JACKSON, Miss. (AP) -Former Jackson State coach W.C. Gorden will settle into the stands Saturday as close to the 50-yard line as he can get at Mississippi State to watch an historic football game.
“I knew it would eventually come,” said the 79-year-old Gorden.
The first game between teams from the Southeastern Conference and the Southwestern Athletic Conference took a lot longer to happen than he ever imagined, though.
It makes sense that Mississippi State would invite the first member of the historically black conference to play in a game.
It was the Bulldogs, after all, who defied the governor, the Legislature and Southern mores to play a basketball game against a team with black athletes back in the 1960s (though they had to slip out of state to do it). And Mississippi State hired the first (and only) black head football coach in conference history.
on be on equal footing with teams like Mississippi State when he noticed the first signs of racial cohesiveness on Friday nights in small, rural towns where football could trump even the most bitter of sentiments over integration.
“People would come and watch football games and regardless of what his race was, black and white, they wanted their teams to be winners,” he said.
Integration did change the football landscape, but not the way Gorden envisioned it would.
Gorden remembers home crowds near 40,000, swelling to 60,000 some weekends, and coaching the best athletes in America. But historically black colleges failed to consistently sign the big-time recruits or attract big crowds to games after integration.
“I think that’s where we have faltered as African-American institutions,” Gorden said. “We have not developed the atmosphere, the creativity, the improvements and innovation to attract these young men to come to our institutions.”
Though the game comes later than Gorden thought it would, Jackson State fans are still atwitter over the contest. It’s a chance for their Tigers to make a real mark and knock off an SEC team that might be vulnerable under first-year coach Dan Mullen.
The hubbub on the street in Jackson is that the Tigers might have enough talent to challenge the Bulldogs, who won just four games last year. There is precedent. The Bulldogs lost to Football Championship Subdivision member Maine back in 2004.
The buzz made its way along the large network of Jackson State fans to Starkville.
“You can feel it,” wide receiver Brandon McRae said. “Everywhere you go somebody’s talking about it, ‘You guys going to beat Jackson State,’ or Jackson State fans talking about it, ‘We’re going to give y’all hell’ and stuff. Everybody’s just excited about it.”
Jackson State coach Rick Comegy, for one, isn’t conceding anything. He has turned around the program in just four years and has appeared in the conference title game the last two seasons with one win.
He’s not just content to cash the check his team gets for the appearance. In fact, the coach bristled at what he considered a low payday of $315,000 and openly wondered if there might be a second SWAC vs. SEC matchup.
“It’s a great opportunity of a lifetime for me and the staff and these kids,” he said. “They realize that this may never happen again, even though if you look in the paper they’re thinking about playing Alcorn. They haven’t signed nothing on the dotted line yet. So there may not ever be an opportunity like this. We want to make sure these opportunities open up. We’re looking to win the football game.
“We’re not backing down on anything.”
Mullen and Mississippi State fans will be closely watching how the Bulldogs handle the game. There has been unrivaled excitement around the program since the former Florida offensive coordinator’s hire. The school sold Mullen’s brand of the spread offense as the answer for all its woes and fans have responded with record season ticket sales. Saturday’s game is less than 1,000 from a sellout.
The team needs to play well against the Tigers to capitalize on that momentum. So far, things have gone as well as Mullen could expect.
“The thing I am most happy with from our team through the preseason is how we have all stuck together,” Mullen said. “They all depend on each other. No guy has tried to take an individualistic approach and take over. That has been the most encouraging thing I have seen.”
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