http://www.thetowntalk.com/article/20090118/SPORTS/901180324/1006
BATON ROUGE — David Garrett’s cowbells are losing a little of their ring lately.
A 1982 graduate of Mississippi State, Garrett is a second term president of the Lee County alumni chapter of State. One of his sons, Drew Garrett, is a sophomore at State.
David and his wife Felicia of Jackson, Miss., started taking their boys to Scott Field for State football games when they were old enough to ring a cowbell.
“They’d be down there under blankets,” Garrett said. “No one had more maroon blood than us.”
The Garretts are about as Mississippi as you can get. They live in Tupelo — 45 minutes from Mississippi State in Starkville, 45 minutes from Ole Miss in Oxford and five minutes from Elvis Presley’s birthplace.
But two Thursday nights ago, there were the Garretts hosting a party with Cajun food and music in a part of the country known more for gum trees than gumbo. Their son Chris was leaving the next morning — Jan. 9 — to start school on Jan. 12 at LSU, where he will battle for playing time at quarterback. He chose LSU over such schools as Alabama, South Carolina and, yes, Mississippi State.
Garrett is a 6-foot-4, 220-pound prospect out of Tupelo High School listed as the No. 18 pro style quarterback in the nation by Rivals.com. He threw for 1,995 yards and 24 touchdowns at Tupelo last season in a record breaking season.
As a junior, he committed to Mississippi State on Oct. 13, 2007, to the delight of then-coach Sylvester Croom and the many State alumni who know his father, who was president of the Lee County alumni chapter of State from 2000-01 and became president again in 2008.
“It was an emotional decision on the day of the State-Tennessee game,” his father said in a telephone interview Friday. “State was all Chris knew. He grew up loving State. He still loves State.”
State finished 8-5 in 2007 with its first winning season and bowl trip since 2000, but Chris Garrett wanted to look around. He scheduled a few junior day visits.
“He was exposed to what else is out there,” his father said.
On March 26, 2008, Garrett switched his commitment from State to LSU not long after visiting the LSU campus on junior day, and the Garretts were exposed to what else is out there. The elder Garrett will step down as Lee County’s State alumni president next month, but not because his son is going to LSU.
“That was going to happen anyway,” said Garrett, who works full time in communications and education at the North Mississippi Medical Center in Tupelo. “Alumni presidents have one-year terms. But there were some folks who tried to make end a lot sooner and were very vocal about it.”
Garrett was not ready for some of the nasty fallout to his son switching to LSU.
“There’s been a reaction here that I never expected and was never really prepared for,” he said. “I knew people would be disappointed and angry, but not to the extent that they have been. It’s my son’s life. It’s my son’s career. I’ve taken a lot of criticism for not making him go to State because I’m active with the alumni chapter. It’s been mainly in the Internet chat rooms and on the radio talk shows and blogs, but there are people in town who no longer speak to me face to face.”
LSU coach Les Miles empathized with Garrett, but he admitted he had never recruited the son of an alumni president of a rival school.
Thetowntalk
1/18/09
