A recent trip to the University of Georgia further cemented the notion that Mississippi’s two members of the Southeastern Conference face steeper climbs toward athletic distinction.
The factors of money, influence, population and recruiting are obviously making the pursuit of competitive excellence more difficult for Ole Miss and Mississippi State.
However, it’s a major credit to both universities that they have competed as well as they have over the decades against their much larger and wealthier SEC brethren.
Mississippi State was No. 1 in the first college playoff ranking in 2014. Ole Miss won 10 games this season and has been rated nationally in the top 10, but this is about the future.
With big-money schools Texas and Oklahoma soon entering the conference’s financial arms race, our two schools and their fans must dig even deeper and work harder to maintain their reputations on the fields of play.
We are mainly talking about football, the breadwinner. Both schools rank near the top in this state’s second most popular sport, baseball, each winning national championships in recent times.
Ole Miss won a natty in women’s golf in 2021. State has had the most success in basketball lately, in both men’s and women’s action. The Ole Miss women reached the postseason last year.
I recently returned from Athens, Georgia, where that state’s reigning two-time national football champion Bulldogs quickly took the fight away from Ole Miss in massive Sanford Stadium.
The venue felt like one of those monumental colosseums of the National Football League. The place holds upwards of 100,000 happy fans who pay large sums for the privilege of watching the Dawgs rout opponents.
Few of us can realistically predict the future, but I suspect that the first college football program with a stadium holding 125,000 fans, or more, will be the University of Georgia. Their supporters have the money and the desire to go bigger, better and, yes, badder.
It had been a decade since I’d been “between the hedges.” The stadium had grown by another 15, 000 to 20,000 seats and more amenities had been added, presenting a frenetic, circus-type atmosphere for a college football game. The fact nobody seems capable of beating Georgia makes it all the more fun for Bulldog Nation.
With Texas and Oklahoma joining mega schools Georgia, Alabama, Texas A&M, LSU, Missouri, Florida and Tennessee, along with smaller yet combative teams from Mississippi, South Carolina, Arkan-sas and Kentucky, the SEC should remain the premier “amateur” athletics consortium.
Ole Miss and Mississippi State, with rounded-off enrollments of 24,000 and 23,000, respectively, will be going against institutions with immense student populations like Texas A&M, 66,000; Florida, 49,000; Alabama, 37,000; Georgia, 36,000; South Carolina, LSU and Missouri, all above 30,000; and Kentucky, Auburn and Tennessee, all near 30,000.
The big money aspect will chiefly affect our schools under the new “name, image and likeness” program that allows athletes to profit off their abilities and promotional efforts. The larger campuses have the largest NIL cash pots, meaning more for their athletes.
Metro Atlanta’s population of almost 7 million is twice Mississippi’s size. More people means more top-rated recruits, and UGA has consistently signed college football’s premier list of prospects.
Population-wise, Mississippi is easily the SEC’s smallest state.
Texas leads with 29 million people, Florida 21 million, Georgia 11 million, Tennessee 7 million, Missouri 6.1 million, South Carolina 5.1 million, Alabama 5.1 million, Kentucky 5 million, Louisiana 4.7 million, Oklahoma 4 million, Arkansas 3.1 million and Mississippi, 2.9 million.
But, remember, only 11 can play at a time.
Mac Gordon is a native of McComb. He is a retired newspaperman. He can be reached at macmarygordon@gmail.com.
