Rogelio V. Solis/Associated Press
Mississippi State is already "disappointed" with head coach Mike Leach's off-field behavior before he has coached a single football game for the program.
On April 2, Tyler Horka of the Mississippi Clarion Ledger reported Leach tweeted a picture of an elderly woman with knitting needles on Wednesday with the message, "After 2 weeks of quarantine with her husband, Gertrude decided to knit him a scarf."
However, the woman was holding a noose with a tied hangman's knot instead of a scarf in the since-deleted tweet.
Mississippi State athletic director John Cohen released a statement on the tweet Tuesday:
"No matter the context, for many Americans the image of a noose is never appropriate and that's particularly true in the South and in Mississippi.