SxSE: Starkville, Mississippi

Rolling right along in our South by Southeast road trip through the SEC, we've arrived at Starkville, MS, the home of Mississippi State Baseball.

"Starkville is an Indian word for 'trailer park'."

    - Skip Bertman, long time coach of  LSU Baseball.

♦ Starkville is the 5th closest SEC town to Columbia, 576 miles away (428 air miles).  Mississippi State is in the SEC West Division.

♦ Fun facts about Starkville, MS

• 2010 population:  23,888.  That's an amazingly small number, considering the student body of Mississippi State runs around 21,000.
  
  
• Starkville makes no apologies whatsoever about being mostly about Mississippi State.  The Starkville Convention & Visitors Bureau website features their logo and slogan:  Historic Starkville:  Mississippi's College Town.
  
  
• The original name of the town was Boardtown, because a local lumber mill made boards.  Later they changed the name to the much more inspiring Starkville, after General John Stark.
  
  
• Starkville is the birthplace of legendary baseball player Cool Papa Bell.
  
  
• Notorious criminal Machine Gun Kelley was a student at Mississippi State for two years, enrolling in 1917.
  
  
• Check out this article at StarkvilleNow.com for a look at some of the history of Starkville.

John Grisham
Mississippi St alum

♦ There is only  1 Chik-fil-a location in Starkville

♦ Starkville is locally referred to occasionally as StarkVegas.

• There's a @VivaStarkVegas Twitter account and a Facebook page

• UrbanDictionary.com has this definition:
• StarkVegas (n.) Slang for Starkville, MS. There, people keep it real by drinking, smoking, and throwing away their future. Its liberal by biblebelt standards but freakishly conservative by standards set by the freethinking world.
      Johnny: Where's the party at?
      Ronnie: Starkvegas you idiot.
       Johnny: I knew i was just testing you.

• Why is Starkville called StarkVegas? (Message board thread at TigerDroppings.com)
• "because what happens in starksville....never gets heard about...bc there is nothing to do...?"
• "Because it's trashy, but without the glitz."
• "Because for the longest time the only place where there was anything (shopping, restaraunts, hotels, etc.) was on Hwy 12. Someone called it the Starkville version of the Strip in Las Vegas...therefore Starkvegas"

♦ Holy Turf.com's SEC Bucket List:  Mississippi State

# 62 Bulldog Bathrooms: At Mississippi State the men’s bathrooms are odd. There are a couple of stalls, but there are no urinals. You simply urinate on the wall. It runs down into a trough at the bottom of the wall. (Insert snaky comment about Starkville here)

I first went to the bathroom on the wall several years ago (think 2002) when in Starkville for a game. I returned in 2006 to watch Arkansas clinch the SEC West assuming by now the Bulldogs have more typical bathroom accommodations. You know what happens when you assume. After a four year hiatus, I returned to Starkville twice during the 2010 season. Once to watch Auburn and later to watch Arkansas. It is 2010 by now. I mean our parents are on Facebook, sending a Tweet is a cool thing, and surely Mississippi State has somewhere for men to urinate besides the wall, right? Wrong!

♦ Click HERE to listen a pair of podcasts on RodkMNation from The Closers on KFRU, discussing Starkville and MSU" traditions with a pair of Mississippi sports writers.

♦ If want to know the best places to eat in Starkville, check out The SEC Guide to MSU's Home Turf (espn.com):

Tucked away between a bridge and the fire station on University Drive is a dilapidated building next to an empty gas station. From the outside, the place looks abandoned like in an episode of Scooby-Doo with its outdoor dining area consisting of lawn chairs. Beneath the shabby exterior, however, is the vibrant and, might I mention, always packed Stromboli's of Starkville, Mississippi. Stromboli's is considered the go-to pizza place of Starkvegas.

♦ In Starkville, boring is in the eye of the beholder (Columbia Missourian)

The exit sign for Starkville (people there say the "k" like a "t") had been unremarkable enough that it was nearly missed. The car screeched sideways through the first turn of what felt like a 720-degree exit ramp before sanity and proper speed were restored.

Five hundred seventy-five miles, nine hours and one near-death experience.

And for what?

To see if what everyone said was true.

To see if, out of the 14 U.S. cities that have Southeastern Conference Schools, this town really was the most boring.

Read the rest at the Columbia Missourian