To say that I was surprised would be an exaggeration. I’m never surprised when Mississippi State fails to get the benefit of the doubt.

After all, we’re talking about a program that has 1 winning season in SEC play in the 21st century. And even that historic year, which saw Dak Prescott lead the Bulldogs to a No. 1 ranking in the first ever Playoff poll, still yielded 3 losses, including a devastating Egg Bowl loss to Hugh Freeze-led Ole Miss.

Speaking of Freeze, the Auburn program he just took over is riding its worst 2-year stretch of the 21st century after a disastrous 1.5-year tenure with Bryan Harsin. It’s a program that Mississippi State beat, along with the likes of Texas A&M, Arkansas and the aforementioned Ole Miss. And in the first game of the Zach Arnett era following the death of Mike Leach, the Bulldogs went down to Tampa and outlasted a hard-nosed Illinois team. It’s why the Bulldogs hit 9 wins and finished ranked No. 20 in the AP Poll.

(People also forget that Mississippi State led in the 4th quarter at eventual-West champ LSU before turtling up in the closing minutes.)

Yet when the preseason SEC media poll came out, who was picked to finish last in the West? Mississippi State.

Back to the basement, according to some.

You could point to myriad reasons beyond just the lack of historical success.

Maybe if the Bulldogs had played Alabama or Georgia tougher, there’d be a different feeling. Or perhaps there are simply questions about what the program will look like in a post-Leach world under Arnett. After all, Arnett is the second-youngest Power 5 head coach, and he’s the youngest SEC head coach since Lane Kiffin at Tennessee in 2009. It’s possible that Will Rogers transitioning from the Leach Air Raid to the more pro-style Kevin Barbay offense has some feeling skeptical about the Bulldogs.

And if you really want to break it down by pointing to the lack of returning production on defense — Arnett does return the SEC’s top 2 tacklers from 2022 with his all-important 2 starting linebackers to anchor the 4-2-5 — then one might argue that the 7th-place pick is justified.

One way or another, though, it’s pretty clear — the disrespect is real.

It’s not just the predicted 7th place finish in the West, either. The disrespect is clear in breaking down some of the individual preseason honors, too.

In addition to having a 49-1 TD-INT ratio in the red zone the last 2 years, Will Rogers is 8th in SEC history in both career passing yards and passing touchdowns, yet he shared third-team All-SEC honors with Joe Milton. As in, a guy who lost his starting job at 2 different Power 5 programs.

There’s obviously a different interpretation of Rogers’ numbers because of the high-volume passing that was synonymous with the Leach Air Raid. And sure, while there’s no guarantee that Rogers earns his first end-of-season All-SEC honor, don’t disregard the fact that he got to this place by throwing through tight windows against SEC competition. Anyone who tries to convince you that he’s not one of the conference’s top signal-callers is disrespecting Rogers.

He was Mississippi State’s only preseason All-SEC selection on the offensive side of the ball, though Tulu Griffin did get the second-team All-Purpose spot — yet was somehow only worthy of the third-team Return Specialist spot. Never mind the fact that Griffin was 1 of 4 SEC players with a kickoff return touchdown and he racked up an FBS-best 32.3 yards per kickoff return.

Nope. Even Griffin didn’t get preseason respect.

Nathaniel Watson’s second-team All-SEC honor was the lone preseason nod that Arnett’s defense got. Meanwhile, the ageless Jett Johnson, who led the SEC with 116 tackles, didn’t get 1 of the 9 preseason All-SEC linebacker spots. The guy has 200 tackles the past 2 seasons as the captain of Arnett’s defense, which ranked in the top 5 in the SEC against the run in all 3 of his years in Starkville.

Snub? Absolutely.

If Johnson’s production came at Alabama, there’s no denying that he would’ve made the cut. And to be fair to the Tide, a program that earned national title berths in 9 of the past 14 seasons with the greatest coach in the sport’s history is always going to get the benefit of the doubt in a subjective criteria like this one. It probably doesn’t help the Bulldogs’ case to break any sort of tie with Alabama when the Tide’s streak in the matchup is at 15. Averaging 4.4 points the last 5 meetings against Saban’s squad probably didn’t exactly add to the “Mississippi State deserves more respect” argument.

Arnett’s to-do list doesn’t center around beating Alabama, nor is it all about preseason respect. He might only be 36 with, as he says, “only 2 schools on his résumé,” but he’s been around long enough to know that simply reaching 13 consecutive bowl games doesn’t carry a ton of weight in the SEC. Winning road games in hostile atmospheres, upsetting top-10 foes, playing meaningful November football … that’s how you earn respect.

Maybe that’ll change when the new era of the expanded Playoff arrives in 2023. Arnett maintained his belief that his program will be positioned to compete for a spot in the 12-team Playoff. He didn’t want to put a timeframe on that, but he knows as well as anyone that the margin for error is slim in the West.

One year, you can be a 9-win team and the next, you can be picked to finish dead last in your own division.