Don’t Mess With Starkville

Starkville may not be a booming metropolis. It has it’s faults, but it has its assets. Folks from other schools and states love to look down on our city that holds our school, Mississippi State University.

Most folks who attend MSU love Starkville. The people are nice, food is good and it’s a relaxed atmosphere conducive to getting an education (the actual point of going to college).

Naturally we want to defend our land that we hold dear. We can talk about what needs to be done around town, criticize this or that, but we are in the family. When an outsider does it, those are fightin’ words. And as historical evidence has shown us, the result of bashing Starkville doesn’t always end up so good…

In reference to Mike Bianchi’s recent article about how MSU and Ole Miss should be cast out of the SEC for UCF and USF, our friend over at FWtCT took a look at some of his past writings.

Here are some excepts from that piece which was written the day before MSU was to play the #13 ranked and Steve Spurrier coached Florida Gators in 1992.

"The image it conjures up is one of chickens running wild in the city streets and Friday night hayrides and women in bee-hive hairdos and men in lime green leisure suits.It takes more abuse than any other college town in the Southeastern Conference, mainly because of its reputation as a backwoods bumpkinville where “Macon County Line” is just opening at the local drive-thru movie thee-ater.When most people hear the name “Stark” they think of a place where nuclear winter has set in and turned the landscape into a bleak, barren wasteland."

The next day, Mississippi State STOMPED Florida 30-6.

I couldn’t find a link to Mark Bradley’s 2005 article in the Atlanta Journal Constitution, but I do remember it well.

After UGA beat MSU 23-10 that year in Starkville, he made sure to run Starkville down the road when he got back to Athens. I’m paraphrasing but he said our airport (Golden Triangle) was the worst he’d ever seen and made some not-so-flattering comparisons. The town was filled with poor people and he was so depressed just being there, etc. etc.

It kind of reminds me of what our beat writers did to Lafayette last week. Matt Stevens, Mike Bonner and Logan Lowery (plus Brian Hadad of Bulldog Sports Radio) all publicly trashed the town. Well I hope we don’t have to go back to Lafayette any time soon.

When UGA returned to Starkville in 2010 they were soundly beaten, 24-12.

Don’t mess with Starkville.