Something special is brewing in Mississippi. Now that we’ve enjoyed a sample of it, we want more.
That’s not unusual during this season of the year, when people are baking, grilling, frying, brewing, stewing, and mixing up holiday dinners and treats.
Thankfully, my family is blessed with several who are exceptionally talented cooks, and the rest of us will be the beneficiaries of those talents.
This year, however, something else is cooking, and it’s a little unusual around in Mississippi, at least in recent years.
We’ve seen it cooking in Jackson, Starkville and Oxford lately, even over the weekend. It’s a recipe that people always love. In fact, people enjoy this recipe that they will pay vast sums of money and spend their spare time following its progress.
So what is this recipe that is so popular?
The answer is college football success at a high level in the state of Mississippi.
For any doubters, just look at this past weekend. The Jackson State Tigers and their hall of fame-coach Deion Sanders captured the SWAC football championship with a convincing 27-10 victory over Prairie View A&M in Atlanta. As many sports fans will remember, Atlanta has been the site of many of Sanders’ athletic feats over the decades. After the Falcons chose him with the fifth pick of the 1989 draft, he became the greatest defensive back in the history of football. If that weren’t enough, he also played baseball for the Atlanta Braves, becoming the toast of the town. Fans from Prime Time's alma mater, Florida State, began doing the FSU tomahawk chop during his baseball games. That’s right; the tomahawk chop of the Atlanta Braves began as a salute to Deion Sanders.
So Coach Prime has seized the conference championship and their season is not over yet. He has made the Tigers a national name and an attractive site for recruits.
And then there was the Mississippi State impact over the weekend, even without playing. On national radio, talk of the Heisman Trophy drifted into the realm of next year’s Heisman race, and MSU’s quarterback Will Rogers was named as one of the early favorites for the most prestigious individual award in all of American sports. While Rogers has previously flown below the media’s radar, those days are over. Every performance of a Heisman contender becomes national news, as do the results of his team’s games.
For those who didn’t believe that Mike Leach’s Air Raid offense could put up big numbers in the SEC, Will Rogers has become walking proof that it can.
Up the road in Oxford, someone else joined Will Rogers in making news without stepping foot on the football field. Ole Miss Head Football Coach Lane Kiffin agreed to a contract extension with the Rebels, bringing in quite the haul of money for the new year. More importantly for football fans, the new agreement disproved all of those coaches from other universities telling recruits that Kiffin wouldn’t stay in Oxford long. On the day the agreement was announced, one prized prospect committed Ole Miss and an experienced quarterback (in the transfer portal) visited. The Rebels also sit squarely in the top ten in the latest College Football Playoff poll.
You might remember the warning in this column a couple of weeks ago, that too many rumors had Kiffin leaving for too many places. When that happens, it’s usually the work of rival recruiters.
Recent seasons had not been kind to these three football programs, but that has changed quickly. All three head coaches were hired in the same off-season. All three head coaches are dynamic leaders, albeit in vastly different ways, whom the media loves to cover. All three have resurrected their football programs at break-neck speed and are only getting better.
To make things even better for the fans, all three teams will play in bowl games relatively close by. Coach Prime returns his team to Atlanta, the city he basically owns, to pursue yet another great triumph. The MSU Bulldogs can drive over to Interstate 55 and take a right, arriving in Memphis in a few hours. There, they will compete in the historic Liberty Bowl against a strong Texas Tech team.
The city of New Orleans is also an easy drive from most parts of Mississippi, and that’s where Ole Miss is heading to face off against Baylor on the opening day of the new year. This clash of two top ten teams will almost certainly draw a large television audience.
Having tasted success this year, football fans in Mississippi have an appetite for much more. As it now appears, there may be plenty of helpings for everyone during 2022 and beyond.
