Once again, Mississippi State finished higher than picked in the preseason

Published Jun. 30, 2017 6:28 p.m. ET

foxsports

Once again, the SEC media were wrong about Mississippi State.

Here is the order of finish the SEC media picked in July:

Here is the order of finish from the final SEC West standings:

Technically, MSU was tied for 5th, but we lose to the tiebreaker to Arkansas at equal 3-5 conference records.

This was the third time in the Dan Mullen era that MSU was picked to finish last in the West. Not once have they done that.

In six of Mullen’s eight years the Bulldogs have finished ahead of expectations. Only once has the media gotten it right, and once they’ve oversold MSU.

Here’s how the media has picked MSU and where they’ve ultimately finished each year under Coach Mullen:

2009:

2010:

2011:

2012:

2013:

2014:

2015:

2016:

The media had it right for the most part in Mullen’s first two years, the in 2011 MSU was overvalued (remember that was a 6-6 team that started the year ranked), but every year since 2012 the media has undervalued Mullen’s teams.

At no point in Coach Mullen’s tenure have the Bulldogs been picked with more than two teams below them. That is, when they were picked 4th in 2011 there were only six teams in the West; whereas in 2014 there were seven teams when they were picked 5th.

But I guess in fairness, only the 2014 team finished the year with more than two teams behind them. So while the media generally undervalues MSU, we haven’t given them much reason to start picking us higher.

Nevertheless, it is true that the media perennially picks us lower than they should.