In 2008, Mississippi State fans met Sylvester Croom with a lukewarm reception when he led his team on the field against Southeastern Conference foe Arkansas in front of a Senior Day crowd of 42,056 – which proved to be his final home game as the Bulldogs’ head coach.
In 2009, nine months after Dan Mullen was hired by Mississippi State, he led his team out of the gates at Davis Wade Stadium on the MSU campus for the first time to play Jackson State (or “that school in central Mississippi” for this column’s sake) in front of 54,232 fans who were more fired up about football than they had been in a decade – a decade that saw only one winning season.
Obviously someone in Starkville was wide awake during those marketing classes.
While a number of good advertising campaigns and the allure of a new head coach certainly contributed to the spike in interest in Mississippi State football last year, perhaps nothing piqued the interest of Bulldog fans quite like Dan Mullen’s urge to intensify the century-old rivalry with Ole Miss.
In an ode to legendary Ohio State coach Woody Hayes – certainly someone Mullen and Florida head coach Urban Meyer had heard of before or during their stint at Bowling Green State University – he began to refer to Ole Miss colloquially as “that school up north.”
Eventually, it became commonplace at every Mississippi State football event – from alumni rallies to signing day parties – where the topic of Ole Miss was brought to his attention (and that encompasses the great majority of these occasions), Mullen continually referred to Ole Miss as “that school up north” (or “TSUN,” for the sake of brevity).
I’ve been told that referring to Ole Miss as “that school up north” has caught on among many Mississippi State fans. I’m also told that a number of people in this country still listen to Elvis and still watch American Idol as well. These lamentable facts of life leave me to ask the question our collective conscious is thinking: How can something so obviously derivative and simple be so popular?
It’s simple, really: we’re in what I call the “Twilight Era” of American society and pop culture, where it only takes one person to deem something a good idea and spend money on it for all 2,000 of that person’s friends to agree and spend money on it as well; no matter how many of them are consciously aware of just how bad of an idea it really is.
This phenomenon is capitalized on everyday by the film, music and television industries.
It didn’t take long for Mississippi State to capitalize on it either – the Bulldogs surpassed their school’s season ticket sales record of 38,440 tickets sold by early August, just eight months after Mullen’s arrival.
Maybe we should capitalize as well; (I wouldn’t be the only one rocking a TSUN T-shirt were they to exist).
Dan Mullen obviously knows better. And while being difficult just for the sake of being difficult is the kind of trait that can cause one to fail an open book test, it’s also the kind of trait that can produce news even when the amount of real news taking place is minimal at best. It’s a great approach, but it’s certainly not a new idea.
What’s more, those who have shared this idea in the past have also shared another unfortunate circumstance.
Not wanting to proclaim them “the University of Texas”, Texas A&M has referred to the Longhorns simply as “t.u.” for 90 years in an attempt to render UT as “just another Texas university”.
The Longhorns lead the alltime series against Texas A&M 75-35-5.
Further west, UCLA has labeled rival USC “that school across town”, as the two universities are separated by just 12 miles. USC leads the series 43- 28-7.
The rivalry between Ole Miss and Mississippi State is over 100 years old, and Ole Miss leads the series 60-40-6. Anyone capable of reading this far into this column can see where I’m going with this:
Envy is the sincerest form of admiration.
That’s not necessarily a bad thing, however. I’ve been under the impression that the success sustained by the Mississippi State baseball program over the years was a catalyst for the development of the excellent baseball program we now have at Ole Miss, much like Oregon State’s consecutive National Championships in baseball in 2006 and 2007 were probably a catalyst for the Oregon Ducks to decide that baseball was indeed worth playing (Oregon discontinued baseball as a scholarship sport in 1982, but reinstated the sport as such in 2009 after their instate rival’s national triumphs).
Rivalries are essential because they increase the level of competition.
They force both parties involved to get better (and “better” is something both Ole Miss and Mississippi State could be in football).
I am of the opinion that we should embrace it to an extent (the rivalry, not “TSUN,” even if the “Ole Miss TSUNami” would be a cunning reference to the days of the “Flood”). Sure, at the end of the day all of the games on the schedule are worth the same, but if both universities push each other, one of us is bound to go where neither of us has been athletically in recent memory.
As for the name-calling?
Saying something meaningless over and over does not give it meaning, If you prefer to replace a school’s name with directions on how to get there, or if it was your Earth-shattering idea to insert “to Hell with LSU” into “The Star Spangled Banner,” I’m glaring at you.
If you’re an incoming freshman unfamiliar with the rivalry, or if you’re just interested in finding out something new about the university, read into it. The Egg Bowl owns just as many memorable moments in Ole Miss history as The Lyceum.