And simultaneously, a new staff member comes forward.

Kent McLeod, the assistant athletic director for football operations at Ole Miss, has accepted a similar position at Duke under former Rebels coach David Cutcliffe.

McLeod said the hiring won't be official until after Jan. 1, once everyone gets back from the holidays, but that an agreement had been reached. McLeod has been at Ole Miss for seven years and was hired by Cutcliffe in 2001. He was vital to the recruiting efforts under former coach Ed Orgeron.

McLeod said he had an opportunity to work under new coach Houston Nutt but decided to follow a familiar face. Nutt had mentioned in a press conference earlier this month that McLeod had a large role in holding together the program during the coaching transition.

"It has nothing to do with coach Nutt," McLeod said. "He was great and it would have been a good job. But I'm comfortable with coach Cutcliffe and he gave me my first job at Ole Miss, so we've got a history."
According to his profile at the Mississippi website, McLeod's duties at Ole Miss included being "responsible for all day-to-day operations of the recruiting office, on-campus recruiting activities, academic evaluations of prospective student-athletes and all NCAA compliance paperwork.As recruiting assistant, McLeod helped in all areas of recruiting, including maintaining all correspondence with prospective student-athletes, assisting in official and unofficial visits to campus, maintained the prospect database and assisted in the organization of football camps."

Mississippi's incoming '08 class is currently ranked 31st nationally, with one five-star prospect, two four-star prospects, and twelve three-star prospects.

McLeod can also take credit, in part, for helping Ole Miss lure Eli Manning and Michael Oher to Oxford. Manning is well-known, and Oher is one of the top offensive linemen in the country. He is the subject of the acclaimed book The Blind Side by NYTimes Magazine contributor Michael Lewis.

More importantly to Duke fans, however, is that McLeod has spent the last few seasons working alongside one of the nation's top recruiters, Ed Orgeron, who was instrumental in building the current juggernaut at Southern Cal before taking over for Cutcliffe at Mississippi.