How a volunteer job at Mississippi State helped Jody Wright land at South Carolina

Former Mississippi State offensive coordinator Woody McCorvey replays the incessant thumping noise heard throughout the Bryan Athletic Administration Building in his head.

Thump-thump-thump-thump-thump.

It’d stop for a brief moment, enough to hold a quick conversation, before picking back up.

Thump-thump-thump-thump-thump.

This wasn’t the pitter-patter of feet scurrying across the floors. Nor was it the occasional jogging of players or staffers through the MSU football offices.

This was a full sprint.

“He was always on the run,” McCorvey, Clemson’s chief of football administration, said of new South Carolina tight ends coach Jody Wright. “When you heard the feet pounding, everybody in the building knew it was Jody.”

Wright has since raced from the offices in Starkville to the highest levels of college and professional football. His resume includes stops leading Nick Saban’s recruiting department in Tuscaloosa and time with the New York Giants and Cleveland Browns. On-field roles under Bill Clark at UAB and Jacksonville State are also part of his coaching marathon.

Officially hired last month to replace Erik Kimrey, Wright’s landing at South Carolina, at least in part, dates back to his days at MSU. It’s there he started as a volunteer coach, overlapped with Shane Beamer and worked on a staff that included numerous football lifers.

Those that were there remember the golden-haired hustler with an Energizer bunny-like demeanor and a man just as likely to find himself entertaining the kids’ table as breaking down film deep into the night.

“You don’t don’t go work for the coaches that Jody has worked for in so many different facets of college and pro football if you’re not really, really, really good,” former MSU coordinator of football operations Brad Pendergrass said. “And Jody is that.”

Landing on the Mississippi State football staff

Wright laid out his plan to MSU defensive coordinator Ellis Johnson — or at least what constitutes a plan for a 20-something-year-old fresh off a playing career at Jacksonville State.

The pair connected through Wright’s father, Lynn, a longtime football coach at Pickens Academy just across the Alabama state line from Starkville. Johnson had recruited the school as an assistant for the Crimson Tide between 1990 and 2000.

Jody hoped to latch on as a graduate assistant at MSU, but college football support staffs hadn’t yet expanded to their current massive sizes. Those handful of slots were filled.

“Can I volunteer?” Wright asked his father’s old friend.

“I don’t know what the rules are, but you don’t have to have any money?” Johnson queried.

“No,” Wright said. “I told my dad this is what I want to do and this (Mississippi State) is where I want to be.”

Johnson and head coach Sylvester Croom checked into what NCAA rules allowed. By the time they sorted it out, as Johnson tells it, Wright enrolled at MSU and planned to become a student volunteer to work in whatever capacity they’d have him.

“I was thinking, ‘We’re gonna get this guy for free? This is a no-brainer,’ ” Johnson recounted.

Wright initially worked with Johnson and the defense. Croom moved him over to the offensive side when he recognized his upside and the football mind he possessed.

Johnson still jokes Croom stole Wright from him. Croom can’t recall the exact details, but the head coach got his wish.

“I think it took Coach Croom about a month or two (before he) realized what a jewel (Wright) was,” Johnson said.

Back in the office, Wright worked with Pendergrass, among others, to push MSU’s recruiting operation into the 21st century.

Having spent the previous 17 years in the NFL when he was hired ahead of the 2004 season, Croom hadn’t coached in college since his time on Bill Curry’s Alabama staff between 1983 and 1986.

He now readily concedes coaches like Wright, Pendergrass, Beamer and future NFL head coaches Joe Judge and Freddie Kitchens helped him connect with the younger generation of recruits and players in Starkville.

Wright, for example, spiced up Croom’s presentations. He added pictures, graphics and video links when possible.

That level of technology — basic as it seems today — was largely foreign to Croom. He’d grown up in the profession hand-writing his notes as an assistant for Bear Bryant.

“I was very organized as far as writing out what I wanted to talk about — making lists, for instance,” Croom told The State. “But they put football diagrams and music and things in to keep the players’ attention.”

McCorvey, too, enlisted Wright’s help. Game plans had to be finished on Thursdays before a contest. When the plan was completed, Wright drove the file 20 minutes down the road to McCorvey’s house in Brown Creek on the south side of town.

Once there, McCorvey went through the plan, checked off what had been compiled and returned it to Wright.

McCorvey rarely, if ever, had questions.

“We never had to correct anything,” he said. “Because that’s how efficient (Wright) was.”

Chicken farms, swing sets and Starkville

Short on money and long on responsibilities as a volunteer assistant, Wright found ways outside of football to make ends meet.

“Jody’s a hustler,” Judge quipped. “Jody did a million things.”

Judge and his wife, Amber, met while playing football and soccer, respectively, at MSU. They were married shortly after college and just before Joe landed as a graduate assistant on Croom’s staff.

The newlyweds split their house in downtown Starkville just off the Cotton District with three other couples when Joe got started. Wright, at least briefly, slept on their couch.

When he landed his own place, Wright rented out the extra rooms as a side gig. Judge jokes renters came and went as if his friend ran a hostel.

Wright even occasionally traveled 45 minutes from Starkville to Pickens County, Alabama after work to help on his uncle’s chicken farm for extra cash.

“That’s when I first learned about how chicken farms work and the incinerator and all that stuff,” Judge said with a laugh. “... I mean, Jody can operate on 45 minutes of sleep better than anyone I’ve ever seen in my life.”

Wright’s responsibilities extended far beyond any job description and outside the walls of MSU’s football offices.

Kitchens called Judge and Wright out to his house one afternoon during the Bulldogs’ 2005 season. He had a project for his wide-eyed assistants: build a swing set for his kids.

Judge and Wright anticipated a two-hour job. They miscalculated.

The pair left the football offices and headed to Kitchens’ house every night that week around 9 p.m. They worked under the glow of a spotlight until midnight, when Kitchens’ wife, Ginger, implored they go home.

The swing set eventually reached completion after a few late nights. Its use? That was limited.

Kitchens left Starkville after the season for a job with the Dallas Cowboys.

“(Wright) was younger then, but there was never anything too small or too big for him,” Kitchens told The State. “He started out at Mississippi State where he wanted to make a name for himself and he did that through hard work and dedication through whatever job he was doing.”

Joining Shane Beamer in Columbia, SC

Wright sits to the right of Beamer in a black plastic chair. A smile graces his face as he prepares for his opening remarks as South Carolina’s tight ends coach.

It’s been 17 years since Wright and Beamer were on the same staff in Starkville. Wright’s blonde locks have receded. Beamer joked earlier this offseason he, too, has grayed over the course of his first year as a head coach. Such is the product of age.

“The vision Shane has and how everybody — players and staff — have bought in has been really great,” Wright said through his deep Southern drawl. “Everybody’s working together for a common goal and looking forward to a lot of exciting things to come.”

Wright spent five years on staff at MSU and was even retained by Dan Mullen after Croom’s ousting in 2008 following a 4-8 season.

Judge and Wright would reconnect at Alabama working for Saban. Judge and Kitchens also hired Wright during their spells as NFL head coaches. Pendergrass went on to operations roles at Wisconsin and Tennessee before getting out of football.

Beamer — who worked in a handful of on-field roles under Croom between 2004 and 2006 — left MSU for South Carolina to work under Steve Spurrier.

The entire group remains close.

“We talk all the time about the people that you’re broke with are the people you’re closest with,” Judge told The State. “And we had a good crew of us down there.”

South Carolina’s board of trustees approved a contract that will pay Wright $750,000 in salary over two years. That’s a long way from building swing sets and volunteer coaching.

Wright joked he’s a step slower than he was back in Starkville. And while he may not sprint around the halls of the Long Family Football Operations Center in Columbia, he’s earned that right.

This story was originally published February 25, 2022 at 8:35 AM.

Ben Portnoy

The State

Ben Portnoy is The State’s South Carolina Gamecocks football beat writer. He’s a 10-time Associated Press Sports Editors award honoree and has earned recognition from the Mississippi Press Association and the National Sports Media Association. Portnoy previously covered Mississippi State for the Columbus Commercial Dispatch and Indiana football for the Journal Gazette in Ft. Wayne, IN.