The gap barely stretched 48 hours of real time, but from Sunday night to Wednesday morning, Mississippi State’s old football coach was gone and its new one had yet to be identified. The coaching vacuum was impressively brief, but when the Bulldogs lost the man who had led their program the last nine years – plus several of the people who helped him do it – it seemed for a moment that they might not know who they were anymore.
They were 8-4. They were No. 3 in the College Football Playoff rankings. They were going to a bowl game.