Mississippi State’s long season is becoming easy to sum up.
Following the Bulldogs’ 28-21 double-overtime loss on Friday at BYU, coach Dan Mullen wrapped up some 20 questions in three minutes.
“Yep, that’s what I saw” and “I thought they played hard” were two of his first three press conference quotes.
The Clarion-Ledger beat writer Michael Bonner was working him hard for answers, but it probably would have been easier to sneak up behind him and pull his wisdom teeth or tweeze the gray hairs this season is causing.
The answers were snarky and over-the-top short. Can’t blame Mullen for his frustration, but his irritation leaves desire for even a smidge of graceful losing.
The anger is warranted. Barring a couple of miracles, the Bulldogs aren’t going to a bowl game. They have lost to South Alabama, badly lost to Auburn and narrowly beat a poor offensive team at UMass.
The wheels are off and Mullen’s annoyance is showing. It’s understandable to a point, but he is going overboard, taking it out on reporters with jobs to do and monthly salaries less than the money he made during his three-minute press conference.
He even toed a little bit of a line with comments about four personal foul calls, that in his defense, were touchy calls by the SEC crew.
“Four personal foul calls by one official in the same game,” he said. “Very interesting. I’ve never seen that happen before.”
The smart aleck glances and body language just aren’t necessary towards the press. It is understandable but not warranted in that setting.
Sophomore QB Nick Fitzgerald wasn’t much more long-winded.
“It sucks,” was the gist of Fitzgerald’s postgame analysis. “You lose, you lose. It sucks no matter if you lose by a point, you lose by 100 points. It sucks no matter what.”
That was Fitzgerald summing things up with reporters who made the trip to Provo, Utah. Those media scrums may succumb to the newspaper budgets from here on out. There isn’t a whole lot left to play for outside of hopes of beating Ole Miss in the Egg Bowl.
Fitzgerald let some more of his vexation show. Asked about the atmosphere in the locker room after the game, he had six words.
“I mean, what do you expect?” Fitzgerald said.
It wasn’t rude. It was true, and Fitzgerald is a kid in a high-profile position. His struggles are magnified and critiqued by adults who couldn’t begin to imagine the pressure, much less take a shotgun snap and make reads.
Mullen has turned the football program around at Mississippi State. Bowl games are expectations. Rankings are expectations. But since Dak Prescott left, Mullen hasn’t been able to transform his next quarterback. The running back stable is a crap shoot, and the defense until Friday hasn’t performed.
Mullen has done one heck of a job in Starkville. Statistically, this should not be his undoing. But we live in a world of now, not No. 1 two years ago. Should this be his end, he is providing some very ugly last impressions. And his players are feeding off his actions, win or lose.
