For the second consecutive year, Southern Miss will hit the road and play a spring scrimmage off-campus.

The Golden Eagles will hold their first scrimmage at Ocean Springs High School in Ocean Springs, Miss., on Friday, the second consecutive season that they’ll played in that venue.

“It’s a big opportunity for our players,” Fedora said. “It’s another chance for them to show what they can do in front of these coaches. We get to go down to Ocean Springs and for all our Golden Eagle fans that are down there on the coast, they get to come watch the team. It’s also good for our kids because it’s like an away game. You get to go somewhere else with people in the stands and they get to show what they can do in front of everyone.”

The trip is also good for recruiting.

Southern Miss’ best offensive player, wide receiver DeAndre Brown, hails from Ocean Springs and the Golden Eagles picked up Ocean Springs running back Allen Howze in the 2010 class.

This year, Ocean Springs wide receiver Joe Morrow is one of the top recruits in the state and is on the ESPNU 150 Watch List. Mississippi State, Ole Miss and the Golden Eagles are all recruiting him.

And it’s not just Ocean Springs players who come out to watch. Playing a scrimmage off campus attracts several recruits from different schools around the Gulf Coast.

Playing a scrimmage on a high school campus is a good way to circumvent the NCAA’s recruiting quiet period. The quiet period, which lasts until April 14, prohibits any coach from contacting a prospective recruit or his parents. A player and/or his parents can visit a college campus and can write and phone the coach, but the coach cannot initiate the contact.

However, on April 15, the evaluation period begins and coaches can start visiting high school campuses. So even though Fedora and his staff won’t be able to speak with recruits during Friday’s scrimmage, they’re laying the groundwork to chat with them in about a month.

It’s scrimmages like these that have made Fedora so successful in recruiting against the SEC schools both in his state and his region. Every year he’s been with the Golden Eagles, he’s managed to snare a few of the top targets while bolstering goodwill toward the Southern Miss program.