Bo Wallace Talks Program Building, Coaching Career and New OC Gig at Coahoma C.C.
Ole Miss is taking over at Coahoma Community College, an oft overlooked junior college in Clarksdale, Miss., lost in a state that fields some of the best JUCO teams in the nation every year.
The perennial JUCO cellar dweller has retooled. They brought in a whole new coaching staff this offseason, highlighted by a handful of faces Rebel fans know well – none more so than former quarterback Bo Wallace.
The CCC team has won three games over the past three seasons. Changing that losing mentality won't be easy, but the Rebel-heavy staff has a plan.
"Really the big thing is changing the culture. They haven't had a lot of success there, had some good teams that but haven't been able to put the records together that they could have," Wallace said. "That's the biggest thing – teaching the kids how to win and how to win close games."
Travis Macon is the new head coach at Coahoma. Macon blocked for Eli Manning with the Rebels, spending 2000-2002 in Oxford under David Cutcliffe. But Macon and Wallace are not the only two Rebels on the staff.
Wallace's offensive line coach, Emmanuel McCray, blocked for Wallace during his sophomore and junior seasons at Ole Miss. Now he'll lead the offensive line for Wallace's offense.
Additionally, the team's defensive backs coach, Kareem Moore, started his college career at Ole Miss before transferring to Nicholls State. Moore went on to play four seasons with the Washington Redskins.
It's a Rebel-heavy staff... but back to Wallace.
At just 27-years-old, he's a young offensive coordinator, even for the JUCO ranks. Wallace started coaching in 2015, almost right out of Ole Miss. He's held four jobs in four seasons, never staying anywhere more than one season. This hopes to be different.
"I was coaching high school in Tennessee last year. We had some success on offense and I reached out to Coach Macon when he got the job," Wallace said. "I ended up he wanted me to interview for the (offensive coordinator) job. I went down there and ended up getting offered the job and I've been with him ever since."
Wallace spent 2019 at Fayette Ware High School in Somerville, Tenn. as an offensive coordinator. The year before Wallace showed up, the team went 2-9 and scored 8 points per game. In 2019, Wallace's first and only season, they went 9-3 and scored 34 points per game.
So it's not like Wallace has bounced around so much coaching because he hasn't had success. His first job, in 2015 at a private school outside of Dallas, was actually coaching safeties. From there, he went to Tennessee to work as a quarterbacks coach in a job where his little brother was the quarterback.
In 2017, Wallace was the quarterbacks coach on an East Mississippi Community College team that won the national championship while scoring 48.3 points per game. From there, he went back to Tennessee, working his first offensive coordinator job, this time at the school where his brother was a senior quarterback.
For Wallace, coaching is a way to keep that competitive edge. Undrafted out of Ole Miss in 2015, he went to training camp with the Kansas City Chiefs but wasn't offered a contract after rookie minicamp. He had opportunities to play in Canada, but decided to just get straight into coaching.
"Once the NFL, the dream was done, I always knew I wanted to coach. I didn't really want to go up (to Canada) and keep playing; I kind of just wanted to start my coaching career," Wallace said. "I knew as a career (coaching) was something I wanted to do. I wanted to play as long as I could and then go over to the coaching side."
Right now, the most fun part of the job is the game planning. That's how get gets that competitive fix – trying to break down what you do and how his personnel can exploit the gaps in what a defense does.
A college gunslinger in a game of football that quite honestly has changed a ton even since Wallace left Ole Miss in 2014, he's gotten used to keeping up with modern offensive trends and analytics. Increases in play action concepts and pre-snap motions have been integrated into what he does more and more every year. He's still close with Hugh Freeze, having talked to him right before taking the CCC job. A lot of his offensive philosophies flow through his former coach.
When sarcastically asked if running backs matter, a silly internet schtick that relates almost exclusively to NFL Draft value in a league with a salary cap and a surplus of quality backs, Wallace just laughs.
"In high school and college you damn well better believe they do."
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