A Look Back at the Last Time MSU Was 8-0 (1999)
Normally on Tuesdays we like to take you back into the annals of Bulldog football and revisit a game from the past that was played against this week’s opponent. But given that Mississippi State and UT-Martin have played only once, a 55-17 MSU win in 2011, we decided to go in a different direction. Today we will look back at the last (and only other) time MSU was 8-0.
The year was 1999. Expectations were high for Jackie Sherrill’s Bulldogs following their Western Division championship in 1998. State opened the season with four straight home games. First was an easy 40-7 win over Middle Tennessee, then a 13-10 squeaker over Memphis. A 29-11 win over Big 12 conference member Oklahoma State earned MSU their first national ranking of the year (23), and the Bulldogs closed out the home stand with a 17-0 shutout of South Carolina.
State took to the road for the first time in 1999 and returned home with a 42-14 victory over Vanderbilt to take their record to 5-0. From that point on, things got a bit dicey. First the Bulldogs traveled to Auburn for their first serious SEC road test. Tommy Tuberville was in his first year at Auburn, and the underdog Tigers found themselves up 16-0 over the 14th ranked Bulldogs. With only four minutes left to play, the Bulldogs were down 16-3 and appeared to be headed to their first loss of the season. But as Justin Strawn details here, QB Matt Wyatt led the Bulldogs to an amazing 18-16 comeback win to keep the perfect season alive.
Back in the friendly confines of Scott Field, the Bulldogs found themselves trailing a mediocre LSU team 16-11 late in the fourth quarter before mounting a last minute drive. Rod Gibson’s controversial one yard plunge with time running out was the difference in State’s 17-16 win. Next came Kentucky, in an ESPN Thursday night telecast that came right down to the wire. Scott Westerfield had earlier missed a fourth quarter FG that would have given the Bulldogs the lead, but got a second chance and nailed a 45 yarder with just 5 seconds remaining to give MSU a 23-22 victory.
Now sitting 8-0 and ranked #8 in the country, the Bulldogs traveled to Tuscaloosa to take on the #11 Alabama Crimson Tide. Mississippi State was riding a three game winning streak over the Crimson Tide, but Alabama’s defense was too much and Tide prevailed 19-7 to end the Bulldogs’ bid for a perfect season. The Tide would go on to win the Western Division and defeat Florida in the SEC championship game, while the Bulldogs ended up 10-2 with an Egg Bowl win plus a victory over Clemson in the Peach Bowl.
So what’s different between then and now? Well for one thing, the 2014 Bulldogs have a much better resume than did their 1999 counterparts. Three consecutive wins over top ten teams and a night game victory at over LSU in Tiger Stadium are far more impressive than any wins that the 1999 team enjoyed. That fact is reflected in the rankings, as the 2014 Bulldogs have been #1 for the past four weeks, while the 1999 team never achieved a ranking higher than #8.
The 1999 team also had a knack for playing and winning close games. During their 8-game winning streak, the ‘99 Bulldogs won four games by a grand total of seven points. The 2014 Bulldogs, on the other hand, have won most of their games rather convincingly, with this past week’s 17-10 squeaker over Arkansas the lone exception. And the 2014 team has something the 1999 team did not have – a legitimate Heisman Trophy candidate in the person of QB Dak Prescott.
Barring an upset of Armegeddon proportions, the 2014 Bulldogs will be 9-0 after this weekend, a record that no previous Mississippi State team has ever accomplished. And what will be waiting for them the following week? A trip to Tuscaloosa for another showdown that, just as it did in 1999, may determine who wins the SEC’s Western Division.