Name-a-Day Calendar, April 27: Mississippi State Bulldogs

Page 172 of 365

Chosen in: 1905 unofficially, 1961 officially

Chosen by: Local sportswriters initially, made official by university administration

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What is now Mississippi State University was founded in 1878 as The Agricultural and Mechanical College of the State of Mississippi, or Mississippi A&M for short. Their football team debuted in 1895 and, as with many other ag schools, it was initially known as the Aggies, so the team we now know as the Mississippi State Bulldogs was originally the Mississippi A&M Aggies.

The 1905 Aggies weren’t very good,¹ but they won the game that mattered: on November 30, they beat Ole Miss 11-0. Reporting on the game, local newspapers noted that the Aggies played tough like bulldogs. This led the bulldog to become an unofficial but widely accepted symbol for the college and for the school’s sports teams to sometimes be called the Bulldogs (though “Aggies” was still the preferred nickname).

In 1932, the school expanded their curriculum and became known more simply as Mississippi State College, or Mississippi State for short. The school figured it no longer made sense to call themselves the Aggies, so they switched to Maroons, after their main school color, but the bulldog still loomed in the background.

It loomed enough so, in fact, that the 1935 football team requested their coach, Major Ralph Sasse, find a live bulldog as a mascot. He found a family in Memphis willing to gift him their bulldog, Ptolemy, and it became Mississippi State’s first bulldog mascot.

The team was still officially called the Maroons, but “Bulldogs” was used increasingly often over the decades that followed. In 1961, the school went ahead and made it official: the teams were the Mississippi State Bulldogs.

Mississippi State has continued the tradition of live bulldog mascots to the present day. Each dog’s official title is Bully, but they also go by their own separate names. The current Bully is named Dak.

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1. They went 3-4, including a 27-5 home loss to Cumberland. Who is Cumberland? Where is Cumberland? I didn’t know without looking it up and you probably don’t either.