CHARLOTTE, N.C. – Mississippi State is set to take a picture with a specially branded stock car at Charlotte Motor Speedway on the Sunday before the Belk Bowl. The entire team – players and coaches – is lined up in three rows behind the car, and the group just barely fits. There’s a tiny bit of chaos as guys get moved from one side to the other to try and balance the shot out and make the job easier on the photographer.
De’Runnya Wilson thinks he’s in the right spot, but that’s quickly proven not to be the case. Someone pulls him out from where he’s standing and indicates he needs to go to the opposite end. When he gets there, he is shoved out and starts making his way back where he started. Right as he gets to the middle again, coach Dan Mullen grabs Wilson, puts his arm around the wide receiver, and they both laugh. The shot gets taken, and the Bulldogs scatter to put on driving suits in anticipation of their experience driving around the track.
Wilson lingers a moment longer than everyone else, with a huge smile on his face, before sauntering to join his teammates.
“I’m just enjoying myself,” Wilson says at the track. “It’s a great experience, and you’ve got to cherish that. But we have a game to win first, and I’m going to do whatever it takes to do my job and get a win with my teammates. A lot of guys before our time set the foundation right now. They set the standard, and we’re just trying to reach it.”
On Dec. 30 at Bank of America Stadium, Wilson records five catches for 96 yards and a touchdown in Mississippi State’s dominating 51-28 win over N.C. State. Two days later, he announces on Instagram that he’s played his last game with the Bulldogs and is headed to the NFL Draft.
It’s the last game for another prominent Mississippi State player, as well, although he didn’t need to make an announcement. In Dak Prescott’s three seasons as the starting quarterback in Starkville, the Bulldogs won 26 games, capped off by his MVP performance in the Belk Bowl where he threw for a bowl-record 380 yards and four touchdowns (and added 47 yards on the ground).
Prescott is loose and relaxed all week long, his eyes focused as he takes in everything that goes on around him. This is a quarterback who saw his team ranked No. 1 at one point in 2014, had national publications write profiles about him, played in an Orange Bowl, and was featured on College GameDay. One would think Prescott would be going through the motions during this particular bowl experience, but there’s the sense he knows how special these last moments as a college player are, and it’s his last chance to, well, be a kid – no matter how professionally he carries himself on and off the field already.
“I allow myself to enjoy every week and especially the bowl games,” Prescott says at a Media Day held in the club lounge overlooking BB&T Ballpark in Uptown Charlotte. “It’s usually in a town or a city I’ve never been, so it’s always exciting. Just separating the business and pleasure. Know when it’s time to unwind and have some fun vs. when it’s time to lock in and make sure the guys around you are focusing. The guys really like being able to have some time for ourselves and not necessarily honed in on having to do a bunch of things and sticking to a time schedule real quick. That’s awesome.”
This attitude permeates a majority of the Bulldogs roster, even if the younger players laugh a little more often and talk a little more loudly. At the Second Harvest Food Bank on Monday, the players rock back and forth on their toes and listen to Mike, the organization’s designated speaker for the day, explain what Second Harvest does and why it matters.
Between them, N.C. State and Mississippi State will put together 2,400 bags of food for Charlotte area children in need, with each bag containing fruit cocktail, ravioli, chicken noodle soup, chicken breast meat, macaroni and cheese, raisins, and chocolate pudding. The team splits off into two groups, and the task is completed at breakneck speed as both groups want to finish ahead of the other. (Football teams are efficient as all get-up when they have a goal, especially when said task involves being organized and involving the tiniest bit of competition.)
At the conclusion, some players are Snapchatting, one guy is absentmindedly singing “Down in the DM” by Yo Gotti, and one Bulldog stands up on a wooden pallet that was holding the canned goods. He accidentally breaks through the wood before sheepishly walking away as onlookers double over in laughter.
“We try to have fun everywhere we go,” Mississippi State freshman safety Brandon Bryant says, “and when we’re not at practice, we all go out in packs and try to see the excitement of a new place or a new city. We already knew basically what we were doing when we came out here. It’s for a great purpose. It’s not all about us. Some of us on the team grew up like this, and football helps us make it out. It’s a great feeling knowing you’re helping someone less fortunate than you.”
The bowl experience is one that’s difficult to replicate with anything else in college football. For so much of the season, football and school are pretty much the only things players have time to worry about. As Bryant says, being a student-athlete is a “24-7 job.” But the Belk Bowl allows the players to mix some activities that impact the community – along with the food bank visit, both teams visit the Levine Children’s Hospital, and N.C. State organizes a football camp for kids at Mallard Creek High School – with fun, and plenty of free time to explore the city.
Something that’s particularly unique to the Belk Bowl (and which draws its share of jokes at times) is the shopping spree both teams get to participate in at the company’s flagship store in South Park Mall. They’re each given $450 and 20 percent off everything in the store, including all the items discounted due to the post-Christmas sale. That goes a long way for some players looking to buy suits for future job interviews, or gifts for their families.
N.C. State’s Mike Rose buys a NutriBullet for his grandma. Mississippi State wide receiver Fred Ross picks up a Michael Kors watch and a bracelet for his mom as a late Christmas present, telling a local TV crew that “she knows I’ve been busy.” Another Bulldog is asked if he’s shopping for someone special, and he says, “I like to think I’m someone special.”
Bulldogs offensive lineman Justin Senior was shopping for a tote bag and an overnight bag for a friend, and asks the sales associate what the difference is between a small roller bag and a weekender. He comes prepared with pictures, but pauses at the register to call her and make sure he does, in fact, have the right items.
Prescott goes with watches and cologne (and seems particularly excited about a John Varvatos fragrance he picked out). One player wearing a black Star Wars shirt walks by with three belts draped over his right shoulder. Others post up in the outdoor apparel section and search for stuff to wear hunting. Unsurprisingly, none of the players are taking advantage of the 80 percent off Christmas decorations on the lower level of the store.
A few players like linebacker Richie Brown opt to do something else with their gift cards. Brown has donated about $300 of his $450 Belk allotment to charity, and some of the other Bulldogs are pitching in, as well. All in all, they’ve raised close to $800, and the team spends part of the week trying to figure out exactly where they want the money to go before settling on giving the gift card amount to local youth in Mississippi.
“I have plenty and there’s people out there who don’t have anything,” Brown says. “$450 is a lot of money, and we don’t need all that anyway. Really, it’s about doing any little thing we can do to try and help out. Something small for us is going to be huge for someone else.”
Brown has seen Mississippi State’s profile jump in recent years, and he admits it’s tough at times seeing the fans unsatisfied with nine-win seasons, but that comes with the territory. Ultimately, it’s a good thing when supporters expect a team to win, and that those expectations come from establishing a winning tradition in the first place.
The Bulldogs wouldn’t be where they are today without players like Prescott, Brown, Ross, and Wilson, or Mullen’s coaching staff, which brought those players to Starkville. Mullen had a lot of success as an assistant under Urban Meyer at both Utah and Florida, and he stresses that bowl games are a representation of the hard work a team put in throughout the season. They’re supposed to be fun, and overloading the guys or structuring every minute of their day can be suffocating.
“It’s a reward,” Mullen says. “One of the things I want to make sure is our guys have an awesome experience at a bowl game. But I tell everybody this: Winning the game makes it an awesome experience. Don’t forget how important that aspect of the bowl experience is. But we make sure we’re not in complete lockdown.”
The Bulldogs got their win, and subsequently got their awesome experience in the process. Now it’s time to start all over again and ultimately earn another bowl invite in 2016, wherever that invite will be. For a sport that rarely celebrates its amateur players, bowl games are a chance to actually make student-athletes feel special and give them a memory they can share with the group they spend so much of their time with over the course of the year. A win just makes it that much more memorable.
