STARKVILLE — A day after its release, Mississippi State athletic director Zac Selmon is satisfied with the Bulldogs’ Southeastern Conference slate for the 2024 football season.
“Really excited to try new venues,” Selmon told The Dispatch in a recent phone interview. “We will have a gauntlet of a schedule. But that is what we all signed up for when we came to Mississippi State.”
In the first year of a 16-team SEC, MSU will travel to Austin to play Texas, one of two new programs along with Oklahoma, entering the conference in 2024. The Bulldogs will also travel to Tennessee, Georgia and Ole Miss in 2024, while hosting Missouri, Florida, Texas A&M and Arkansas.
“You know the schedule is going to be robust, intense, so I am really pleased and we are excited,” Selmon said. “Any time you play in this league you are excited to play (games), so happy with where we are at and look forward to not just the 2024 season where we have a bridge season, but see where our discussions could go for a more permanent solution to our schedule here in the future.”
The SEC agreed for a one-year “bridge” schedule format for 2024, keeping an eight-game slate for all teams with some stipulations. Each team would play either the Longhorns or Sooners and won’t make any of the same road trips it makes in 2023.
The Bulldogs are headed to South Carolina, Arkansas, Auburn and Texas A&M in 2023.
The league also did away with divisions and instead will send the two teams with the best conference records to the conference championship game in Atlanta.
The selection of each university’s 2024 SEC opponents was meant to preserve many of the conference’s top rivalries, and maintain “fairness and balance”, according to the SEC.
For Selmon, the league nailed MSU’s schedule, by keeping its annual Egg Bowl Rivalry against the Rebels, while also adding road venues the Bulldogs haven’t been to in years.
“Just a diversity of venues for our fans is critical from a fatigue standpoint,” Selmon said. “Also, there is a lot of economics behind making a commitment to going to an away football game. For us, it’s very exciting to provide opportunities for people to travel to Austin, get to play at a historic venue like that and cheer on the Bulldogs. We got great alumni bases in Nashville, which is close to Knoxville, got a good alumni base in Dallas, so to be able to bring the Bulldogs on the road is something I am excited about.”
MSU hasn’t played in Texas since a 1999 Cotton Bowl matchup versus the Longhorns in Dallas, and hasn’t visited Austin since 1992. The Bulldogs last traveled to Knoxville in 2019 and Athens in 2020.
At the cost of this new format came some of the program’s longest SEC West rivalries against Alabama, Auburn and LSU.
The Bulldogs had played the Crimson Tide every year since 1948, Auburn since 1955 and LSU since 1944.
Though many college football and SEC traditionalists may be upset about those games not consistently being on the schedule moving forward, Selmon hopes they can be open-minded to what this means for the future of Bulldog football.
“There is no perfect solution for this thing,” Selmon said. “Everybody wants to continue to maintain rivalries and traditions. But also the nature of our business has changed. The economics have changed and we have to be able to continue to keep the lights on, if you will. With that, you want to have games like Ole Miss every year. We want to preserve those rivalries and to get some new things. Sometimes you gotta be open-minded to get some new things.
“At the end of the day we are always going to put Mississippi State in the best position and know that what we are doing with the SEC, we will continue to be in a good position.”
Justin Frommer is the Mississippi State sports reporter for The Dispatch.
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