Who: Chad Bumphis, Mississippi State
Title: Wide receivers coach
Previous stop: Utah wide receivers coach (2021-22)
Why he's important: If everything went as it was supposed to, Chad Bumphis would still be at Utah. But Mike Leach was taken from us last December, defensive coordinator Zach Arnett was promoted to head coach, and all of a sudden Bumphis was back in Starkville.
The circumstances that led Bumphis back to his alma mater might have been as unfortunate as they were unforeseen, but the Mississippi State receivers job was always part of the plan.
"I got into coaching to take this job," he said last month.
An all-state receiver for mighty Tupelo High School, Bumphis played for Mississippi State from 2009-12 and led the Bulldogs in receiving for three of his four seasons in maroon and white. Bumphis still holds the school record with 24 career receiving touchdowns while ranking second with 159 receptions for 2,270 yards.
After a brief career in the NFL and CFL, Bumphis began coaching in 2016 at Iowa Wesleyan. Later appointments took him to GA spots at Buffalo and Utah and then, in 2019, a full-time job coaching wideouts at Austin Peay, where he helped DeAngelo Wilson lead FCS with 1,564 receiving yards. He returned to Utah as wide receivers coach in 2021, aiding the Utes to win the Pac-12 in both seasons.
He joins a Mississippi State staff that has plenty of familiar faces: Arnett was already on staff (obviously), running backs coach Tony Hughes has 11 years of State experience across two stints, D-line coach David Turner was on staff when Bumphis was a player, and four more assistants were retained from Leach's staff.
But none of those guys were Bulldogs themselves.
Bumphis was hired to coach State's wide receivers, but also to be a liaison between State football and the state of Mississippi. He'll fill a role similar to what Cadillac Williams does at Auburn.
"The best teams we've had here have been teams that have been dominated by guys from this state. There's a lot of relationships, people I know in this state that I hadn't been able to talk to in a while. I'm excited to get back out on the road and see some of those guys and recruit some real talent," Bumphis said this offseason.
“He wanted to build a legacy with another Mississippi kid, where he grew up and played,” JJ Harrell, a top-250 wide receiver from Sardis, Miss., told the Columbus (Miss.) Dispatch last month. Harrell flipped from Tennessee to Mississippi State in June. “It spoke value and showed me that coach Bumphis is a true, genuine coach and showed me I could trust him.
“It was hard to turn him down.”
Typical of an Air Raid offense, seven Bulldog wide receivers caught between 30 and 53 passes in 2022. Four of those players are back -- the leading receiver, Rara Thomas, transferred to Georgia before Bumphis arrived -- but the Bulldogs added two wideouts via the portal. Freddie Roberson, a 6-foot-2 arrival from Eastern Washington, appears the most promising of the bunch, having caught four passes for 62 yards in a game with Florida last season.
"The constant message he said to me is, 'We have to find guys that can score at any given time we put the ball in their hands.' As a receiver that's what we want to hear: someone who's going to put us in position to do what we do well. He is adamant about getting those guys the ball in space and letting them make us look like smart coaches."
Ultimately, Bumphis's job will boil down to finding, recruiting and developing a receiver better than Chad Bumphis.