{ "archive_path": "archive/1791064978.478257", "base_url": "cdispatch.com/news/shades-of-2014-bulldogs-hot-start-brings-economic-boost", "basename": "", "bookmarked_date": "2026-10-03 22:02", "canonical": { "archive_org_path": "https://web.archive.org/web/cdispatch.com/news/shades-of-2014-bulldogs-hot-start-brings-economic-boost", "dom_path": "output.html", "favicon_path": "favicon.ico", "git_path": "git/", "google_favicon_path": "https://www.google.com/s2/favicons?domain=cdispatch.com", "headers_path": "headers.json", "htmltotext_path": "htmltotext.txt", "index_path": "index.html", "media_path": "media/", "mercury_path": "mercury/content.html", "pdf_path": "output.pdf", "readability_path": "readability/content.html", "screenshot_path": "screenshot.png", "singlefile_path": "singlefile.html", "warc_path": "warc/", "wget_path": "cdispatch.com/news/shades-of-2014-bulldogs-hot-start-brings-economic-boost/index.html" }, "domain": "cdispatch.com", "extension": "", "hash": "1K29VFKEBZSNG976XFNW", "history": { "archive_org": [], "dom": [], "favicon": [ { "cmd": [ "curl", "--silent", "--location", "--compressed", "--max-time", "120", "--output", "favicon.ico", "--user-agent", "Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; Intel Mac OS X 10_15_7) AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/118.0.0.0 Safari/537.36 ArchiveBox/0.7.4 (+https://github.com/ArchiveBox/ArchiveBox/) curl/curl 8.14.1 (x86_64-pc-linux-gnu)", "https://www.google.com/s2/favicons?domain=cdispatch.com" ], "cmd_version": "curl 8.14.1 (x86_64-pc-linux-gnu)", "end_ts": "2026-10-04T01:29:43.484698+00:00", "index_texts": null, "output": "favicon.ico", "pwd": "/data/archive/1791064978.478257", "schema": "ArchiveResult", "start_ts": "2026-10-04T01:29:42.946488+00:00", "status": "succeeded" } ], "git": [], "headers": [ { "cmd": [ "curl", "--silent", "--location", "--compressed", "--head", "--max-time", "120", "--user-agent", "Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; Intel Mac OS X 10_15_7) AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/118.0.0.0 Safari/537.36 ArchiveBox/0.7.4 (+https://github.com/ArchiveBox/ArchiveBox/) curl/curl 8.14.1 (x86_64-pc-linux-gnu)", "https://cdispatch.com/news/shades-of-2014-bulldogs-hot-start-brings-economic-boost/" ], "cmd_version": "curl 8.14.1 (x86_64-pc-linux-gnu)", "end_ts": "2026-10-04T01:29:43.921348+00:00", "index_texts": null, "output": "headers.json", "pwd": "/data/archive/1791064978.478257", "schema": "ArchiveResult", "start_ts": "2026-10-04T01:29:43.494368+00:00", "status": "succeeded" } ], "htmltotext": [], "media": [], "mercury": [ { "cmd": [ "/app/node_modules/@postlight/parser/cli.js", "https://cdispatch.com/news/shades-of-2014-bulldogs-hot-start-brings-economic-boost/" ], "cmd_version": "1.0.0", "end_ts": "2026-10-04T01:30:01.782355+00:00", "index_texts": null, "output": "mercury", "pwd": "/data/archive/1791064978.478257", "schema": "ArchiveResult", "start_ts": "2026-10-04T01:29:57.644010+00:00", "status": "succeeded" } ], "pdf": [], "readability": [ { "cmd": [ "/app/node_modules/readability-extractor/readability-extractor", "/tmp/tmp4pycnzqz", "https://cdispatch.com/news/shades-of-2014-bulldogs-hot-start-brings-economic-boost/" ], "cmd_version": "0.0.11", "end_ts": "2026-10-04T01:29:57.618774+00:00", "index_texts": [ "Mississippi State fans cheer on MSU in its 31-24 win over Missouri on Sept. 26. Fans packed Davis Wade Stadium last weekend, and are expected to do the same this weekend against Alabama. Photo courtesy of Mississippi State Athletics\t\n\t\t\tMississippi State football\u2019s start has Starkville buzzing.\nThe Bulldogs are 4-0, have a quarterback garnering Heisman hype and have shot up the national rankings to No. 16. MSU\u2019s successes on the gridiron are already translating into triumphs for Starkville\u2019s economy.\nStarkville\u2019s hotels are sold out for MSU\u2019s game against Alabama on Saturday, the second straight weekend of hotel sell outs in the city, said Paige Hunt, director of tourism with The Greater Starkville Development Partnership.\n\n\t\t\t\n\t\t\t\n\t\t\t\t\n\t\t\t\tPaige Hunt\n\t\t\t\t\n\t\t\n\n\u201cIt just goes to the reason that, the better you are (at football), the more people want to come see you,\u201d Hunt said. \u201cThere\u2019s just a lot of excitement in this Mississippi State fan base.\u201d\nThe excitement follows two seasons of losing records for the program. The Bulldogs went 2-10 without an SEC win in 2024. MSU started 4-0 last year but tallied just one more win the rest of the way for a 5-8 finish.\nHunt said it\u2019s not unusual for hotels to sell out during a game weekend, even when the Bulldogs are bad, but the 2026 hotel numbers are already in a better spot than the last two seasons.\nHotel occupancy was up 3.3% this past weekend when MSU hosted its SEC home opener against Missouri, compared to last year\u2019s first conference home game against Tennessee.\nThe number shoots up to 8% when comparing last weekend to MSU\u2019s SEC home opener in 2024 against Florida, when the Bulldogs were 1-3.\n\u201cWe are much more likely to sell out when we are good at football,\u201d Hunt said.\nHunt said MSU\u2019s success extends beyond filling up hotel rooms.\n\u201cWhen you come for a football game, you\u2019re likely going to eat at a restaurant. You\u2019re going to stay at a hotel or a short-term rental. You\u2019re going to potentially need to run to the local Walmart to get tailgate supplies,\u201d Hunt said. \u201cSo there\u2019s a lot going on, and that just means that just about every corner of the community is impacted by a home football game, and that happens regardless. But when Mississippi State is doing well \u2026 it just makes the excitement ratchet up just that much more.\u201d\nThe impact isn\u2019t contained to just Starkville.\nWhile she didn\u2019t have any concrete numbers for the 2026 season so far, Frances Glenn, tourism director for Columbus-Lowndes Convention and Visitors Bureau, said Columbus generally also sees an influx of visitors during a successful MSU season. Football season is something \u201cwe all benefit from,\u201d she said.\n\n\t\t\t\n\t\t\t\n\t\t\t\t\n\t\t\t\tFrances Glenn\n\t\t\t\t\n\t\t\n\n\u201cWe always have overflow from Mississippi State, both in the hotels and the restaurants,\u201d Glenn told The Dispatch. \u201c\u2026 I think there\u2019s a direct correlation historically, and of course, the better Mississippi State does, people want to come back and watch.\u201d\nBy the numbers\nStarkville receives sales tax numbers on a three month cycle, so Ward 2 Alderwoman Sandra Sistrunk said it won\u2019t be until November when the city knows its sales tax numbers for this football season. Other successful athletic seasons, however, have made a big improvement to Starkville\u2019s numbers.\nMSU\u2019s 2014 season is widely regarded as one of the best in program history. The Bulldogs went 10-3, and shot up to No. 1 in the country after a 9-0 start. Sales tax revenue for September, October and November was up 12-15%, $50-$70,000 a month, from 2013, Sistrunk said.\nShe said there could have been other events in that three-month span but said most of those numbers would have been driven by football.\n\n\t\t\t\n\t\t\t\n\t\t\t\t\n\t\t\t\tSandra Sistrunk\n\t\t\t\t\n\t\t\n\n\u201cI\u2019d like to think that, if we have continued success, that maybe the numbers will be a little higher now than they were back then,\u201d Sistrunk said.\nNancy Carpenter, who headed the Columbus-Lowndes CVB during the 2014 season, remembers Columbus seeing \u201calmost as much\u201d of an impact as Starkville did.\n\n\t\t\t\n\t\t\t\n\t\t\t\t\n\t\t\t\tNancy Carpenter\n\t\t\t\t\n\t\t\n\n\u201cI remember during that time, we were thrilled at Visit Columbus just because of the impact that it was having (and) because of the people that wanted to come,\u201d she said. \u201cI remember the hotels were so full, and I was even helping, during that time, get people rooms.\u201d\nCarpenter believes those staying in Columbus at the time likely preferred getting away from the \u201cbusyness\u201d of the gameday environment, particularly long lines. Visits from those fans also benefited Columbus attractions, she said.\n\u201cI was over, at the same time, the Tennessee Williams Welcome Center, and that was something else that I remember vividly, is having hundreds of people on the weekends,\u201d she said. In 2021, when MSU\u2019s baseball team won the national championship, Starkville\u2019s numbers increased by 30%.\nSistrunk said those numbers are skewed because they include the city\u2019s recovery from the COVID-19 pandemic, but she estimated if that was taken out, it would have been another 15% increase.\n\u201cHaving a successful football season, basketball season, baseball season, having interest in the community of any sort that brings people to the city has that immediate impact of increased sales, increased local investment in purchasing during the events,\u201d Sistrunk said. \u201cBut the bigger piece of it is, if it\u2019s sustainable, you see more interest in people actually investing in the community in terms of infrastructure, starting a business, buying a house, buying a second house, that sort of thing.\u201d\nPrep for this weekend\nRyan Handran was the general manager of Rick\u2019s Cafe in 2014.\n\n\t\t\t\n\t\t\t\n\t\t\t\t\n\t\t\t\tRyan Handran\n\t\t\t\t\n\t\t\n\n\u201cIt was wild,\u201d Handran said of the environment in the bar. \u201cIt\u2019s hard not to be in a good mood when your team\u2019s doing great. \u2026 It\u2019s easy to go out and celebrate, and people were definitely feeling how easy it was.\u201d\nHandran is now a co-owner of Rick\u2019s, and is feeling the hype around this year\u2019s squad.\nHARDY, a country music artist with more than 7 million monthly listeners on Spotify, is playing a concert on Friday at Humphrey Coliseum. Handran wasn\u2019t planning on opening up the main bar, avoiding competition with the concert, but because of the football hype, he opened up the bar, and held a DJ night.\nRick\u2019s has a capacity of 850, and Handran said he expects to be pretty close to that on Saturday. He said the bar is \u201cstocking up basically to our fullest,\u201d and is hosting the Jason Miller Band, who have over 13,000 followers on Instagram.\n\u201cThe more of those stadium chairs we have filled, the more that trickles down across our little city,\u201d Handran said.\nHe said the bar plans its entire fall schedule around the football season and relies more on making money throughout the football season, more than anything else throughout the year.\n\u201cThese are some of the most important weekends for every business in this town,\u201d Handran said. \u201cIf you can\u2019t make your money on home game weekends in the fall, you are really going to struggle when it comes to the summer.\u201d\nNews Editor Emma McRae contributed to this reporting.\n\t\t\t\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\n\t\t\tJake is the Mississippi State athletics reporter for The Dispatch.\t\t\t\n\t\t\t\n \n \n Quality, in-depth journalism is essential to a healthy community. The Dispatch brings you the most complete reporting and insightful commentary in the Golden Triangle, but we need your help to continue our efforts. In the past week, our reporters have posted 35 articles to cdispatch.com. Please consider subscribing to our website for only $2.30 per week to help support local journalism and our community." ], "output": "readability", "pwd": "/data/archive/1791064978.478257", "schema": "ArchiveResult", "start_ts": "2026-10-04T01:29:55.786750+00:00", "status": "succeeded" } ], "screenshot": [], "singlefile": [], "title": [ { "cmd": [ "curl", "--silent", "--location", "--compressed", "--max-time", "120", "--user-agent", "Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; Intel Mac OS X 10_15_7) AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/118.0.0.0 Safari/537.36 ArchiveBox/0.7.4 (+https://github.com/ArchiveBox/ArchiveBox/) curl/curl 8.14.1 (x86_64-pc-linux-gnu)", "https://cdispatch.com/news/shades-of-2014-bulldogs-hot-start-brings-economic-boost/" ], "cmd_version": "curl 8.14.1 (x86_64-pc-linux-gnu)", "end_ts": "2026-10-04T01:29:55.779082+00:00", "index_texts": null, "output": "Shades of 2014? 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