There's a lot of Delta State involved in Ole Miss-Auburn game
(Ole Miss took down Auburn 28-21 in week eight of college football. Rick Cleveland column was written before the game Saturday).
When Ole Miss and Auburn face off Saturday night for an important SEC football game at Auburn, much of the ESPN hype will be about Oxford-born and former Ole Miss head coach Hugh Freeze coaching against his former team.
That’s understandable. But if you take one step down the coaching rung at both schools, there will be another intriguing dynamic along both sidelines. Ron Roberts, the Auburn defensive coordinator, once coached at Delta State both as a defensive specialist and then as head coach. Ole Miss defensive coordinator Pete Golding first played and then coached under Roberts at Delta State, where they are a huge part of the Cleveland school’s rich football history. The two remain close friends who talk often. Both are very good at what they do and are highly respected in the coaching business.
Delta State, under present coach Todd Cooley, is off to a 7-0 start and plays West Florida in Cleveland Saturday in a 3 p.m. Showdown of national Division II powerhouses. Even so, later that evening, many Delta eyes will be watching closely the goings-on at Jordan-Hare Stadium on the Auburn plains.
Delta State’s current success somewhat mirrors that of Roberts when he was the DSU head coach for five seasons (2007-11), and the Statesmen won 10 or more games in four of those five seasons. Delta reached the DII national championship game in 2010 and the national semifinals in 2011. Roberts, a native of Visalia, California, also spent two years as defensive coordinator at Delta before becoming the head man.
Yes, and during his time as Delta’s defensive coordinator, he inherited an under-sized but hard-hitting safety named Pete Golding from Hammond, Louisiana.
“Pete was just a great player,” Roberts says of Golding. “He was all the things you look for in a safety. He was instinctive, knew where to be and where everybody else was for disguising stunts and blitzes, which can come from all angles.
It doesn’t take a really long memory for Ole Miss fans to know of Roberts’ expertise in that regard. Just think back to Jan. 1, 2022, and the Sugar Bowl: No. 6 Baylor vs. No. 8 Ole Miss. The balks-hawking Baylor defense sacked Ole Miss quarterbacks 10 times, put Matt Corral on crutches and dealt the Rebels a 21-7 defeat.
Roberts was asked in a phone conversation earlier this week what he sees as the difference between that Ole Miss offense and the one he faces Saturday at Auburn.
“What jumps out at you is the running backs,” Roberts said. “They are at a different level. They have a lot of different gears. The quarterback is playing at a really high level. The first thing you have to do is prevent the big play. They make a lot of them.”
It’s funny. Despite his close relationship with Golding, Roberts knows little about the Ole Miss defense, except that, generally, it has improved over past seasons. And he knows that without watching.
“I know they’re sound, they’ll be in the right places,” Roberts said. “Pete’s always gonna do a great job.”
Rick Cleveland, a native of Hattiesburg and resident of Jackson, has been Mississippi Today’s sports columnist since 2016.