TUSCALOOSA, Ala. — Dak Prescott was comfortable in the shadows, a place his team has spent so much of its 115-year existence.
As a mostly unknown leader of a mostly ignored program, the Mississippi State quarterback unexpectedly turned the unranked Bulldogs into the top team in the nation this season, convincingly knocking off LSU, Texas A&M and Auburn.
Next month, the sudden star likely will be in New York City, trading his jersey for a suit while being showcased during an hour-long TV special, which could end with him being immortalized in athletic eternity as the best player in college football.
Simpler times have passed. Greatness is no longer a goal, it’s an expectation. Each of his snaps is an assumed success. The days of being an underdog are over — except against Alabama.
On Saturday, Prescott and the unlikely top-ranked Bulldogs (9-0) take on the even more unlikely role of a No. 1 team as a heavy nine-point underdog at Bryant-Denny Stadium against No. 5 Alabama (8-1), the all-time power almost annually viewed as the nation’s best, regardless of ranking.
Going on the road against the best program of the era and into a stadium packing more than 101,000 fans — each representing a Crimson Tide national title, or so it seems — where an SEC championship and playoff spot could both be at stake, Prescott prefers the Bulldogs will return to playing the role with which they are most familiar.
“We’re back to the team we were to begin the season, the team we were earlier in the season where nobody expected us to win [and] didn’t think we could win,” Prescott said this week. “We were the underdogs in all of those games. I mean, it feels good to be back to that.”
For the Bulldogs’ biggest game in decades — and Alabama’s biggest game of the week — Mississippi State will travel 90 minutes by bus to get to Tuscaloosa, a place millions of miles from their Starkville, Miss., campus.
At Alabama, championships seem to come as often as commencement ceremonies, while Bulldogs fans see SEC titles (1941) as often as Halley’s Comet (if they’re lucky). The 27-time SEC champion Crimson Tide have played in a record 61 bowl games, while the Bulldogs, winners of 18 of 98 all-time meetings against Alabama (the Tide have 76 wins, three games ended in ties and one Alabama win was vacated by the NCAA), have finished in the Top 10 once.
Mississippi State’s history isn’t defined as being the black sheep of the SEC, but more a blade of grass, trampled and unnoticed by the Alabama elephants thundering past.
Even with a potential Heisman Trophy front-runner, the sixth-ranked offense in the nation and a team that’s trailed less than 49 minutes this season, Bulldogs coach Dan Mullen played up the disparity between the programs.
“I look at their roster, they probably have more five-star players sitting on the bench that can’t get a rep on their team than we have on our entire roster,” Bulldogs coach Dan Mullen said.
An “In every article you read, we are big underdogs heading into this game. We know that role. We are going to be OK with that. Our guys are going to come in with a chip on their shoulder and play with great effort. No matter what everyone else is predicting, we want to play that way every week.” Playing that way for nine weeks hasn’t erased the legacies built over generations, but an incredible performance from Prescott could alter one season, putting the Bulldogs a step closer to an unthinkable national championship, the prize Alabama thinks most about.
Prescott, who missed last year’s game due to injury and threw a touchdown pass in garbage time as a redshirt freshman at Alabama in a blowout loss, said he isn’t nervous about playing the biggest game of his life — and that of countless fans — against a team with one home loss in the past three seasons. More than 101,000 fans have filed away from the feared field having seen dual-threat quarterbacks — Cam Newton, Johnny Manziel — make their Heisman moments on their field far too often recently.
“I’ve grown a lot in every aspect of life and every aspect of the quarterback position,” Prescott said. “I don’t really think there will be any jitters going into the stadium.
“Now being able to go to Tuscaloosa and the starter and healthy, I’m very excited.”
Isn’t everyone?