Jackson Jambalaya

The Wall Street Journal published a story Friday lauding the "Might of Mississippi Football":

This weekend, the two biggest games in college football are in the Deep South. Shocker!

These matchups involve highly ranked teams from the Southeastern Conference. You don’t say!

But here is something that is in fact surprising about Saturday’s pair of Southern showdowns: They’re both taking place in the state of Mississippi.

In a turn of events that harks back to the days of the wishbone offense, the center of the college-football world this weekend is the Magnolia State, where two longtime punching bags situated less than 100 miles apart have finally started to punch their weight.....

Half a lifetime is understating it. The Rebels and Bulldogs haven’t both been ranked in the top 15 and facing top-15 opponents since 1953.

For a state that worships the pigskin as fervently as any other, it is a moment that is long overdue. Which leads to an inevitable question: Why has it taken so long?

Mississippi has long been one of the nation’s football hotbeds. High-school football is a statewide obsession: Mississippi is tied for sixth nationally in its percentage of high-school students that play football. It ranks third in NFL players per capita, according to USA Football.....

But for the most part, all of this passion has counted for naught. While neighboring Alabama is home to two of college football’s superpowers, the Tide and defending SEC champion Auburn, Mississippi’s two flagship schools have spent the best part of half a century as SEC doormats....

An obvious disadvantage is Mississippi’s population of 2.9 million, which is almost half the size of Alabama and one third as big as Georgia, another SEC state. But the state’s lagging education system also diminishes the local recruiting base because talented high-school prospects often fail to reach NCAA academic standards.

“And don’t forget that all those other big schools eyeing Mississippi,” said Nutt, who now works as an analyst on Sirius XM’s College Sports Nation channel. “It’s an uphill battle just to keep those recruits you have in state.”

Until recently, the Rebels and Bulldogs struggled to attract top recruits from outside Mississippi because of facilities that were substandard relative to the competition. The schools lacked winning traditions, and the state’s civil-rights history has often undermined efforts to lure out-of-state prospects.....

“The leadership is lot less insular than it was,” said Jake McGraw, public policy coordinator at Ole Miss’s William Winter Institute. “For a long time, we were pretty bad about the people we put in charge of our programs.” (KF note: People don't realize how huge this factor is. LSU went through it with Joe Dean.)....

But the rise of Mississippi’s schools is largely a function of the sport’s economics. In a classic case of a rising tide lifting all boats, the SEC’s success—it has won seven of the last eight national titles—has boosted even its weaker programs to new heights.

The league’s lucrative TV deals provide invaluable exposure, not to mention an annual payout of almost $21 million for the 2013-14 academic year. This has given the Rebels and Bulldogs the financial clout to upgrade facilities and pursue superior coaches, which in turn enables them to target recruits they couldn’t have landed before. In 2012, Ole Miss lured a consensus top-10 signing class headlined by the nation’s top recruit, Georgia defensive lineman Robert Nkemdiche, and No. 1-rated receiver Laquon Treadwell from Illinois..... Rest of article