Fact is, it's been over a decade since our program has been nationally respected. Sure, we have been ranked a few times here and there and have had a nice season or two but nothing that forced the rest of the country to take us seriously. We beat Florida in the Swamp 2 years ago when they were "down" so it didn't carry as much water as it should have. Same with the UGA win that year. Beating the tar out of Michigan was important, however, and in spite of it sealing the deal on RichRod's fate, it still resonates because it was 52-14 and because it was at a NYD bowl.
You need to be ranked AND knock off the name teams in order to build/sustain national credibility. We are in that grey area where the analysts, talking heads, bloggers and other opinion makers are starting to give us some credit and/or benefit of the doubt. Should we beat Tennessee on Saturday, the AP writeup won't treat it like a surprise. But some more national respect will have been earned by Mississippi State.
We have solidified our place in the rankings over the past 2.5-3 seasons (since the 09 Houston loss) by not losing the games we were favored in and with few exceptions keeping the losses to the juggernauts close. We have not embarrassed ourselves like we repeatedly did in the late Jackie and most of the Croom tenures. Still, long established opinions can take a long time to change. Our nearly complete absence from the CBS game over this time span reiterates that point.
If we knock off Tennessee in dominant fashion, then dispatch of MTSU, then we should have a marquee matchup with #1 Alabama on CBS, possibly Gameday in town to cover it. That would signify a return to the level of national respect we had the last time we came into Tuscaloosa undefeated.
It feels so good to matter again. After a few years of sucking you tend to get numb to the losing and lose sight of how much national respect means to student enrollment, gameday atmosphere, giving to the university, general pride in Mississippi State. Conference football relevance shouldn't matter so much to the SEC member institutions, but it clearly does.
You need to be ranked AND knock off the name teams in order to build/sustain national credibility. We are in that grey area where the analysts, talking heads, bloggers and other opinion makers are starting to give us some credit and/or benefit of the doubt. Should we beat Tennessee on Saturday, the AP writeup won't treat it like a surprise. But some more national respect will have been earned by Mississippi State.
We have solidified our place in the rankings over the past 2.5-3 seasons (since the 09 Houston loss) by not losing the games we were favored in and with few exceptions keeping the losses to the juggernauts close. We have not embarrassed ourselves like we repeatedly did in the late Jackie and most of the Croom tenures. Still, long established opinions can take a long time to change. Our nearly complete absence from the CBS game over this time span reiterates that point.
If we knock off Tennessee in dominant fashion, then dispatch of MTSU, then we should have a marquee matchup with #1 Alabama on CBS, possibly Gameday in town to cover it. That would signify a return to the level of national respect we had the last time we came into Tuscaloosa undefeated.
It feels so good to matter again. After a few years of sucking you tend to get numb to the losing and lose sight of how much national respect means to student enrollment, gameday atmosphere, giving to the university, general pride in Mississippi State. Conference football relevance shouldn't matter so much to the SEC member institutions, but it clearly does.
