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Mississippi State’s Rise Follows Its ‘Pied Piper’

STARKVILLE, Miss. — Vic Schaefer said he could have taken several head coaching jobs while he was an assistant for 15 years at Arkansas and Texas A&M.

His former boss — Texas A&M Coach Gary Blair — has an offbeat theory about why Schaefer finally took the helm of the Mississippi State women’s team in 2012.

“It’s because he’s so cheap,” Blair said. “Both schools wear maroon, and he didn’t want to change his wardrobe.”

Jokes aside, Schaefer agreed that there were similarities between the programs beyond the colors. Much like Texas A&M before Blair and Schaefer arrived in 2003, Mississippi State had never been a consistent threat in the Southeastern Conference.