100 Day Bulldog Countdown: 33 Days - The day Jackie made a bull a steer

Year two of the Jeff Lebby era has arrived and the Mississippi State coach is back to work.

After a disappointing first season, the coach and his staff are doing what they can to get things back on track in Starkville. The players on the field will be the difference for State this season if they are to make a return and we’re going to discuss every single one of them over the course of the next few months.

As we do every year, we’re counting down 100 days until State’s first game at Southern Miss in Hattiesburg on August 30. Over this period of time, we’ll breakdown every scholarship player on the roster, look back at great moments in MSU history and even talk about legends that have come before the current Bulldogs.

Today, we look back at one of the most memorable stories in Bulldog history.

33 Days: Jackie Sherrill’s motivational tactic leads to win over Longhorns in 1992  

This is a story about how a bull named Willy became a steer and the Bulldogs upset the Texas Longhorns three decades ago. The fact that it’s still being talked about to this day would suggest that it’s a story worth telling.

The year was 1992 and State football was finally getting some juice again. For the past 10 seasons before Sherrill was hired, the Bulldogs had produced just two winning years and found themselves routinely toward the bottom of the conference. Sherrill had changed that quickly with a 7-5 season in year one including an upset win over No. 13 Texas and an Egg Bowl victory over Ole Miss leading to the first bowl game in 10 years.

Confidence was sky high when the season opened in ’92 and Sherrill saw the Longhorns back on the schedule for an early season matchup – nationally televised by ESPN. The Bulldogs were ranked No. 25 in the preseason and had fans around college football talking about them, but Sherrill would throw some gasoline on that fire the week of the big game.

As the Bulldogs were going through the preparations for Texas, Sherrill had a bull calf named Willy brought to the practice fields on campus. The coach was in a meeting with his players at the beginning of the week and asked if they knew the difference between a bull and a steer. When the answer was mostly “no”, it was decided what the coach would do.

Sherrill would gather his team around at the practice field and the owner of the bull calf performed a castration right then and there. Sherrill would bring the act up at a press conference and the firestorm began for the coach and the University.

It became national news that president Dr. Donald Zacharias would denounce, along with members of the University Vet School. The Animal Rescue League filed a complaint and almost every national sports columnist in America had a say on it.

Still, Sherrill kept churning.

“We didn’t do anything inhumane to an animal,” Sherrill would say. “The calf is standing in living color today going about his business. Let me put it this way: I don’t think that calf was embarrassed.”

Whether one agrees with the act or not, it certainly worked in State’s favor. The Bulldogs jumped out to a 13-0 in the first quarter against the Longhorns in Austin as Sleepy Robinson scored a couple of touchdowns within the first 10 minutes of the contest, but would go down with an injury and give way to backup Greg Plump the rest of the way.

Leading 16-10 at the half, the Bulldog defense would stuff Texas for the final two quarters and got a touchdown from Plump and two field goals from Chris Gardner to pull away in a 28-10 victory. State ran wild on the UT defense with 242 yards rushing while the defense intercepted two passes in the win.

Former offensive lineman Matt Caldwell, a redshirt freshman in ’92, recounted the week with Maroon and White Daily.

“I can still see it like it was yesterday,” Caldwell said. “Coach Sherrill always had a way about him of doing things to get you motivated. He would always give you something symbolic of who you were playing. He was always looking for an edge or an angle.”

State would go on to finish the year 7-5 for the second-straight season and finished inside the top 25 after a 4-4 finish in SEC play with a ranked win over Florida. They went to the Peach Bowl where they lost to North Carolina 21-17.

Sherrill would go on to produce State’s one and only trip to the SEC Championship and he left Starkville in 2003 as the winningest coach in school history – a feat that still has not been topped. Through all the triumphs that Sherrill had at State, this story still lives in infamy, and it will never leave. Some still find it comical, others not so much but it is still a legend that lives on through the ages.