Zach Arnett shares how he kept Mississippi State recruiting class together

There are few people, if any, who had a more difficult job to accomplish in college football over the last two months than new Mississippi State head coach Zach Arnett. From taking over for a legend that passed on and getting his new players through that tragedy to holding the foundation of the program together, Arnett had a very long December and January.

However, he did a commendable job in every aspect. That’s especially true in how he secured the future of the program by holding onto their recruiting class. In his explanation of how he got that done, Arnett said it was a group effort considering how his current players sold the program to their recruits.

“I think it speaks to the young men we have in our program already. And the young men we were targeting and had committed in the class,” said Arnett on The Paul Finebaum Show. “There’s a lot of reasons you sign and commit to a football program. Obviously, the football program, your role in it, plays a big part of that. But there are many other things that go into deciding where you commit and where you sign. Obviously, the university itself, the academic programs.”

“Probably more than anything that doesn’t get emphasized enough is the players in the locker room. Typically, your best recruiters are your own players,” Arnett said. “So, all those young men in our signing class who stayed with us and signed? It’s because they developed relationships with the players in the locker room. When it came down to decision time it was, ‘Hey, I want to be a part of a team with a bunch of guys like myself,’. That’s what exists at Mississippi State. Frankly, our best recruiters were the young men in our locker room.”

Mississippi State signed the No. 24 recruiting class in the nation per On3’s Consensus Team Rankings. It includes 25 overall signees with four four-stars and 21 three-stars for an average rating of 87.66. The class, which brought 52% of its members in from Mississippi, finished 10th overall in the SEC.

Again, it can’t be understated how difficult a hand Arnett was dealt as of late. He had to be the one to pick up the pieces of this tragedy that also completely changed his life. Even so, he has done the people of Starkville right to start by leading the program right away as well as maintaining the next group of Mississippi State football recruits.