Mississippi State Following Familiar Playbook into Unfamiliar Territory

Remember this storyline? Unranked, lightly regarded Southeastern team comes from out of the pack to contend for a national championship in football.

You shouldn't need too much time, at least not if you've been paying attention the last five years. It was only in January that Auburn emerged seemingly from nowhere to fall a mere three points shy of a national title. And in 2010, it again rose from the depths of the preseason rankings to be crowned the king of college football.

Could a third installment in the series, with a new cast, be in the works?

From behind Door No. 3, let us introduce...Mississippi State.

Don't look now, but another perfect-storm scenario is brewing in the super-competitive, ultra-deep SEC that could put coach Dan Mullen's Bulldogs very much in the mix come early January.

Unranked heading into Saturday, Mississippi State went to Baton Rouge and beat No. 8 LSU 34-29 in a game that was more one-sided than the final score suggested; the Bulldogs led 34-10 just after the start of the fourth quarter.

Sunday saw Mississippi State crack the AP Top 25 for the first time in two seasons. That the Bulldogs' rise came off a defeat of a Top 10 team is undoubtedly a surprise to many longtime SEC watchers.

Here's why.

Going into the LSU matchup, Mississippi State had lost every game it had played against a Top 10 team since 2000. Over the past five years, the Bulldogs' combined record against the power elite of the SEC West—LSU, Auburn and Alabama—was 1-14, with the one win coming against Auburn two years ago when the Tigers finished 0-8 in conference play.

The link with Auburn is significant for Mississippi State since it could very well follow the historical footprint created by the Tigers in '10, when they jumped from being ranked No. 22 in the preseason AP poll to finish as the BCS national champion with a quarterback named Cam Newton.

Wesley Hitt/Getty Images

That team climbed slowly in the rankings until a 35-27 win over No. 12 South Carolina in the fourth week of the season vaulted the Tigers from No. 17 in the AP to No. 10. The climb to No. 1, which culminated in a 22-19 win over Oregon in the BCS title game, followed.

Last year's Auburn team, which went to the final seconds of the BCS title game before losing 34-31 to Florida State, was even more unheralded. The Tigers didn't receive a vote in any preseason Top 25 ballot, and SEC media picked them to finish fifth in the SEC West. Led by quarterback Nick Marshall, Auburn won its first three games before losing a 35-21 decision at LSU. The Tigers didn't lose again until FSU beat them in the BCS title game.

Similarly, not much was expected of this year's Mississippi State team. But Mullen, who is in his sixth year in Starkville, gave an indication of what the future might bring when he told the SEC Network that he felt he might have his best team this season.

Year	Record	Bowl Game
2009	5-7	None
2010	9-4	Gator Bowl (Win)
2011	7-6	Music City Bowl (Win)
2012	8-5	Gator Bowl (Loss)
2013	7-6	Liberty Bowl (Win)
2014	4-0	?

The win over LSU put the picture into a sharper focus.

"I probably aged seven to 10 years in the final three minutes of the game," Mullen told reporters after watching the LSU rally fall just short. "We are trying to build a program, and I'll take it."

Certainly, there were indications of what could happen. A year ago, Mississippi State was plagued by injuries and inexperience but staggered to a 7-6 record by virtue of a pair of overtime wins over Arkansas and Ole Miss at the end of the regular season. The Bulldogs also finished fourth in the SEC in total defense.

This year, that unit returns 19 of its top 22 players. And overall, a team that had a mere 12 seniors last season had 19 juniors or seniors in starting roles against LSU.

And then there's the quarterback. Junior Dak Prescott was all over Tiger Stadium on Saturday night, passing for 268 yards and a pair of touchdowns while adding another 105 yards and a score on the ground. By the end of the night, LSU's defense, which ranked third in the nation entering the game, had been shredded for 570 total yards, the worst in the Les Miles era.

Gerald Herbert/Associated Press

Mullen has made comparisons of Prescott's potential to what Tim Tebow did at Florida, when Mullen was an assistant coach. And more than a few plays Prescott is running at Mississippi State are similar to the game plan Mullen, as Florida's offensive coordinator, put in for Tebow. With a few more performances like Saturday's, Prescott, who has accounted for 14 touchdowns (11 passing) in four games this season, could be joining Tebow and Newton in the Heisman winners' circle.

Indeed, it was Mississippi State that looked more like a prime-time team than LSU, thanks not only to Prescott, but also running back Josh Robinson, who ran for 197 yards and a touchdown.

There are other indicators that suggest the Bulldogs might be ready to make a run this season. They will have a week off to prepare for their next challenge, a beastly back-to-back against No. 6 Texas A&M and No. 5 Auburn. But both of those games are at home. Also working in their favor are SEC crossover games against Vanderbilt and Kentucky instead of the South Carolina and Georgia combination Auburn must face.

After that, though, await road games at No. 3 Alabama and at No. 10 Ole Miss, a matchup that as of today sees both Mississippi and Mississippi State ranked concurrently for the first time since 1999.

But that storyline is just one in an intriguing, unexpected drama Mississippi State is presenting week by week.

Mark Blaudschun covers college football as a national columnist for Bleacher Report. He has more than three decades of experience covering sports at a variety of newspapers in New Jersey, The Dallas Morning News and The Boston Globe. Follow him on Twitter @blauds.