When I was kid, I dreaded returning to school after the Thanksgiving break.

It wasn’t necessarily that I hated school or that I felt the break was too short. Rather, it was the certain humiliation that awaited me.

I grew up in Tupelo, a Mississippi State fan in what was then very much an Ole Miss town. That was true of almost every town in Mississippi in the 1960s in the waning years of segregated college football when Ole Miss was a national power and Mississippi State was, well, a poor relation.

By the time I entered elementary school, Ole Miss had won 19 of its previous 20 games against MSU. To make matters worse, one of our teachers had a son, David Parham, who was an offensive lineman on the Ole Miss team. Every year, David would visit the school. The whole school looked forward to his visits, but to me it was like Sherman returning to Atlanta.

In those days, Ole Miss routinely stuffed the Bulldogs in a locker, metaphorically speaking. Despite that reality, as the annual Ole Miss-MSU game approached – played then on Thanksgiving Day in Jackson – one of the last things I told my Rebel-fan schoolmates before the holiday break was that Mississippi State was surely going to beat the Rebels this time. They laughed at me. Then they laughed even harder on the following Monday.

During my eight years at Lawhon Elementary, State beat Ole Miss just once, then only because the Rebels’ star quarterback, Archie Manning, missed the 1970 game with a broken arm. Few of their other games played during my elementary school years were competitive.

Things got better, though. The integration of college football in the South leveled the playing field and over the ensuing decades, the Rebels and Bulldogs competed on level terms, more or less.

I wonder now if that will continue.

As of today, Ole Miss is 3-0 and ranked fifth in the nation with a legitimate shot at the national championship. Mississippi State is 1-2 and coming off a 41-17 home loss to Toledo, quite possibly the most humiliating defeat in program history. The Bulldogs are staring down the barrel of a 2-win season, with five of their nine remaining games against teams currently ranked seventh in the nation or higher.

The college football landscape has changed dramatically in the last few years, and I am not confident that there is a clear path for a renaissance of MSU football.

The new transfer rules, along with a rule allowing schools to pay players, means it is difficult for a team down on its luck to acquire the talented players needed to compete in what is now a super-conference or retain them if you do.

The NIL rules are particularly troubling for MSU, a money-challenged program that has always taken pride in the ability to do more with less. That model likely won’t work in today’s game.

These changes came at a time when MSU was particularly vulnerable – two new coaches in as many years for a program weakened by a sustained period of poor recruiting.

The fanbase is disillusioned. I see a lot of half-empty stadiums in MSU’s future, which means a lot less game-day money pouring into the local economy.

The prospects for Ole Miss, meanwhile, are brighter. It’s pretty easy to raise money when your team is a national contender and its coach, Lane Kiffin, has proven to be a master at luring top players from other schools.

The Rebels should be able to bank some serious bucks this year as a hedge against the inevitable cycle of success and decline or the departure of wanderlust-inclined Kiffin.

Right now, though, the Rebels have money, perhaps enough to sustain them, if not at the top, at least somewhere in the sphere of respectability.

I do not believe the same can be said of my alma mater.

It is a bit childish, but Ole Miss’ success is salt in the wound for MSU fans. Drawing from personal experience, I can tell you that you never think much about being poor until you’re constantly around someone who isn’t. You feel your poverty all the more.

I’m feeling like that poor kid again, minus the optimism.

Slim Smith is a columnist and feature writer for The Dispatch. His email address is [email protected].

Slim Smith is a columnist and feature writer for The Dispatch. His email address is [email protected].