BRANDON, Miss. – From this charmer of a suburb in Central Mississippi, almost every highway out of town leads you to some large college football outpost.
There’s LSU and there’s Alabama, both reachable in less than three hours. Another 1 1/2 hours on the road gets you to Auburn. Georgia, Tennessee and Arkansas are each longer treks, but still manageable for the dedicated road-tripper. Within the state of Mississippi, Ole Miss is fairly close in proximity and Mississippi State is closer.
The point being, Brandon, Mississippi, is supposed to be SEC country. So watching a school from the Pac-12 North infiltrate the pecking order last football season had to be unfamiliar and unprecedented – awkward and wholly gratifying – for the southern community of 23,000.