As CFB Season Approaches, Tolerate Diversity

Leading up to the 2015 college football season, Mississippi State fans are mad. Why are they mad?

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Because many experts are predicting the Bulldogs to finish last, or next to last, in the SEC West.

A lot of the anger stems from the lack of perceived respect Mississippi State gets from these so-called experts. The logic behind Mississippi State finishing so low in the standings in 2015 is the number of starters the Bulldogs lost from their 2014 team. If Alabama, Auburn, or LSU were to lose the starters the Bulldogs lost, many would say those teams were just reloading.

Due to a variety of factors, mainly recruiting rankings and program history, the Bulldogs are not given the same benefit of the doubt. The recruiting rankings tell us the Bulldogs should be a good team that is stuck in a really difficult division. History also tells us the Bulldogs do not sustain success on a year-to-year basis.

My plea, not only to bulldog fans but all college football fans, is to embrace diversity this college football preseason. This is the time when everyone makes predictions, and everyone makes rankings. It’s one of the slowest times of the year for a sports writer or blogger.  As a result, fans are bombarded with opinion pieces on a nearly hourly basis.

Whenever someone writes an opinion piece in today’s society and culture, it is either wholly accepted or rejected. There is no consideration for what individual parts of an argument or opinion could be correct or incorrect. Somehow our society has evolved into a strictly right or wrong culture.  And I don’t think this is a good thing.

Back in the middle of the college baseball season, I wrote a piece about The Left Field Lounge. The piece is more about how an atmosphere can breed apathy then it was about wins or losses. While I do believe that fan interaction, or the lack there of, can lead to an apathetic fan base, I don’t believe it is anywhere close to being the primary reason a team wins or loses ballgames. However, many who read that piece assumed I was saying the baseball team was so terrible this past season because of everyone in the Left Field Lounge. And because I did not have the same opinion as many others, I was labeled stupid, ignorant, or things that were far worse. The debate about apathy that I was hoping to start never materialized. It was due to the fact people either completely accepted my argument or completely rejected it.  There was no consideration for the smaller or finer details of the piece.

Sadly, this is how we approach all topics in today’s society. Whether it’s gay marriage, abortion, or Caitlyn Jenner receiving the Arthur Ashe Courage Award at the ESPYs, we have become a society that not only doesn’t like it when people don’t agree with us,  but we also completely reject someone’s value as a person simply based on one opinion.

As a blogger for Mississippi State, there are lots of opinions that people will not agree with of mine. I knew that when I started.  I also knew that people would make baseless assumptions about me as a person on the opinions that I wrote about.  Despite the fact I knew this, it still surprises me when people whom I have never met assume they know 100% about me as an individual based off of something they read on the Internet.

And this brings me back to my original point. When you read a prediction or opinion about the upcoming 2015 Mississippi State football season, and it isn’t the most positive thing you have ever read, please do not assume that you are aware of the intelligence of the writer of the article. Most years, losing the number of starters that Mississippi State is losing from its 2014 team would spell disaster for the Bulldogs. What many people are writing about the Bulldogs is not a deviation from what they would have written about the Bulldogs during the 90s and in the Croom years. Their beliefs and opinions are based on history.

The optimism most Bulldog fans have is based on the fact many of the new starters will be veterans of Dan Mullen’s system. The starters of 2014 who will no longer be a part of the team are being replaced by primarily seniors and juniors. The idea of reloading as a team has never been associated with Mississippi State. But with the development Dan Mullen has shown in his six years as the head coach of the Bulldogs, it might be time for people to revisit this idea about Mississippi State.

Even if most people don’t change their opinions about the Bulldogs, can we all agree to not assume that someone is an idiot, moronic, or the dumbest person  alive because of that opinion? I think the world would be a better place if we could.