Mississippi State University has been notified it will be fined by the Southeastern Conference for violating the SEC policy on institutional noise in relation to cowbells.
The MSU Athletic Department confirmed the SEC informed them fines are coming, though the extent and dollar amount of the fines have yet to be confirmed.
An SEC spokesman confirmed they found MSU to be in violation of the institutional noise policy. However, fines and the complete evaluation of the one-year bylaw regarding artificial noise makers will not be evaluated until the end of the season.
While the exact amount of the fines has not been announced, the violations stem from games hosted in Starkville on September 9 against Auburn and September 25 against Georgia.
MSU Athletic Director Scott Stricklin said the SEC office informed him last week the fines were coming.
“My conversation with the league office has been, “Hey, obviously, you’ve been in violation of the policy.’ I wasn’t surprised,” Stricklin said. “I think their assessment of where we were and my assessment of where we were was consistent. My thought was we have to do better.”
The rule, which was implemented this season after much persuading from Stricklin and MSU President Mark Keenum, states that cowbells may only be rung before and after games, during timeouts, halftimes and after MSU scores. The policy only applies to SEC games, and the violations come from the only two SEC games MSU has hosted.
The Bulldogs host two more SEC games this season – Kentucky on Saturday and Arkansas on November 20 – and Stricklin hopes to see improvement from the fans in those games.
“I think we got better between the Auburn game and the Georgia game,” Stricklin said. “Auburn, I don’t think we were anywhere near where needed to be. Georgia, I thought we were closer. We’ve got two more conference games before we’ll have our next round of conference meetings, and we showed progress from Auburn to Georgia. If we can go into our meetings and say, ‘We got better by the end of the year, we had this thing like we needed it, it’s only fair you give us the opportunity.’ I think that’s our challenge.”
MSU football coach Dan Mullen said tradition is important to both him and the school, but he admitted that neither him or the players hear the cowbells on the field.
“However the SEC judges it, they judge it,” Mullen said. “I think our fans, the athletic dept., our student body, they’re trying to comply and do at the end what the SEC asks. It’s important that we continue to try and do that. On the field I don’t hear it, but if that’s their ruling we have to continue to work harder.”
Stricklin believes the university has done nearly everything it can to encourage correct usage of cowbells, and he hopes the fans will respond by sticking to the guidelines.
“At the end of the day, it’s got to be something [Mississippi State] takes pride in,” Stricklin said. “We have to take pride in the fact that we’re proud of our cowbells, and we’re proud of the fact that we were given a challenge that’s pretty difficult, and I don’t think Mississippi State should back down from challenges. It’s pretty unlikely a year ago that people thought we could go down to the swamp and win a football game. There are people who didn’t think we could manage this and do it.”
While conceding it is a daunting task, Stricklin asked that cowbell wielders consider their university when cheering at football games.
“The pride of this institution and the pride of the cowbell should be stronger than any selfish motivation to ring it whenever you want to,” he said. “That’s really what we’re dealing with here. We’re depending on Mississippi State people to do the right thing. It’s hard to change the actions of 50,000 people overnight. I don’t want to pay fines. Any money we generate, I want to invest it back in our program to help us win. The other thing is, I love the cowbell and I want to see us be able to bring it in the stadium and see my kids bring it in the stadium.”