Plenty to talk about in Mississippi State’s bye week

For a week without Mississippi State not having a game, it’s been a fairly eventful week.

From injury updates to recruits decommitting, there’s a lot going on for a bye week and the week is only halfway over.

Who knows what Thursday and Friday will bring us?

ICYMI: Examining Mississippi State’s road to bowl eligibility after SEC setbacks

For now, though, there are three things I’ve held off on writing about to let my initial reactions pass.

And we’re starting with one that made me more than a little upset.

Jeff Lebby leaving Starkville?

I was shocked earlier this week when a social media post on the site formerly known as Twitter came across my video feed of someone talking about Jeff Lebby looking for way out of Starkville.

What angers me about this isn’t the idea of Lebby leaving Mississippi State. I don’t think that’ll happen.

To be very blunt, unless Zac Selmon becomes Oklahoma’s next athletics director and Brent Venables bombs as the Sooners’ head coach, I find hard to believe a Power 4 team will hire Lebby without him showing success in Starkville.

Let’s not worry about that, though, because none of those three things have happened yet.

But I absolutely hate how this person, whom I’ve never heard of before and am not going to even mention his name (see the post below), said what he said.

"Rumblings".

In other words, State was winning and playing well so our fan base made up rumors. https://t.co/WKkdlrtTgE pic.twitter.com/py61a3AbXy
— Everything MS State (@msudawg04) October 6, 2025

“Kinda like the thing earlier, if someone said, ‘[person speaking] reported,’ no I didn’t. I’ll just say I’ve heard rumblings that Jeff Lebby’s looking around to try to get out of Mississippi State. If someone came to me and said, ‘prove it,’ I can’t.”

“I can’t prove it” isn’t journalism, analysis or a scoop. It’s how your uncle explains Bigfoot sightings or how your dad explains why you have to push the bubble thing to start the lawnmower.

I get wanting to generate clicks, but have some integrity. If you can’t prove it, then how does anyone know what you’re saying is true?

Hopefully, most viewers are smart enough to know it’s clickbait material.

Mississippi State’s injuries

Mississippi State Bulldogs running back Fluff Bothwell (24) is carted off the field during the fourth quarter. — Mississippi State Bulldogs running back Fluff Bothwell (24) is carted off the field during the fourth quarter against the Texas A&M Aggies at Kyle Field. | Maria Lysaker-Imagn Images

There are three major injuries we’re monitoring: Fluff Bothwell, Albert Reese IV and Isaac Smith.

On Tuesday, head coach Jeff Lebby provided updates on each of those players. Here’s what he said:

On Bothwell…

“We got good news back on Fluff. As we move forward, there's not a hard timeline for us right now. All the pictures came back and they were positive, so feel really good about that. We will continue to evaluate, it will be a day-to-day deal. Really fortunate the images came back the way they did.”

On Reese…

"Albert's better, but did not practice today. He's making great strides. Our hope is to be able to see if he can go practice next Tuesday, as we get ready for a really physical practice that Tuesday. And if he can, that'll give us the ability to get him back.”

On Smith…

“He didn't practice today. The goal for him and Albert is the same, having a real evaluation next week, Tuesday morning, to see where those guys are to have the ability to go play.”

It’s good news Lebby didn’t come out and say any of them had suffered season-ending injuries like after the Arizona State game with Blake Steen and Will Whitson.

But his answers didn’t tell us much and we won’t know much until at least next Wednesday. We don’t know exactly what the injuries are beyond Reese suffered an upper body injury and Bothwell and Smith have lower leg injuries.

Lebby said all of the evaluations will happen on Tuesday, the day after his media availability. So, if he’s asked about their statuses Monday, he’ll (probably) say something similar to last week about letting the Student-Athlete Availability Report “do the talking.”

For the record, I don’t fault Lebby’s strategy for discussing players’ injuries. Preparing for a Mississippi State offense with Bothwell is a lot different than without and the same can be said about Smith and the defense.

Just hold off on your predictions for a little while.

NCAA eligibility and transfer portal changes

The changes to the transfer portal window were made official this week. Instead of two windows, there’ll only a 15-day window for players to enter the portal at the start of the January.

I’ve always thought having the transfer portal open the Monday after the regular season was dumb, so I agree with moving the transfer window to a later start date.

Notification of transfer window dates for DI football are approved by the DI Administrative Committee.

The committee’s action is not final until its meeting concludes Wednesday. Moving forward, DI football notification of transfer windows will be Jan 2-16, as recommended by the…
— NCAA News (@NCAA_PR) October 7, 2025

And the elimination of the spring transfer portal could end up being a good or bad thing.

It really depends on if, for example, a coach can decide his offensive line needs to get bigger and better without having to go through spring practices.

The NCAA also changed the transfer portal rules for when there’s a coaching change. Instead of having a 30-day transfer window immediately when a head coach leaves a school, there’ll be a 15-day transfer window start five days after a new coach is hired or announced.

New rule change from the NCAA: Effective immediately, in cases of a head coach change, athletes will have a 15-day consecutive window beginning five days after a new coach is hired or announced.

(This does not apply to coaching changes prior to today.)
— Nicole Auerbach (@NicoleAuerbach) October 7, 2025

This change I don’t agree with.

It’s a clear move by the NCAA to take back some of the power the players had obtained and we know there’ll be a school to take advantage of this move to keep players from leaving.

If there was a player’s union this might not have happened. Or at least there’d be a concession made.

OK, I’ll get off my soapbox now.