Zac Selmon addresses why Mississippi State invests NIL, resources in baseball

Mississippi State Athletic Director Zac Selmon made a splash earlier this month when he poached National Championship winning coach Brian O’Connor from Virginia to replace Chris Lemonis, who was fired mid-season.

During O’Connor’s time with the Cavaliers, he led the program to an 885-370-2 (362-234-1) overall record. In that time, he was named ACC Coach of the Year five times, helped the Cavaliers to two ACC titles, made seven total trips to the Men’s College World Series and won a National Championship in 2015.

After winning the National Championship in 2021, Mississippi State posted just a 129-102 (50-70) record over the next four seasons. In that span, the Bulldogs made two NCAA Tournaments but failed to advance to a Super Regional.

Selmon explained why this was unacceptable and why they’ve spent the resources to completely rebuild the Mississippi State baseball program (from the players to the staff) this offseason. Simply put, they want to get back to Omaha.

Selmon wants to dog-pile in Omaha

“It’s important because of the players we’ve had here,” Selmon said. “Throughout this process, I’ve heard from so many great players. It’s household names that you grew up listening to or knowing who they were. I’m blessed to have coach [Ron] Polk here everyday. To get to be around people like that, you start to know what the expectation is. You can’t do anything now unless you put resources behind it. So much of our business has changed and we’ve had some unbelievable supporters that have stepped up throughout this entire year and specifically throughout this week because they want to be a part of it.”

Dudy Noble Field, which opened in 1967, is often regarded as one of the best stadiums in all of college baseball. It set its record attendance of 16,423 fans back in 2023, showing how massive fan support for baseball is at the university.

“Our job is to make sure we put our programs in a position to be successful, and we can’t do it in this era without a lot of support,” Selmon said. “For us, we’re committed to making sure we put our coaching staff in a position to where we fast forward 20 years from now, we see letter-winners come back and say ‘man, do you remember that time we dog-piled in Omaha?”

“It starts with the investment we made today, and clearly it’s something we know it’s going to be so good for not only our athletics department, but our entire institution and the state of Mississippi. That’s something we’re really excited about.”