Top 50 stories of 2014: No. 2
As we approach the end of the 2014 calendar year, we’re looking back at the top 50 stories in college football for the year. Today, we continue on with the top 10 with our No. 2 story of 2014.
PREVIOUS ARTICLES
- No. 50-46: McCarron, Saturday morning, Phyllis, Lattimore & Dillon Day
- No. 45-41: Penn St, Alabama flag at Kyle Field, SEC Network, DGB, Fournette
- No. 40-36: Kentucky’s collapse, Oregon, UNC academics, Michigan burns, Lutzenkirchen
- No. 35-31: Ohio State, Mizzou, Clowney/Manziel, Rushing Records, SEC Bias
- No. 30-26: Spurrier, Bielema, Reveille, SEC East, Coaches dancing
- No. 25-21: Garcia & Spurrier, Florida’s coaching search, Nick Chubb, and the Big 12 teams
- No. 20-16: Kiffin, UAB, Rushing the field, Treadwell’s injury & a viral letter about Athens
- No. 15-11: Bucking tradition, Treon Harris, Josh Shaw, Mike Slive, Kenny Trill
- No. 10: Dak Prescott
- No. 9: Will Muschamp
- No. 8: Katy Perry GameDay
- No. 7: Amari Cooper
- No. 6: Michael Sam
- No. 5: SEC title streak ends
- No. 4: Todd Gurley
- No. 3: The selection committee and playoff
NO. 2 — THE STATE OF MISSISSIPPI
Few states love their football like the state of Mississippi, and 2014 was a banner year for football in the Magnolia State.
The state’s two SEC schools — Ole Miss and Mississippi State — took enormous steps forward this season, overcoming their reputations as long-suffering programs to rise to the top of the best division in college football.
Mississippi State won 10 games in a regular season for the first time since 1940. It earned its first No. 1 ranking in school history and maintained it for five weeks. It rose from unranked to No. 1 faster than any school in college football history. It became the first team to beat three straight top 10 teams in 30 years.
This season was arguably the best in MSU history, and it was engineered by a coach many wanted fired a year ago and a quarterback with just seven career starts under his belt prior to this year.
Dan Mullen has earned numerous Coach of the Year honors after leading the Bulldogs to a 10-2 record in the grueling SEC West. The once-maligned coach is due for a raise after taking MSU to a school-record fifth straight bowl game, and he’ll likely get one after the Bulldogs’ Orange Bowl showdown against Georgia Tech.
Dak Prescott was a relative unknown among casual fans entering Week 1, but that didn’t last long. The junior set 10 Mississippi State records and came just four passing yards and 61 rushing yards shy of becoming the SEC’s second 3,000-1,000 quarterback ever. His eighth-place finish in the Heisman voting marked the school’s best Heisman finish of all-time.
It’s only fitting Mississippi State’s greatest season ever was engineered by arguably its greatest player ever.
The Bulldogs returned 18 starters this season and 20 of their top 22 players on defense. However, it was players like former two-star tailback Josh Robinson and former two-star defensive end Preston Smith that powered Mississippi State.
Robinson ran for 1,128 yards (third in the SEC) and 11 touchdowns. Smith recorded a tackle for loss in 11 straight games to end the regular season and closed the year with 9.0 sacks and 14.5 tackles behind the line.
Contributions from once-unheralded prospects like Prescott, Robinson and Smith turned Mississippi State’s preseason promise into a storybook season.
But not to be outdone, the Egg Bowl champion Ole Miss Rebels had a storybook season of their own.
Ole Miss rose to as high as No. 3 in the polls during the year, and it boasted the nation’s No. 1 scoring defense at season’s end. The Rebels allowed just 13.8 points per game in 2014; no other team in the nation allowed fewer than 16 per contest.
Oxford served as the backdrop to one of the great college football Saturdays in recent memory on Oct. 4 when Ole Miss hosted College GameDay in the Grove for the first time ever.
Hosts wore bowties, and Lee Corso even wore a seersucker jacket. Ladies in pearls and fellas in boat shoes executed the perfect combination of classiness and rowdiness. The best tailgate in college football was on full display, and at the end of the program guest picker Katy Perry showed the world just how fun a tailgate in the Grove really is.
Then Ole Miss took the field and handed Alabama its only loss of the season, scoring two touchdowns in the final six minutes of play to do so. Unanimous All-American Senquez Golson (the school’s first unanimous All-American since Michael Oher) intercepted Alabama’s Blake Sims in the end zone to seal the game, and the Ole Miss fan base threw an epic party to celebrate.
The Rebels would go on to lose three straight conference games and its best player, Laquon Treadwell, in the process. Nevertheless, Ole Miss summoned all it had in its regular season finale and stunned No. 4 Mississippi State to kill any chance MSU had of reaching the inaugural College Football Playoff.
The long-anticipated Egg Bowl lived up to its hype, putting the historic rivalry on the map for many fans who’d never tuned in before.
Alabama and Mississippi State combined to lose three times this season — once when they played one another, and twice when they each played Ole Miss.
The Rebels actually beat three 10-win, New Year’s Six-qualifying teams this year if you add a Week 1 win over Boise State to the mix.
And both Ole Miss and Mississippi State have 2015 recruiting classes ranked in the top 15 in the nation according to 247Sports, indicating these programs may be in the mix in the SEC for years to come.
But whether both schools go on to become power programs in the SEC or regress to their former place near the bottom of the conference standings, Mississippians will forever point to the 2014 season as one of the greatest in the state’s football history.
A combined record of 19-5, two premier New Year’s bowl games and enough milestone accomplishments to fill an encyclopedia — that’s what Ole Miss and Mississippi State achieved in 2014. Not too shabby.