Bent Bulldawg’s Bites: Southern Miss @ Mississippi State

All of Maroon & White Nation is, I’m sure, both extremely excited and relieved to finally get this Two-Thousand and Fourteen Football Season under way!

I know we cannot wait to see our boys in maroon finally take the field again. I cannot wait to get back to Davis Wade and hear tens of thousands of cowbells en masse as The Famous Maroon Band plays “Hail State.” I’m sure many who did not have the opportunity to attend Fan Day this last Sunday will be excited to attend and see first-hand the new expansions and renovations to Davis Wade Stadium as we celebrate the One-Hundredth Anniversary of football at Scott Field. I’m excited to see this “Psycho Defense” in action and to see our “darkhorse Heisman candidate” Dak Prescott handing it off to Robinson and throwing downfield to Wilson and Lewis. I’m sure it will be a blast for the entire Bulldawg Family.

Oh, and a team from the University of Southern Mississippi will be there also. The Golden Eagles, or as we like to affectionately refer to them, the Mustard Buzzards.

Vegas oddsmakers are giving us a four touchdown plus point spread going into this one. Not sure if it will or won’t be much of a contest after the first quarter or so. But I do think that these in-state games make it a bit more exciting to watch. Many of their players played with or against some of our players in high school. Their friends and family recently got The SEC Network, too, and they want to be seen playing well on TV. They’d all love to say they took down an SEC team. It’s just not going to happen.

Southern has a history of good football. They once had a quarterback there who wore #4, and he may have been the best quarterback to ever come out of Mississippi. Name was Favre. Just a few short years ago, in 2011 to be exact, Southern Miss won the C-USA championship and went on to win the Sheraton Hawaii Bowl. That led to a little bit of the “big head” I think. Which is what led to these billboards.

Of course, after 2011, they lost their coach and a lot of key talent on the team. In 2012 they went 0-12. Then, in 2013 they managed to beat only the University of Alabama: Birmingham Blazers in the final game of the season to finish 1-11. This led to a new slogan for their program.

One would think that this type of drastic drop-off in the ol’ W column would be a humbling experience. A reasonable person might think that a team that has gone 1-23 over the last two seasons would not be anxious to talk just a whole lot of smack. That doesn’t appear to be the case with these Mustard Buzzards. Since football season ended last year, there have been sightings in various places on the internet of photos like this:

More recently, tweets like this one concerning USM receiver Markese Triplett starting showing up in the Twitterverse:

This lack of respect doesn’t appear to have gone unnoticed by our Bulldawgs, either. I did notice that this tweet:

was indeed retweeted by Chris Jones.

To be honest, the forecast for Saturday calls for a beat-down. As much of a fan as I am of seeing a tight, hard-fought contest on the gridiron, I’ll be okay with this “not-much-of-a-game.” Here’s just hoping that Dak gets his chance to show out a bit before they bench him at the half, that the defense gets their chance to go a little Psycho, and that none of our boys get hurt.

Hail State!