That’s my whole point. Mississippi State, Georgia Tech, Kansas, Oregon State, Vandy, Duke, etc will never be elite football programs. Other schools have figured out that you can be elite in sports other than football and still provide a great deal of pride and entertainment within your athletic department.
I have friends who are currently enrolled, and are recent graduates at Miss St, and they say baseball games are the most fun thing on campus all year. A few of them aren’t even actual baseball fans, they just like it because it’s a big event. That’s why there are so many casual football fans, because it’s a big event held on a weekend where a lot of people gather either at the stadium, at home, or out at bars or whatnot to watch it.
I seriously doubt Miss St. fans would trade in their one and only natty just to beat Ole Miss this year. If it was to win 10 games a year and beat Ole Miss 5 times in a row? Sure. But not for 1 game, and not for a 7 win season. That’s what my original comment was about. Someone said they’d trade every ounce of success by our other programs from a winning season. That would be about the worst thing possible for GT sports.
It’s all relative. I’m sure Vandy would trade in a year or 2 of being elite in baseball for a year or 2 of being above average in football because they already have titles. They already have a name for themselves. Kansas would almost definitely trade in a year of being a title contender in basketball for a year of being even average at football. Because once again, they already have titles and a huge brand name in basketball.
Miss St. doesn’t have that history. They’ve always been pretty good at baseball, but never have they had a title. For them the payoff would have to be much larger than being above average in football, it would likely need to be a playoff contending team.
Georgia, a team desperate to get the monkey off their back in football would likely forfeit every single game in every sport to secure a football natty. But after they got their first I doubt they would do it again. Georgia has a pretty rich baseball history too, and they would definitely get tired of Tech beating them every year in baseball and basketball. Failing to beat Georgia in non football sports haunted Tech in what was probably one of the worst eras in overall GT sports after the 2016 football win. I think over the next 3 seasons of baseball, basketball, and football we went something like 1-11 against them. That’s pitiful, and it just increased their already incredibly tight grip on the state.