Decades before the USM football era, 2 coaches grew up together in small town Mississippi
The roots of Southern Miss football are buried deep within the soil of Mississippi. Follow one of the those roots long enough and you’ll end up in a town of about 7,000 people in the late 1980s.
There you’ll find two elementary-school kids passing the time in the hallways with a crushed up cup, competing with each other in a creative game of basketball.
Both were the young sons of high school football coaches. They used the innovated teachings soaked in at football practices to find inventive ways to entertain themselves in a time not yet disturbed by the digital age.
Now, more than 30 years later, those two kids are the architects of a mammoth-sized offensive rebuild in Hattiesburg.
Golden Eagle head coach Will Hall was in second grade when he met his offensive line coach and then fourth-grader Sam Gregg. The paths of the two Amory High School products have been intertwined from the beginning.
“Will lived a couple streets over and we were pretty tight, from then to now,” Gregg told the Sun Herald of his friendship with Hall.
The two shared a duplex the lone year Hall attended Murray State before they embarked on their own college and early coaching careers.
A coaching entanglement
They reunited as coaches for the first time at Southwest Baptist University in 2006 thanks to a hefty responsibility placed on Hall.
The head coach at SBU at the time needed an offensive line coach and decided to let Hall, a 25-year-old offensive coordinator, make the hire.
“I immediately called (Gregg) and he came up, interviewed and got the job,” Hall said. As for why a young Hall was tasked with an important coaching hire: “Normal was not part of our day-to-day lives,” Hall said between laughs. “I don’t want to say anything negative, it was just not a normal situation.”
“We probably shouldn’t get into that,” Gregg chimed in. “There wasn’t a lot of normal things going on there.”
From then on, the two have been nearly inseparable.
“We’re like an old married couple,” Hall said. “Heck, we’ve probably spent more time with each other over a 12-year period than we’ve spent with our wives.”
It was when the two arrived at West Alabama when their philosophies and coaching traits, both behind the scenes and on the field, truly began to form.
The grueling grind of trying to win football games with a minimal staff while also convincing prospective athletes to move to Livingston, Alabama to play for UWA did wonders to prepare Hall and Gregg for the challenges they face today.
“There are more things to do at this level, but it’s a lot easier because you have a lot more help,” Gregg said. “I feel like I am so prepared for the job that I have here and for the job that I had at Liberty because I worked at West Alabama. It was a great place with a lot of great people, but there was nothing there. You had to find a way to get recruits. You had to find a way to get resources because there’s nothing there. It’s a little town, everybody works at the college and at the paper mill.”
Winning at the D-II level
West Alabama found unprecedented levels of success with Hall and Gregg on staff. Hall was the offensive coordinator from 2008 to 2010 and took over as the head coach in 2011.
The Tigers had consecutive winning seasons for the first time since the early 90s, went 11-3 in conference play during Hall’s tenure as head coach and hosted a playoff game for the first time in school history.
The small staff at UWA forced the two to spread their responsibilities. On top of their immediate tasks, they also had to run the weight room and even provide academic assistance. On one occasion, Hall made the 90 minute drive to Laurel to make sure an athlete passed a math test.
“We drove to Laurel High School and tutored a young man for his college algebra exam to get him out of Jones Junior College,” Hall said.
They did almost all of their recruiting in January and February, catching the prospects who “filtered through” the Division I level for one reason or another and built a culture that bred winning football in a town of only 3,000 people.
“West Alabama was hard, but we had a phenomenal team there,” Gregg said. “If we had stayed at West Al, we probably would’ve had one of our best teams coming back... Our culture at those places was the difference. We went to West Georgia, a team that hadn’t won eight games in eight years, and won 24 games in two seasons.”
Hall made the decision to take his coaching talents to West Georgia in 2014 in order to get his son into a better school system while also taking over a program with significantly greater resources. And, of course, he brought Gregg with him.
There they coached together for three more years, winning 31 games and making it to the Division II semifinal round of the postseason twice.
“No. 1 was talent, two was culture,” Hall said of the rebuild checklist. “I’ve always built programs on things that stand the test of time. Those are being really good on defense and being able to run the football. You’re seeing that starting to take shape (at USM), too.”
A bigger challenge
Hall quickly flew up the coaching ranks after UWG, making stops at Louisiana, Memphis and Tulane before returning to Mississippi to lead the Golden Eagles.
When he began to put together his first staff, there were reports he was targeting Gregg to be his offensive line coach and offensive coordinator.
According to them, Hall never even considered Gregg for the position because of a promise Gregg made to Liberty head coach Hugh Freeze two years prior.
“When I took the job at Liberty, I told (Freeze) I would stay for three years,” Gregg said. “I told him I wouldn’t leave. He was real nervous because he knew Will was up for a lot of jobs, he was up for the Troy job.”
“(Gregg) was never even in consideration for the first staff here because I knew he had given his word to Hugh that he would stay there for three years,” Hall said. “That just ain’t how either one of us roll. When we give you our word on something, that’s how we roll. But fast forward another year and it had been three years, so there you go.”
Sure enough, as soon as Gregg’s three years were up on the Flames’ staff, he was called upon by Hall to help turn around an offensive line that ranked at or near the bottom of every meaningful statistical category in 2021.
Through recruiting, the Golden Eagles have improved depth with true freshman Kyron Barnes earning a starting role and transfers Bryce Ramsey and Calvin McMillian playing significant snaps.
The early returns are promising. Southern Miss is averaging nearly a full 100 yards of offense more through four games than it did last season and is averaging at least 30 points per game for the first time since 2016.
“We’re way better, we’re playing a whole lot harder,” Hall said. “I’m glad (Gregg) is here. We’ve recruited well.”
There’s no denying the challenging task the USM job was going to be for Hall, but the wheels are churning in the right direction.
And it certainly helps to be facing the task at hand with your friend.
“With all the pressures that come with what I have to be in charge of daily and how many lives, it’s very soothing for me to know that no matter what, (Gregg) has my back,” Hall said. “I know if somebody attacks me or is not line with my vision of how I want this culture to be, he’ll address it.”
“It’s just easy,” Gregg said. “It’s hard to win a college football game and when you have the opportunity to work with somebody you care about and somebody you love, it just makes it easier.”
The two will take their offense to Troy Saturday to face one of the strongest defenses in the Sun Belt. It’ll be the Golden Eagles’ first ever SBC game.
The contest is scheduled to kick off at 6 p.m. and be broadcast on ESPN+.
This story was originally published October 6, 2022 at 1:44 PM.
