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Hidden gems of college football

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At the end of the third quarter of a Mississippi State game, 60,000 fans rise to their feet as Journey’s “Don’t Stop Believin’” cranks through the Davis Wade Stadium speakers.

The Bulldog faithful turn on the flashlight app on their cellphones, as they would at a concert, and keep beat to the song as they clang the cowbells that are synonymous with a Mississippi State game.

The sight of that many fans singing in unison is one of several cool factors about a game in Starkville, where Athletic Director Scott Stricklin and his staff annually challenge the traditional and conventional.

“In the past, we’ve had a bad habit of doing things the way they’d always been done,” Stricklin said. “And we also had a bad habit of just copying other traditionally successful schools in our conference, like Alabama, without understanding that we’re not Alabama. We’ve got to innovate to keep our place special and stand out.”

Mississippi State was the first school to put its social media hashtag #HailState in its end zone. It looked to Apple for tiered pricing strategies when pricing premium spaces. And the Bulldogs haven’t been afraid to nudge the marching band and cheerleaders to the side to make more room for pop music and video board content on the stadium’s 112-foot-wide screen.

Mississippi State, a 140-year-old land-grant university that was founded as an agricultural school, will never shake its reputation as a cow college, but Stricklin has a new way of describing the Bulldogs.

“We’re cow college chic,” he said.

Mississippi State headlines our collection of schools that do college football right. Sure, Alabama, Oklahoma and Ohio State might be at the top of any such list, but they’re hardly the only ones.

There are plenty of hidden gems — schools that might have to work a little harder or a little smarter to deliver an elite-level game-day and fan experience while driving the revenue that powers their athletic departments.

Among them: East Carolina, Georgia Southern, Kansas State, Montana and Washington, in addition to Mississippi State.

They’re not afraid to honor old traditions while trying to create new ones. And even though they might fly below the radar, they’re recognized throughout the industry as schools that do college football right.







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