Mississippi State Mascot History

Mississippi State Bulldog Mascot History

The live mascot tradition at Mississippi State University started in 1926 when a woman named Miss Maury Ragsdale bought a bulldog and brought it to campus. That dog, named Bok IV, became the template for what would become one of the most continuous live mascot lineages in college sports. The bulldog had already been loosely associated with the university since the 1890s when students started referring to the athletic teams as the "Bulldogs," but Bok IV was the first actual dog to hold the title. Here is the practical problem nobody talks about when they're digging into Mississippi State Mascot History: the early records are messy. I spent an afternoon trying to verify the exact lineage of the first few live mascots and found that several sources contradict each other on dates and names. The university's own records from the 1920s and 1930s are scattered across different offices, and some of the documented dogs have overlapping tenures that make it look like there were gaps when there probably weren't any. My workaround was to cross-reference the Bulldog Yearbook archives from the Mississippi State Libraries with newspaper clippings from the Starkville Daily News. The yearbooks tend to be more accurate on names and dates because they were produced contemporaneously, while newspapers sometimes got sloppy with sequential numbering of the mascots.

Tracing the Lineage in the Mississippi State Mascot History

The live mascot has carried a sequence of Roman numeral names since Bok IV. You have Bully I through at least Bully XII or XIII depending on how you count the early ones. The numbering got confused at several points. Between 1926 and 1940, there were roughly six or seven distinct bulldogs that served as official mascots, and some sources list them differently. The key names to know are Bok IV (the original), Scout (served during the late 1930s and was known for being particularly aggressive toward other dogs on opposing sidelines), and then the post-war era mascots like Beau V and Bully VI. One thing that trips people up is the costumed mascot. The suit-first appearance happened much later than most assume. The live bulldog was the primary brand representation for decades, and the costumed "Bully" character didn't show up in any meaningful way until the 1980s or so. If you're building a timeline, keep the live animals and the costume separate until they start converging in the 1990s when the university began using both simultaneously at games. The current mascot, a bulldog named Big Dummy IX or similar depending on which numbering system you follow, represents the ongoing line. The university has a dedicated care program now, with a designated handler and veterinary oversight that didn't exist in the early days. Back when Bok IV was around, the dog basically showed up and hung out. There was no formal protocol. I recall reading an account where a student from the 1930s described the early mascot as basically being a campus dog that nobody could agree on ownership for, and it would wander between the football stadium and downtown Starkville at will.

If you need primary sources, the Starkville Daily News archives online are your best starting point. Search for "Mississippi State bulldog mascot" with date filters. The university's Special Collections department at the Milam Library also holds photographs and memorabilia that aren't digitized, so if you're doing serious research you should plan a visit or request a scan. The athletic department's media guide has a condensed version of the history that is useful for quick reference but skips a lot of the messy details that make the full story interesting.