JK’s Week 1 Best/Worst/Bold Prediction

Ahoy there! It’s time for Mississippi State to begin their football season against the Charleston Southern Buccaneers. According to the great, scientifically-respected website Wikipedia, Charleston Southern is a Christian school in North Charleston, SC. Somewhat unsurprisingly, Charleston Southern does not offer a Geography degree.

Charleston Southern does, however, have a football program. Their football team is actually pretty good for being an FCS team, consistently ranking in the top 25 FCS teams since 2013. We cannot take this game for granted. The Bucs bring a triple-option offense into the game, and we all remember when Mississippi State met Georgia Tech in the Orange Bowl [~cringes~].

This may have been one of the hardest B/W/B’s to write this season. This game is designed to be a blowout, so it’s hard to come up with a best case that isn’t just our typical expectation for these games. And 2007 Michigan pretty much laid out the worst case scenario ten years ago. But I’ll do my best either way.

Let’s begin!

[cracks knuckles]

BEST case scenario:

We sink the Bu- okay let’s just say we beat them handily and pretend I wasn’t about to say, well, you know. Anyway, let’s start over. The Bulldogs take a bite ou- oh never mind

Ahem, Mississippi State is able to control the game from the very beginning, we pad stats on both sides of the ball, and NO ONE GETS INJURED*. Seriously, the one thing I worry about if we redshirt Keytaon Thompson is having to leave Fitz out there for too long in these games. Let’s just get our offense kick started and our defense on track to start the year and get to the good games.

The Bulldogs make every field goal and extra point and we find out that [insert whoever plays kicker for us in this game] is a total badass. Also we never face fourth down so no need for field goals.

We win 63-0.

WORST case scenario:

We come out of the gates looking exactly like we did last year.

Our kickers miss field goals or [~shudders~] extra points.

We look lost against the triple option.

Despite having no remaining eligibility, Shumpert is somehow our bell cow back again.

We win 34-31.

BOLD predictions:

Sissy bold: We’ll see Keytaon Thompson play in his first collegiate action tomorrow. Mississippi State has found themselves in a bit of a no-win situation at backup quarterback. Ideally, you’d like Thompson to have an opportunity to redshirt and learn the offense and develop as a quarterback. As I mentioned above, it would suck to leave Fitzgerald on the field to expose him to extra punishment. However, I’d like him to be able to pad his stats a little to help the Heisman** cause (yeah, I’m drinking the Heisman candidate Kool-Aid, too), so I have no issue with being wrong on this one. I just think it’s best to prepare Thompson for possible future involvement this season and save Fitz some punishment.

Chili*** seasoned with bear mace bold: Alabama loses to Florida State, starting a chain reaction that leads to an 8-4 season [gasp!] and the retirement of Nick Saban, which leads to none other than Lane effin’ Kiffin taking over the program at the University of Alabama. Imagine the man who ran out on UT****, and who was replaced by Coach O at USC***** getting the chance to play both EVERY. YEAR. After growing up my entire life in the state of Tennessee before being offered $0 in scholarships to go to the school, I relish every time Kiffin takes a dump on the UT football program. To make this occur yearly would be a tremendous delight.

JK’S TOTALLY COMPUTER GENERATED ADVANCED STATS NOT MADE UP ON A WHIM ACTUAL SCORE PREDICTION: 55-3. Obviously State wins.

*Everyone do it with me, COLLECTIVELY: [knocks on wood]

**But seriously, COLLECTIVELY: [knocks on wood]

***Without beans you crazies. Ethan Lee will back me up on this

****The real UT, obviously, Tennessee. Ethan will not back me up on this

*****The real USC, obviously, Southern California.