Mississippi State and Southern Miss, two teams desperate for even a little football success, will open their respective seasons Saturday at The Rock in Hattiesburg. State won two games last season. USM won one. Neither won a conference game.

The good news: Somebody has to win this one.

Oddsmakers believe State is the likely victor, installing the Bulldogs as 13.5-point favorites. That seems about right. In this era of NIL and the wide-open transfer portal, the college game has become all about the dollars. From all reports, State likely spends at least 10-fold what USM spends on its football payroll, a word I hate to use in college football but it is what it is.

Nevertheless, this is an intriguing way to start the football season. We’ve got two in-state rivals who used to play every season but now get together much less frequently. We’ve got two teams with totally revamped rosters. Even the most diehard of Bulldog and Golden Eagle fans will need a program to know who is who.

Only one NCAA Division I team brought in more transfers than Southern Miss, and that was Marshall, which had to do so, mostly because Charles Huff, the new USM coach, brought so many of his Thundering Herd players with him from Marshall. Perhaps, this season, they should be called the Thundering Eagles. At last count, USM’s roster includes a whopping 63 transfers in all, 21 from Marshall.

Four of the USM transfers came from Mississippi State, including running back Jeffery Pittman and linebacker Avery Sledge, who were Bulldogs the last time these two teams played. In fact, Pittman ran 10 times for 98 yards and a huge touchdown against USM on Nov. 18, 2023, in Starkville. The final score was 41-20, but USM had closed the gap to 26-20 in the fourth quarter when Pittman took off on a 59-yard dash to the end zone to pretty much seal the deal.

At last count, Jeff Lebby and State lead the SEC in portal transfers this year with 37, including several highly rated defensive linemen and linebackers expected to plug the many holes in last season’s porous defense. We shall see.

State leads the series with USM 18-12-1, having won the last six meetings. Older fans will remember a time when the Golden Eagles were every bit as dominant if not more, winning seven straight between 1977 and 1983 and 10 of 12 between ’77 and ’88. 

None of those games – before or after – was more meaningful than the 1981 game played at Mississippi Veterans Memorial Stadium before a equally divided crowd of more than 64,000. State was ranked No. 15 in the country. USM was ranked No. 20 and about to zoom higher. There was serious talent on display on both sides of the field. There was some violent hitting. Orley Hood, the Mark Twain of Mississippi journalism, later referred to it as the “limp off game” because so many players on both teams had to be helped off the field.

Emory Bellard’s Bulldogs included the late, great linebacker Johnie Cooks, who would be the second pick of the 1982 draft and who would knock you into next week. Glen Collins, another first round pick, anchored the defensive line that also included Tyrone Keys on one end and the great Billy Jackson on the other. Kent Hull, one of the great centers in football history, blocked for Michael Haddix, still another first rounder. Two-time All-SEC wide receiver Mardye McDole was another remarkable talent, the first receiver in MSU history to account for 1,000 yards receiving in a single season. And there were more. Said Reggie Collier, the truly great Southern Miss quarterback, “I have never been hit so hard in my life as I was in that game. I thought they were going to kill me.”

The Southern Miss offense featured Collier – who was Lamar Jackson before Lamar Jackson existed – and future NFL stars Sammy Winder and Louis Lipps. Defensively, nose tackle Jearld Baylis dominated the line of scrimmage on a line that also included future NFL star Richard Byrd and under-sized sack specialists Rhett Whitley and George Tillman on the ends.

Southern Miss, in a defensive struggle, prevailed by a final score of 7-6. That Southern Miss team tied Bear Bryant’s sixth-ranked Alabama Crimson Tide 13-13 earlier in the season. They ransacked Bobby Bowden and Florida State 58-14 the week after the State game. They would rise to No. 8 in the nation at one point.

It’s difficult to imagine Saturday’s State-USM matchup will equal that one for brutality or significance, but it is interesting nonetheless. And, as previously noted, somebody who really needs a victory is going to win.