White Out ‘Bama
The Student Association athletic support committee is pushing for all students to wear white and for faculty, staff and friends to wear maroon in a show of school spirit during the Alabama game.
This is a great time for MSU students to show that we support our athletics even after a loss to Kentucky last week. MSU students often laugh at the fact that some Ole Miss students dress in their nice cocktail dresses and smoking jackets as a means of supporting their team. Well, it’s time for all MSU students to support our team by leaving our nice getups in the closet and wearing white.
Many online Bulldog fans at places like “Gene’s Page” nostalgically recall that almost 25 years ago Alabama’s undefeated Crimson Tide were defeated 6-3 by our Mississippi State Bulldogs. Although many say God would have to intervene on our behalf for that to happen this year, it’s important that MSU students support the effort.
Covich’s Crusade
An interesting online group, founded by recent MSU graduate Sean Covich, claims that Mississippi State was cheated out of the 1941 National Football Championship by Alabama. According to his site and other official records, Mississippi State finished four spots behind Alabama in that year’s AP poll.
Furthermore, Mississippi State not only won the SEC Championship that year but shut out Alabama 14-0 in front of a likely hostile crowd in Tuscaloosa. Covich says that Alabama lost two games that season to MSU and a top 10 team he didn’t name.
From my research, it shows that the top 10 team he was referring to was Vanderbilt University, who shut out the Tide 7-0. It also shows that No. 20 Alabama went on to defeat No. 9 Texas A&M in the Cotton Bowl held in early 1942.
If anybody knows about the Alabama’s famed “Got 12?” (National Championships) slogan, then you would recognize that 1941 is included in that number. Many Alabama partisans dismiss the assertion that they don’t deserve 12 and point to the fact that in actuality, they deserve 17 titles. Twelve is a conservative estimate, so say the defenders of the Crimson Tide.
Further research doesn’t bode well for the Tide or the Bulldogs because most ratings services, as notoriously unreliable as some were, decided that Minnesota was the rightful national champion. When they are counted, it has been recorded that 10 of the 13 major ratings systems declared Minnesota the best team of 1941.