Scan any corner of Mississippi State social media and you\u2019ll start to see the posts. No, not the ones about Bulldogs legend Dak Prescott. Nor those about MSU\u2019s massive upset of No. 12 Arizona State on Saturday night. <\/p>\n
No, this corner of the internet, you\u2019ll see, is a fanbase enthused over the return of the retro interlocking \u201cMSU\u201d logo, a regular fixture on Mississippi State apparel during the 1990s and early 2000s.<\/p>\n
This specific logo has been a talking point for plenty of MSU fans, morphing into a social media movement of sorts. Local bloggers and podcasters discussed it regularly. Fans, too, have long pushed for its return — I even encountered it after landing my first job out of college as a Mississippi State beat writer at the Columbus Commercial-Dispatch in spring 2019.<\/p>\n
Finally, though, AD Zac Selmon and his staff have brought the logo back as part of their ongoing revamping of an MSU athletics department that was in need of modernization upon his arrival two years ago.<\/p>\n
I caught up with Selmon recently about adding the logo into the fold and some of the ongoing changes his staff is making around Starkville, Miss.<\/p>\n
Answers have been lightly edited for clarity and length.<\/p>\n
SBJ<\/b>: What was the genesis of bringing back the \u201cinterlocking MSU\u201d logo for this fall?<\/b><\/p>\n
Zac Selmon<\/b>: <\/b>\u201cBefore I got to Mississippi State, I didn\u2019t know the history of all the logos and the marks. Clearly the \u2018M-State\u2019 is still the primary marker for the university, but because of the excitement and the history — not only coaches, players, success of that logo in games on the field, but also how passionate our fans are about it — we knew we wanted to continue to generate excitement.<\/p>\n
\u201c… The main important thing is everything we\u2019re doing is trying to showcase the strength and the great stuff that\u2019s going on at Mississippi State. We\u2019re not trying to change the primary mark, but you look around athletic programs across the country, and there are some different marks that people use. [We] wanted to make sure that we had options.\u201d<\/p>\n
SBJ<\/b>: There\u2019s been an online movement around the interlocking \u201cMSU\u201d logo specifically as far back as when I lived in Starkville, if not longer. What\u2019s the reception been to actually incorporating this and other alternate marks?<\/b><\/p>\n
Selmon<\/b>: <\/b>\u201cPretty soon after arrival, I started hearing about it. One of the things that we\u2019ve tried to do — and there\u2019s not enough time in the day to listen and respond to everything — but we\u2019ve been really intentional about different focus groups that we\u2019ve started from a fan perspective, student perspective, donor perspective. [We tried to figure out] how can we all work together and partner together on things that are meaningful to such a wide variety of people? The uniforms and marks were something that continued to come up, and we\u2019ll continue to work with those groups on ways that we can add value to everybody.\u201d<\/p>\n
SBJ<\/b>: You touched on the revamping of logos, looks, etc., that has gone on since you\u2019ve been at Mississippi State. What went into that process?<\/b><\/p>\n
Selmon<\/b>: <\/b>\u201cWe want to make sure that we constantly tell the story of Mississippi State, and a lot of times, people haven\u2019t heard of all the great things that are going on. We\u2019ve really been intentional about using marks to relate to the wide group of people that we\u2019re working with, but also, the main goal is to — not from a level of arrogance by any means — really just to showcase all the great stuff that is going on in Starkville as a conversation starter. <\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019ve got a variety of throwback looks that we\u2019ve done. We\u2019ve got some future looking stuff that we\u2019ve tried to do as well. It\u2019s just the constant pursuit [of] telling the unbelievable things that are going on at Mississippi State.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Scan any corner of Mississippi State social media and you\u2019ll start to see the posts. No, not the…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":213987,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[43],"tags":[117034,1318,117035,1317,1315,1316,62,3972,67,132,68],"class_list":{"0":"post-213986","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-ncaa-football","8":"tag-elevate-sports-ventures","9":"tag-football","10":"tag-mississippi-state-university","11":"tag-ncaa","12":"tag-ncaa-football","13":"tag-ncaafootball","14":"tag-sports","15":"tag-stanford-university","16":"tag-united-states","17":"tag-unitedstates","18":"tag-us"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/115176792907513541","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/213986","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=213986"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/213986\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/213987"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=213986"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=213986"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=213986"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}