Who Are the Announcers for Mississippi State vs Southern Miss Week 1 College Football Game

The Mississippi State Bulldogs face in-state foe Southern Miss Golden Eagles down in Hattiesburg at 11 a.m. CT on Saturday to kick off the 2025 season. This marks the second year of head coach Jeff Lebby’s era and Charles Huff’s debut season. The Bulldogs overhauled their roster this offseason, adding a total of 65 new players. Of those, 37 came from the transfer portal. Panning the focus to the Golden Eagles, only 23 players are returning with a whopping 65 four-year transfers. August 30 marks the first meeting between Mississippi State and Southern Miss in two years. Now, who is going to tune up the fever of the game through their commentary?

ESPN’s Roy Philpott and Sam Acho are coming to the box to report the face-off that will be taking place at M.M. Roberts Stadium in Hattiesburg, Mississippi, on August 30, at 12 p.m. ET. What will the commentators bring to the table?

Known as the college basketball commentator, Philpott’s passion for commentary came quite late. In an interview with Front Office Sports, Philpott said, “Playing sports growing up, and it probably didn’t occur to me until senior year of high school that I was not good enough to play sports in college and certainly not at the professional level. So, the next best thing was to do sports broadcasting or writing just to be around the sports environment.” He joined ESPN as a play-by-play announcer in 2013, calling college football, basketball, and baseball games as well as contributing to ESPN’s UFL coverage.

While Philpott has been assigned the duty to cover the Bulldogs vs Golden Eagles fight, it looks like he feels a special connection to the Clemson Tigers. After all, Clemson, being his alma mater, he covered Clemson on a daily basis back when Dabo Swinney arrived as Tommy Bowden’s newest hire in 2003. Now what about Acho?

The commentary ritual for the Mississippi State and Southern Miss showdown will be lead by Acho hand-in-hand with Philpott. While Philpott does not have personal experience playing the sport, here Acho stands at an advantage. He joined ESPN in 2021. But before that, he earned fame playing for the Texas Longhorns.

On the field, the defensive end made his mark in the UT record books, landing in the top 10 at the school for career sacks, forced fumbles and fumble recoveries. Back in 2010, he was an All-America selection, including the Walter Camp Second-Team and the Associated Press Third-Team. All these would help Acho to bring more passion to the commentary and give fans a hair-raising experience. Now, where do the two programs stand?  

Dan Mullen’s blunt assessment of the Mississippi State Bulldogs as their rivals search for redemption 

The stats are concerning for Mississippi State. Under their coach, Lebby, the Bulldogs wrapped up their 2024 season with a disastrous 2-10 overall record and a 0-8 mark in the SEC. Along with this, the overall stats were disastrous, too. The Bulldogs ranked 78th in offense last season (377.2 yards per game), and it was less effective on defense, ranking ninth-worst with 456.7 yards allowed per game.

This called for some blunt remark from the Mississippi State’s former head coach, Dan Mullen, the UNLV head coach. In an interview with National College Football Reporter for CBS Sports, Brandon Marcello, who shared about how he enjoyed capturing the winning culture of the program, Mullen shared his unfiltered take on the Bulldogs’ situation ever since he left. “I mean, if we weren’t, back then, if you take a program that has kind of lost for a while and you continue to lose there, there’s not much of a story there, you know what I mean? And you know, there are probably some similarities to hear where they haven’t won a whole lot in the past, right? So, us winning is a story. Us not winning, it’s kind of like it’s the same old same old,” he said.

Now, will Mississippi State’s August 30 rivals be easily taken down? Well, with 283.8 yards of total offense per game (fourth-worst) and 449.2 yards allowed per game on defense (13th-worst), Southern Miss struggled on both sides of the ball last year in the FBS. The Golden Eagles come off with a 1-11 record from 2024. All eyes are on Saturday as these two programs collide. Let’s see if the commentary booth captures the drama on the field.