FanHouse Mississippi State Football

I was so interested in Ryan Ferguson's post about which SEC coaches get blown out the most that I had to look up which coaches in the SEC win by blowout the most. In gathering that info, which I'll share in another post soon, I came across a trend -- nearly everybody in the SEC has blown out Mississippi State fairly recently.

It will come as no surprise to find out that over the last five years, Mississippi State hasn't been a very good football team. I just didn't know how bad they've been until I saw the numbers. In the last five years:

• all but one SEC team has beaten MSU by at least 14 points
• all but two SEC teams have beaten MSU by at least 14 in Starkville
• all but three SEC teams have beaten MSU by at least 17 in Starkville

Of the three that haven't beaten the Bulldogs by 17 at home, Vanderbilt is one, which is no shock because they've only played in Starkville once over the previous five seasons, and because they're Vanderbilt. Arkansas is another, which is sort of surprising in that they play at Mississippi State every other year, and if everybody else is whipping up on State at home, why not the Hogs?

The single team to not beat MSU by at least 14 is a bit of a shocker, though... drum roll... after the jump...

Score one for the Bayou Bengals. It has been announced that LSU will play Mississippi State in a rare early season SEC league match to kick off the 2007 season. LSU coach Les 'The Hat' Miles can be seen to the right celebrating with one of the moves from Michael Jackson's 'Thriller' video. To the surprise of nobody the game will be televised on ESPN Thursday August 30.

ESPN notes that this "continues a tradition" - started last year. Oy.

The Bulldogs were woeful in a 15-0 shutout loss to South Carolina in last year's opener. The game's MVP was Gamecock punter Ryan Succop which says about all you need to know for how that game went. Both starting quarterbacks were knocked out of action early leaving hapless backups to carry already pedestrian offenses through the remaining game action. The game's real drama was in the supposed confiscation of MSU's famous cowbells. Of little surprise many fans snuck the devices into the stadium making a mockery of the policy.

Although without the services of departed quarterback JaMarcus Russell, LSU is a strong favorite to win in a romp here. At least we can save the date, so to speak. I'm just going to pretend there aren't well over six more months until college football. Because if I knew that to be true I'd cry in misery. And I'm not in the mood for misery.

Anyhoo ... the reasoning escapes me at the moment, but those kickoff classic type games were eliminated a year or two ago, robbing college football fans of some great early season shows. Off the top of my head I remember Penn State's Curtis Enis torching the USC defense a while back, I remember the wild Cal/Kansas State shootout that the Bears lost but signaled something positive for the Jeff Tedford era. I remember Reggie Bush scoring three touchdowns against Virginia Tech in a game that catapulted him onto the national stage.

It'd be nice to have that type of game back. Y'know, compelling national matchups and all? Early season battle of titans. This is nice but it's just another SEC league game played out three weeks premature.

Until the fun games return it's LSU/Mississippi State starting the season off with more of a whimper than a bang. But I'll take it, it's football. Just around the corner. Riiiiiight.

The competition gets a lot tougher Saturday when Auburn travels to Starkville to take on Mississippi State. To make that point, Tigers coach Tommy Tuberville wore maroon during his Sunday afternoon press conference. To make the point further, he put the team through two grueling days of practice (Monday and Tuesday) while most of us were cooking out with family and friends. His message: forget about Saturday's win. It's conference time.

Tuberville is concerned about Saturday's game with the Bulldogs. And with good reason. If you watched last Thursday's game with State and South Carolina, you know that the MSU defense is solid. Anytime you hold a Steve Spurrier offense to 15 points, you've done enough to win the game. Unfortunately for the Bulldogs, they lost starting quarterback Michael Henig early and were never able to recover.

The game will squarely fall on the shoulders of the Tiger offense. And the task won't be easy. No, I'm not kidding. Anytime you stop All-SEC receiver Sidney Rice dead in his tracks, you've accomplished something. Mississippi State shut him down Thursday.

Kenny Irons and company will see a much better opponent than last week's. The MSU defense gave up only 81 yards rushing to the Gamecocks. Auburn's offensive line will be tested. Look for them to respond favorably.

Tiger offensive line coach Hugh Nall ran a brutal preseason camp. His entire focus was on making his line more physical. It was apparent on Saturday against Washington State. The offensive line delivered one of its more dominating performances in recent memory. That should serve them well heading into this week's game.

Nall says he's been impressed with what he's seen out of State. "I got the film on them yesterday and I was amazed by what I saw," he said. "Those guys really come up off the ball and they're well-coached. They gave up 81 yards rushing (to South Carolina). I don't care who you play, that's pretty good."

Auburn enters Saturday's contest a three touchdown favorite. That seems high in my opinion. Mississippi State will start red-shirt freshman Tray Rutland at quarterback. We should get to see more of Will Muschamp's blitzing schemes as a result. That should be a lot of fun.