June 28, 2007

Much has been said and written of late about the rise of college baseball in Mississippi. Three teams in NCAA Regionals, two in super regionals and Mississippi State’s run to the College World Series highlighted a banner year of aluminum bat baseball.

Some may infer that baseball is quickly supplanting football as the state’s marquee sport on the college level, and that has some credence.

Mississippi State and Ole Miss have been bad in football for the past three seasons. Southern Miss, one of college football’s models of consistency, will win its standard eight games, then play in a postseason bowl. The Golden Eagles likely won’t challenge for a national championship, at least until the current postseason system is reformed. Even then, having the Golden Eagles out of Conference USA in a national championship game is far-fetched.

Conversely, seeing any of the three college baseball teams playing in a College World Series is tangible and realistic. Each team typically hovers around 40 wins a season. Mississippi State’s national baseball dominance preceded the others’ rise, but the Rebels and Eagles have caught up.

Winning will do that to a college program in any sport, and therein lies the notion that football may have taken a back seat in this state to baseball, at least on the college level.

Folks are going to get an extra adrenaline rush around here when football season begins. Even the most optimistic supporters, though, have had a hard time maintaining that enthusiasm during the recent swoon of the state’s two most famous football schools.

Mississippi State’s last winning season came in 2000 when the Bulldogs went 8-4 and beat Texas A&M in the snowy Independence Bowl. Since that victory, Mississippi State is 14-42.

Of State’s seven Southeastern Conference wins since 2000, two have come against Kentucky and two against Ole Miss. The Bulldogs beat Vanderbilt and Alabama once each and shocked Florida in 2004 in coach Sylvester Croom’s biggest win since becoming head coach that same season.

Ole Miss has fared better over that time, but much of that credit has to go to quarterback Eli Manning, who led the Rebels for three seasons and won the Cotton Bowl in 2003. After Manning left, Ole Miss fired coach David Cutcliffe following his first losing season in 2004.

Current coach Ed Orgeron has gone 7-16 in two seasons, including wins over Memphis, The Citadel, Kentucky and Northwestern (La.) State.

With seasons like the ones supporters have had to sit through, is it any wonder that those same supporters would gravitate toward a sport that is winning consistently on a national basis?

Of course not.

When the football teams begin to show the kind of ascension the state’s three biggest baseball teams have made, then the excitement again will be at a fever pitch.

According to both Ole Miss’ and Southern Miss’ Web sites, the countdown to kickoff is about 65 days. Mississippi State doesn’t have a countdown on its Web site (wonder why?).

No other sport gets a section of its Web site to countdown the start of a season. That in itself shows that football is still the master in this state, even if others are catching up.

Winning is the only elixir that will sooth our aching hearts and keep distance between football and other sports.

And winning has been too sporadic of late to do so.