Saturday will be the one of the biggest days of college football ever in the state of Mississippi. No. 6 Texas A&M will travel to Starkville to battle the No. 12 Bulldogs, and No. 3 Alabama will face No. 11 Ole Miss in Oxford. The two teams’ fan bases find themselves in peculiar places.
The last time the two teams from the Magnolia State were ranked so high in the Top 25 was 1958. For the first time in a long time, the epicenter of the college football landscape will be in Mississippi. ESPN’s College Gameday will be in Oxford, and SEC Nation will broadcast from Starkville in The Junction from 9 to 11 a.m. ESPN’s bus was all-access Thursday, as the Bulldogs were on Sports Center the entire day. There has long been a rivalry between Mississippi State University and Ole Miss, but it has been a long time since the two schools have played a role in the national landscape of college football.
“A lot of eyes will be on the state of Mississippi,” Rockey Felker, director of player personnel and high school relations for MSU, said.
While the two programs reach heights on the football field that have not been experienced in decades, each team’s fans find newfound optimism.
“There are great people here, great family values, great communities,” Dan Mullen said in an interview with espn.com. “The fact that there’s a lot of success with the two schools in Mississippi right now gives everybody in the state an awful lot of pride and allows them to sit up tall, hold their head up high and stick their chest out further.”
The thing that separates Mississippi State and Ole Miss fans from fans from Alabama or Auburn is the fact that fans from the state of Alabama believe their team deserves to have the praise. The fans from the Magnolia State tend to feel no matter how well things are going it will inevitably come to an end soon.
“They both have the ‘Chicken Little’ thing. Something bad is going to happen, but what is even worse is the thought that if they lose, and the other has a massive win,” Chris Vernon said on a radio show in Memphis, Tennessee. “Because either they both pull off massive wins and both be in the top 10 in the polls next week, or one of them is going to win, and according to Vegas it’s more likely that it is Mississippi State.”
The fright that the success will not last long is nothing new to either fan base. The latest disappointment for MSU came in 2012 after the Bulldogs started the season 7-0 and then lost five of the next six games. Even after the first win over LSU since 1999, Bulldog fans have been weary to believe that the hype is real.
The fact one team could lose and the other secure a momentous win would be the worst nightmare of the fan bases. Each team’s fans have cautious optimism for their team’s continued success, as well as a sense of great fear the rival may live up to the hype. 
Throughout the years, Mississippians have had a hard time finding positive things about their state, but these two teams finally offer something to brag about from Mississippi. 
Enjoy the possibility that on Sunday Mississippi State could be one of the top ten teams in the country. Enjoy the fact there are two top-15 matchups on Mississippi soil Saturday. Enjoy this Saturday for what it is, a day in which every football fan in the nation will have their eyes fixed on the Magnolia State.