There’s been much ado in recent weeks about Mississippi State’s “Play with the Best” billboards, specifically the one the school placed in Oxford.
Rebel fans cried foul, the NCAA may or may not have gotten involved and then the board came down.
It’s certainly understandable why Oxford residents wouldn’t want enemy propaganda displayed so close to home. But if the sight of maroon-clad athletes hoisting a giant golden egg offends your delicate sensibilities or jars you awake from your pretentious malaise, then my advice would be this:
Just win the game.
MSU has momentum. It’s won three straight Egg Bowls and deserves the right to tout those victories wherever it sees fit. Aggressive marketing has become a cornerstone of MSU athletics during the Byrne/Mullen/Stricklin era, and strategic billboards have played a major role.
Wins over Ole Miss have too, as the signage has gotten steadily bolder with each victory.
Is MSU bragging? Absolutely.
Are the billboards in poor taste? Maybe.
Should State fans feel bad about that? Hell no. 
Ole Miss fans can snivel about being kicked while they’re down, but the truth is they’ve been doing the same to MSU fans for years.
Through the worst periods of the Sherrill and Croom eras (and actually for the better part of the last hundred years), Rebel fans have waged a guerilla campaign on State supporters much more sinister than a stationary billboard.
The rivalry between these two schools has always had its roots in class warfare, and part of UM’s identity has always been its elitism, its aristocracy and its smug gentility.
In conversation, action and attitude, many Ole Miss fans demean the Bulldog faithful as poor, rural, uneducated and inferior.
When Ole Miss wins, fans tout the accomplishment. But when they lose, they’re above caring about the rivalry. Or football in general.
It’s just a game, they’ll say with noses locked in the upright position, but I guess that’s just all you poor people have to care about.
That kind of denigration seeps into the psyche of MSU fans and is partially to blame for the glass-is-half-empty attitude many fans sported in the pre-Byrne/Mullen/Stricklin years. Many of us were brought up to believe that we’re somehow doomed to failure.
But as our image has changed on the field, so has our self-image as a fan base. So if the athletic department wants to throw a chin shot at its older, more condescending in-state brother, I’m perfectly okay with that.
It’s been a long time coming.
Maybe next year, the signs will just say “Scoreboard.”