The fever is beginning to spread to the state of Mississippi as Heisman hopeful Dak Prescott and the Mississippi State Bulldogs football team have made some early season noise. If you make a trip to see the team play this fall across the South, you’ll undoubtedly hear a very unique noise: a cowbell.
The most popular legend tells of a 1930s football game and two bitter rivals close in score until a cow from a nearby cattle field walked straight across the playing surface. Obviously this lucky cow carried good fortune, because the home team pulled out a dramatic victory.
The student section then vowed to bring a cow to every home game from then on. However, as college students often do, they became too lazy to conquer such a large task of bringing the cow’s bell. Fast-forward a few decades and a man has made a small, strange empire by welding bike handles onto the end of a normal cowbell. This sweet instrument has been the source of beautiful sound and happiness for fans ever since.
Back in the ’50s the Mississippi State basketball team reached national prominence. Fans brought cowbells by the thousands to McCarthy Gymnasium, which is the size of the Rhode’s Field House but made entirely of concrete, allowing sound to echo even louder than the beloved Bison hoops sanctuary.
When noisemakers were eventually banned in 1970, fans had no hope of creating that magical atmosphere again. Then in 2010, the SEC voted in favor of giving fans the opportunity to bring cowbells back into stadiums and ring them when the ball isn’t in play. Thus, the tradition continues and is being passed onto the next group of Bulldog fans who all would echo this statement from the famous SNL skit, “I’ve got a fever, and the only prescription is more cowbell.”
