Side Stepping Saban
Oct 25, 2014; Knoxville, TN, USA; Alabama Crimson Tide head coach Nick Saban during the second half against the Tennessee Volunteers at Neyland Stadium. Alabama won 34 to 20. Mandatory Credit: Randy Sartin-USA TODAY Sports
The theme of 2014 for the Mississippi State football team has been to take previous trends and throw them against brick walls until they are smashed into thousands of tiny little pieces. This year’s version of the Bulldogs has done a lot of things that it hasn’t been able to do or done very rarely. Here are just a few:
- Beat a top ten team
- Beat a team ranked in the AP Top 25
- Beat teams in the SEC West not named Ole Miss or Arkansas
- Been the number 1 ranked team in the country
- Beat LSU
- Beat LSU in Baton Rouge
Those last two are two that I want to focus on. Let’s take a quick trip back in time to the year 2000. Mississippi State entered Baton Rouge with a 4-1 record, and they had a top 15 ranking. Many thought the Bulldogs were the favorite to win the division and to win the SEC that season. They had knocked off number 3 Florida earlier that season and followed it up with a big win over Auburn. The previous year, the Bulldogs had ended a seven game losing streak to the Tigers in Starkville. It looked like the Bulldogs might be changing the course of history in the series. On the other side of the field were the LSU Tigers, who were 4-3 and trying to figure things out in a year of transition. What transition would I be referring to? The hiring of their new coach Nick Saban.
If Mississippi State is going to beat Alabama on Saturday and be the first Mississippi State team to reach ten wins in the regular season in school history, they are going to have to break one more trend in the process. The Bulldogs have been terrible against Nick Saban, and it all started back on October 21, 2000. The Bulldogs had everything going for them when they entered that game. It had been a mostly back and forth affair between the two schools. Mississippi State in the previous year had the number 1 ranked defense in the country, and the Bulldogs entered the game leading the country in defense against the run. They were only giving up 24.4 yards per game to opponents. LaBrandon Toefield and the Tigers exposed weaknesses in the Bulldogs run defense and accumulated 220 yards on the ground. Despite that, Mississippi State was able to finally gain momentum and ran out to a 14 point lead in the 4th quarter. The LSU Tigers would then score 21 unanswered points, and a late Bulldog touchdown would force overtime. The Tigers though would win the game in overtime, and the Bulldogs wouldn’t beat LSU again until this season. And Saban was there to get the streak going.
Saban has dominated the Bulldogs as both the LSU coach and the Alabama coach. His combined record against the Bulldogs is 11-1. The lone victory the Bulldogs have over the legendary coach was the 2007 game where the Bulldogs clinched bowl eligibility for the only time during the Sylvester Croom era. The history against the Bulldogs is even more daunting because the game is played in Tuscaloosa. Since Saban’s arrival, the Tide have an average margin of victory of just over 25 points against Mississippi State in Tuscaloosa. It’s a monumental hurdle.
But this has been the season of overcoming hurdles. Few thought Dan Mullen could beat a top ten team. He’s done that. Few thought that the Bulldogs would be able to end the 14 game losing streak to LSU. They did that. Few believed they would be able to defeat three straight top ten teams. They did that too. No one thought they would be the number one ranked team in the country at any point this season. So far, they are the only team that the College Football Playoff Committee has ranked as the number 1 team.
If Mississippi State is going to win this game against Alabama, it is going to have to overcome a lot of history. Because of that history, no one is predicting the Bulldogs to win in Tuscaloosa. The Crimson Tide are possibly the most talented team in the country, and they have arguably the greatest coach in college football roaming their sidelines. It’s just one more thing the Bulldogs will have to overcome in the hopes of being the SEC and National Champs in 2014. Good thing for the Bulldogs that they have plenty of practice this year doing just that.