Orlando.
Hattiesburg, Mississippi.
One of these is not like the others.
And, yet, for Braylon Braxton, sight unseen, home was going to be Hattiesburg and the Southern Miss football program.
“Without ever seeing it, he said I’m coming,” first-year USM coach Charles Huff told FootballScoop. “He committed and signed with us before he ever came on a visit.
“It’s one thing, like the North Carolina job, everybody commits sight unseen. We’re talking about 1-11 last year and they got no idea what Hattiesburg is. About 16 guys committed sight unseen.
“We had that big recruiting weekend, it was almost like a homecoming because all of them were already signed. We didn’t have to recruit them, just hung out with them; guys moved into their apartments.”
The offers had, seemingly, everything.
Guaranteed money. A larger platform. Bigger conferences – in some cases, that coveted Power Conference designation.
Braxton had just capped an historic season in tradition-rich Marshall University football as its off-the-bench-to-national-sensation quarterback.
He earned SunBelt Conference Newcomer of the Year; got named second-team All-Sun Belt quarterback. Led the Herd on a seven-game winning streak. Garnered the school’s first-ever SunBelt football title.
Made the honor roll, because what can’t Braxton do?
Turns out, he can’t take the easy path. Not without trust and belief.
“I definitely did have some other opportunities – UCLA, Central Florida, Purdue, Cincinnati,” Braxton recently told FootballScoop between workouts and positional meetings. “Schools from everywhere, honestly. But there was a lot of unknowns at those places, and with this being my last year and the [tough] luck I’ve had in college football, I didn’t really want to take a chance on taking a chance with unknowns.
“I trust Coach Huff, trust him a lot. All those places, I’m sure they’re great universities, and I’m sure there are great coaching staffs there, but the opportunity is here at Southern Miss. Southern Miss went 1-11 last year. This is going back to trusting Coach Huff and seeing his vision.”
When Braxton first entered the NCAA Transfer Portal out of Tulsa, he received a phone call from Huff that extended an offer to come to Marshall and compete for the Herd’s starting quarterback post.
Compete.
“Coach Huff never said I’m going to bring you in and you start first game,” Braxton, his brother, Jaylon, a former consensus four-star prospect who just signed with Lane Kiffin and Ole Miss, said. “Coach Huff just said I’d be the reason we won it.”
It now was Braxton’s turn to call Huff. He was again set to enter the Portal, and Huff had been inexplicably left to walk away from Marshall after a 10-win season – the program’s first in almost a decade – and a fourth-straight bowl invitation.
“I get a call from Braylen after he goes in the Portal, and he just says, ‘Coach, I’m coming,” Huff, who hired former Arkansas State and Utah State head coach Blake Anderson to run his offense at USM, told FootballScoop. “I said, ‘Braylon, Coach (Seth) Doege just took the Arizona (offensive coordinator) job. He said, ‘Yes, but I’m committing to you.’
“I talked to his dad (Ronnie, a former University of Houston player), and he said they turned down a lot of money at Marshall, turned down significant money from SEC schools. But Jaylon told me, ‘Coach, I got one year, I’m riding with you.’ He turned down considerable money. I think it just shows, especially in college football, relationships still matter. Every player doesn’t have a price tag. Relationships still matter. Opportunity still matters. How you treat guys matters.”
Upon his arrival last year at Marshall, Braxton immediately proved how he treated guys; how he would earn the role “quarterback of the team, and not quarterback on the team,” as Huff noted.
The former Tulsa starter quickly organized throwing sessions with any and all comers.
“Seven days a week,” said Huff, who skipped vacation last summer for the “first time in 20 years of coaching and ticked my wife off but promised to make it up to her” at a later, still to-be-determined date. “I’d be working and doing online church service Sunday morning, and Braylon would be on the field outside my office window throwing with guys.”
Braxton didn’t pout when Marshall’s season opened with him on the bench. He didn’t bail on the traits he’d put on display since he arrived. He worked and waited.
Then, Huff told him two key things the week of the team’s game against league foe Appalachian State.
“I hope you’re ready to start your campaign for SunBelt Player of the year,” Braxton said Huff predicted as he informed Braxton he had been elevated to starter. “I had always trusted Coach Huff, but after AppState, I truly saw his vision.
“He asked me ‘Do you trust me, do you really trust me?’ I said yes. Fast forward four weeks to AppState, then another nine weeks we’re hoisting that trophy at the championship game. At the moment he was telling me, I didn’t see it the way he was seeing it. But he was honestly protecting me, and he was building that trust.”
Which is why Huff never made a dedicated pitch to solicit Braxton to Southern Miss.
“The world thinks that I manipulated the locker room; I didn’t get a chance to talk to them,” Huff said. “I was told to explore my options after the (SunBelt) championship game. And I was gone. I didn’t get a chance to tell the guys you can come with me or not, but when I left, they had kind of known, because there was noise. I said I’m gonna have to make decisions at the end of the season, but we’re focused on this right here.”
Thus, Braxton made the call.
“The other thing about this move, Coach Huff was like, I don’t feel like he was trying to do anything about it, before I made my choice,” said Braxton, who closed 2024 with more than 2,200 yards’ offense, accounted for 23 touchdowns and delivered an 8-0 ledger as starting quarterback. “When I called him to tell him I was coming, he said, ‘You’re key to whole thing. If you come to Southern Miss, we will get all the guys we need.’
“So, to go to Southern Miss and bring our guys, we’re all grown men, but there’s got to be an Alpha. Somebody’s gotta be the leader and I feel that is me. I have that voice. We all respect each other.”
Braxton puts action to his words. Already he has met with the head of campus police and delivered a similar message of accountability to Kylie Amato, Southern Miss’s associate athletics director for academic support services.
“Our guys at Marshall, we come with very high character,” Braxton said. “I don’t think we had any incidents that involved police while I was there.
“Ms. Kylie, I did talk to her and I was just like, ‘Hey, if people are not showing up to study hall or missing tutoring, you just let me know. We can’t let that stuff go down. Use me if you need to.’”
Braxton will be the starting quarterback when Southern Miss opens the Huff era Aug. 30 with a rare visit from an SEC team, in-state foe Mississippi State, to Roberts Stadium.
“He’s still the first and last to leave the building,” Huff said. “He told me at the end of the year, before things had even started to transition, that he had never played for a coach I have a true relationship with. And he said, ‘Coach, you’ve got my back. I can talk to you about anything. If I don’t play well, I won’t be the starter, but I also know it won’t be one mistake or one bad read and I’m out.’
“I told him, ‘Braxton, you and I have a lot in common. Someone gave me an opportunity and you had the same. You repaid this organization and community.”
In the process, when college football and money have never been more hand in hand, Braxton showed sometimes payment is the process; that belief and trust in a head coach, in this instance Huff, extend deeper than pay-for-play.