Report: Mississippi State receivers coach resigned over NCAA investigation

It immediately raised eyebrows across the SEC: why did Mississippi State wide receivers coach Angelo Mirando suddenly resign Sunday night, less than two weeks before the start of the season?

Mirando said in a statement that his decision was due to "unforseen personal issues" -- adding he wanted to "stress" that there were no other causes -- but that did little to quell speculation given the bizarre timing of the announcement. And assuming a Thursday report from ESPN's Joe Schad is correct, a certain segment of that speculation may be accurate.

Per a Schad source, Mirando resigned "in [the] wake of [an] ongoing NCAA investigation into his recruitment of at least one Bulldogs player."

That report was then more-or-less confirmed by Mississippi State. The school issued a statement Thursday (reprinted here by Clarion-Ledger reporter Brandon Marcello) which reads in full:

Over the last several months, Mississippi State has worked in cooperation with the NCAA to examine a potential recruiting irregularity. We are nearing the end of this examination, and it is our intent to provide additional details when it is complete.

The NCAA confirmed in a brief e-mail to Marcello that the organization is currently working with the school, but would make no further comment.

Mullen would not comment on Mirando or his possible connection to the inquiry, but he did appear to take issue with Schad's report that part of the NCAA's attention was focused on Bulldog wide receiver and Memphis product Will Redmond. Though Schad reported Redmond's high school coach told him he had interviewed with the NCAA concerning Redmond specifically, the coach told the Memphis Commercial-Appeal Thursday that the NCAA's questions concerned "nothing specific" and that he hadn't spoken to NCAA officials since March.

"I would try to get a little more reliable source than Joe Schad," Mullen told reporters after State's Thursday practice. "I'm supposed to be coaching at State College [for Penn State], I guess, right now, too, according to Joe Schad last year. Wasn't that the case?"

The Commercial-Appeal has documented that the NCAA has been asking questions in Memphis high schools for weeks, with their investigation leading to the discovery of Auburn signee Jovon Robinson's falsified transcript and eventual ineligiblity.

As for Mississippi State, it's not yet possible to make any informed speculation on the outcome of the investigation, whether the Memphis-based inquiries might or might not be connected to the Bulldogs, or even exactly what kind of violations the investigation might be searching for. But it's safe to assume that if those violations were serious enough to force Mirando's sudden resignation, they could prove highly troublesome for the Bulldogs.

Mirando would have been spending his second season as the Bulldogs' receivers coach, having been promoted from the graduate assistant level in 2010 to replace now-Louisiana Ragin' Cajun head coach Mark Hudspeth. He began his career as a grad assistant at Florida and moved with then-Gator offensive coordinator Dan Mullen when he took the head coaching job in Starkville that offseason.

"We appreciate Angelo and the work he did, and wish him the best in wherever the future takes him," Mullen said in the statement announcing Mirando's resignation. "We'll take some time to evaluate what our next steps will be with that staff position, but I'm confident in our veteran group of wide receivers and know they'll be focused and ready to go Sept. 1."

Mullen said Tuesday there could be a chance Mirando could return to coach at State again. But earlier Thursday, multiple outlets reported that Mullen has hired former Minnesota head coach Tim Brewster to replace Mirando as the Bulldogs' receivers coach.