History question (re: Miss'ippi State)

JoltinJacket

JoltinJacket

► Ģŏ ʝąҁʞεɫʂ ◄
Joined
Oct 30, 2002
Messages
10,732
Time to put your thinking caps on...

Per Wes' new 2008 preview on RW.com, we haven't played the boys from Starkvegas since 1929.

I knew he hadn't played them often, but how did we avoid playing them every year when we were both in the SEC? I'll pose the same question for Ole Miss, whom we only played a small handful of times during our SEC stay.
 
JoltinJacket said:
Time to put your thinking caps on...

Per Wes' new 2008 preview on RW.com, we haven't played the boys from Starkvegas since 1929.

I knew he hadn't played them often, but how did we avoid playing them every year when we were both in the SEC? I'll pose the same question for Ole Miss, whom we only played a small handful of times during our SEC stay.
Click to expand...

Dodd wouldn't play in MS and I assume they had a rotation and MSU wasn't on ours.
 
JoltinJacket said:
Time to put your thinking caps on...

Per Wes' new 2008 preview on RW.com, we haven't played the boys from Starkvegas since 1929.

I knew he hadn't played them often, but how did we avoid playing them every year when we were both in the SEC? I'll pose the same question for Ole Miss, whom we only played a small handful of times during our SEC stay.
Click to expand...
I dont understand this, we sure used to play them in basketball at MS state during the Babe McCarthy days when they were called the maroons.
 
Costs a lot more to take a football team to the land of the cowbell than it does to take a single van full of basketball players.

And theres was a hell of a lot more money to be made by playing in Atlanta in those days instead of in front of a couple thousand in Starkville.
 
Not only have we not played them since 1929, we've only played them twice. The teams also met in 1908. (Tech won both games.)
 
The distance of the trip wouldn't seem to be the only factor because we seemed to make quite a few trips to Tulane and SMU, along with a few trips to LSU.

RamblinPeck said:
And theres was a hell of a lot more money to be made by playing in Atlanta in those days instead of in front of a couple thousand in Starkville.
Click to expand...

Point taken. This seems to add a piece to the puzzle. They must've been in the same boat as Clempsun. I've heard the stories us playing them annually in the 40s, 50s, and 60s, but rarely if ever playing them in Tiger-town. They were what amounted to a cow college who would come over here for a pay day and get kicked around. I guess it was possible that Dodd & Co. put Miss. State in the same boat, except MSU didn't want to make the long trip.
 
JoltinJacket said:
Time to put your thinking caps on...

Per Wes' new 2008 preview on RW.com, we haven't played the boys from Starkvegas since 1929.

I knew he hadn't played them often, but how did we avoid playing them every year when we were both in the SEC? I'll pose the same question for Ole Miss, whom we only played a small handful of times during our SEC stay.
Click to expand...

Back then the SEC had 12 teams and only played 6 or so conference games.

There was no formal rotation and it was strictly up to individual teams to arrange games.

Tulane and Tennessee only played 3 times in conference, for instance.
 
LongforDodd said:
Calling someone a maroon was what did in bbuzzoff, wasn't it? Let's be civil here.
Click to expand...
That is what they were called before they became the bulldogs, i am alot older than you are, for what it is worth Va Tech was at one time the gobblers
 
JoltinJacket said:
The distance of the trip wouldn't seem to be the only factor because we seemed to make quite a few trips to Tulane and SMU, along with a few trips to LSU.



Point taken. This seems to add a piece to the puzzle. They must've been in the same boat as Clempsun. I've heard the stories us playing them annually in the 40s, 50s, and 60s, but rarely if ever playing them in Tiger-town. They were what amounted to a cow college who would come over here for a pay day and get kicked around. I guess it was possible that Dodd & Co. put Miss. State in the same boat, except MSU didn't want to make the long trip.
Click to expand...
I think we played Clempsen in Atlanta for 22 years without playing in Clempsen--and won all the games. I was at the game in Atlanta in 1968 or 1969 when Clempsen broke the drought.
 
Wasn't it 70 or 71 that we beat Clempson, they complained to the NCAA about the Rats lining up from the players entrance to the bench, in effect blocking their path to their bench coming out of half time, and the game ball was displayed in the trophy case at the Stud Center for a time?

You can take Clempson out of the country, but . . .
 
JoltinJacket said:
Time to put your thinking caps on...

Per Wes' new 2008 preview on RW.com, we haven't played the boys from Starkvegas since 1929.

I knew he hadn't played them often, but how did we avoid playing them every year when we were both in the SEC? I'll pose the same question for Ole Miss, whom we only played a small handful of times during our SEC stay.
Click to expand...
Quite simply, in those days it was about money. Dodd once told Johnny Vaught and the SEC commissioner back in the 1950s, that he could make more money playing Girls High (For the uninitiated, Atlanta had only 4 high schools then Boys High, Tech High, Girls High and Commercial) at Grant Field than to go to Oxford and play Ole Miss.
 
artesian,

I think what you say is pretty much true.

I think Dodd's attitude on the matter also cost us dearly when we tried to get back in the SEC.

At one point in time we played Clemson and Auburn in Atlanta every year. Wow.

That is not what competition is about.
 
texstinger said:
At one point in time we played Clemson and Auburn in Atlanta every year. Wow.

That is not what competition is about.
Click to expand...
Tell that to Jax State and Gardner Webb. You aren't taking into account that back in the day (pretty much the entire first half of the last century) Georgia Tech was the **** and all that. We look at programs like USC, Texas, Ohio State, Michigan, Alabama the same way folks back then looked at GT, Notre Dame, Michigan State, and Duke. Schools like Clemson and Auburn travelled here willingly.
 
I'll never forget when a gentleman in Baltimore told me once, "I went down to watch that Tech Razzle Dazzle Offense one year." He spoke of our program like it was special. I'm guessing in the 45 to 55 time frame.
 
mm42 said:
Back then the SEC had 12 teams and only played 6 or so conference games.

There was no formal rotation and it was strictly up to individual teams to arrange games.

Tulane and Tennessee only played 3 times in conference, for instance.
Click to expand...

It was a different world then. NFL players had to have a real job in addition to their football job. No conference championship games, and about six or seven bowl games. Very little TV exposure. As a child I went to a lot of Tech games, but saw few on TV--before 1960 there was only one or MAYBE two college games on TV each Saturday. The games in Atlanta before the Braves, Falcons, or Georgia being good were almost always sold out. To see Tech you watched the replay show on Sunday with Coach Dodd and Ed Danforth, a grizzled old sports writer from about 1930. I was always amazed that they could have the film developed, cut and edited overnight. No such thing as video tape. But like others have posted, Tech was one of the premier programs in the nation, and certainly the most popular sports team in Georgia.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top