LORMAN — When Alcorn State president Dr. M. Christopher Brown II learned on April 26 that his top candidate for the Braves’ head football coaching position had pulled out, he was stunned. Then he went to work.

Jay Hopson was his man. Brown spent the next four weeks trying to make it happen. On Monday afternoon at a Memorial Day cookout at his home, Brown announced that Hopson, a Vicksburg native, a Warren Central graduate and a former Ole Miss football player, was the school’s new football coach.

Hopson will be the first white coach for Alcorn, a member of the Historically Black Colleges and Universities, and the first white coach in the Southwestern Athletic Conference. He will replace Melvin Spears, who was fired in February after a 2-8 season.

“I knew he was the best candidate,” Brown said. “The question was, did Alcorn State University have the determination and tenacity to do it? After Jay told me he wanted to drop out, I knew I had to take the right steps to bring him back. The support for him was growing. The good thing was he kept taking my calls. Jay was here at our house on Mother’s Day (May 13). We kept talking. Of the final coaches, Jay was the only one who said he could not do it with the way things were. He would not be successful.”

Brown rallied some prominent Alcorn State alumni and formed a plan to entice Hopson, 43, to reconsider. They would redo the contracts for all assistant football coaches. They would make some immediate improvements to the football facility. They would expand the budget for recruiting and do the necessary steps to improve the school’s NCAA academic progress report scores.

“Even the other finalists said they could make do. Jay was different. Through this process, I learned the importance of the recruiting budget, the staff budget and what it takes to be a Division I level program. That’s what we wanted at Alcorn State University. And Jay is a Division I level coach.”

Hopson has spent his coaching career in Division I. He worked for winning coaches Steve Spurrier at Florida, Bob Pruett at Marshall and Jeff Bower at Southern Miss, including the last three years as the school’s defensive coordinator. When Bower was forced out in 2007, Hopson landed on Rich Rodriguez’s staff at Michigan. He left there to become the defensive coordinator at Memphis.

When he initially pulled out of the Alcorn search, Hopson said he was OK about stepping away from college football. There was one reason why that changed.

“This man to my left, kept pulling me back in,” Hopson said of Brown. “He had the vision to want to build a champion. We were just on the same page about building a program built on character and knowledge. Those are going to be the two words that will be our foundation — character and knowledge.”

Hopson knows he has been put in a tough situation with the start of preseason drills 65 days away. He has yet to meet the current coaching staff and the bulk of the players.

“Hopefully, we can win some games next year,” Hopson said. “The thing Dr. Brown has stressed is he wants long-term success and we both know it takes two, three, four years of hard work. I’ve had a lot of good mentors in my career, Steve Spurrier, Bob Pruett and Jeff Bower. In fact, I’ll probably be talking to all of them in the next week or so.”

Hopson said he will begin work immediately. He met three of his players at the announcement, linebacker Kenry Tolbert from Birmingham, quarterback Darius Smith from Dallas, and defensive end Terrance Green from St. James, La.

The three Braves were all excited to meet their new coach.

“As a team, we’ve been waiting on this for a long time,” Tolbert said. “We’re getting someone with a lot of experience at the highest level. He’s been on the big stage. I think what we can provide for him is a pretty strong defense. It’s the core strength of our team. Our offense, however, was a little discombobulated this spring and that’s something he’s going to have to address.”

Vicksburg Mayor Paul Winfield, one of the search committee members, helped steer Hopson toward Alcorn.

“I’m very happy for Jay and for Alcorn State University,” Winfield said. “This is going to create such positive synergy between Vicksburg and the university. Not only has Alcorn State found the best qualified coach, they have also begun to raise the level of its prominence.”

Brown agreed.

“When you have people like Fred Smith, the CEO of Federal Express, Steve Spurrier and Jeff Bower give you recommendations on Jay, I knew I had something special,” Brown said. “Then when I researched and saw where we were at the bottom of the SWAC in terms of coaching budgets and just a hair above Mississippi Valley State I knew something had to change.”

The other three finalists for the job were interim head coach Todd McDaniel, who directed Alcorn’s spring drills; Northern Colorado offensive coordinator Michael Armour; and former Kentucky State coach Fredrick Farrier.

It has not been announced if McDaniel will stay at Alcorn.

Among other members of the SWAC are Southern University, Grambling University and Alabama A&M.

Hopson’s parents are Dr. Briggs Hopson Jr., the longtime director of medical care at River Region Medical Center, and Pat Hopson, who along with her husband directed the Miss Mississippi Pageant for more than 35 years until 2009. His brother is state Sen. Briggs Hopson III, also of Vicksburg.