Mississippians are acting as if it’s the biggest thing to happen since the boll weevil got booted from the state’s cotton crop.

And, at least in terms of global exposure, it is.

More than 3,000 reporters and assorted technicians will continue flooding into Oxford through the week before Friday’s first presidential debate. Given that the TV audience for the two party conventions last month averaged a record 38 million, it’s not unreasonable to expect 60 million Americans — 20 times this state’s population — will tune in to see Barack Obama and John McCain face off on the Ole Miss campus. With satellite trucks launching BBC, Al Jazeera and Chinese Central Television feeds from the Vaught-Hemingway Stadium parking lot, the global audience could reach a billion. Not even Archie Manning could focus that many eyeballs on the state’s largest liberal arts university.

How the event was landed is interesting because it shows a forward-looking university administration.

The Commission on Presidential Debates is a business. It’s nonprofit, but it is a freestanding entity, separate from the federal government and separate from the campaigns. It was founded in 1987 to act as a bridge between competing politicians and to assure debates were held before every election.

To select sites, the commissioners take bids, which they prefer to call applications. To win, venues must pledge enough money to cover expenses and to provide a suitable building.

The expense to Ole Miss will be several million dollars, most of which was raised through private donors well before the major party nominees were selected.

Site visits are part of the process and the then-new Gertrude Castello Ford Center for the Performing Arts is a world class slobber-knocker.

‘A lot of people rightly ask when Mississippi’s penance will be served. They might as well ask when Dealy Plaza in Dallas will no longer be associated with an assassination, when Pearl Harbor will no longer be a reminder of war or whether any tourist will ever look at the Pentagon without thinking of Sept. 11, 2001.’

Mrs. Ford, a classical musician and patron of the literary arts, funded a foundation in Jackson in 1991. After her death in 1996, the trustees awarded Ole Miss $20 million in 1998 to design and build the classroom, rehearsal and concert hall. The pristine center opened six years ago.

Eleven months ago, the commission announced its picks from the 19 applicants. Ole Miss would be the host for the first debate, followed by Belmont University in Nashville and Hofstra University in Hempstead, N.Y. The only face-to-face between vice presidential nominees Sen. Joe Biden and Gov. Sarah Palin is to be in St. Louis.

The university is making the most of things, coordinating more than 50 run-up events including forums, lectures and discussions of national issues and — because college is supposed to be fun, too — a Democrats vs. Republicans laser tag match has been held in the Grove.

Thousands — literally — have had roles to set the stage for a 90-minute discussion between the two individuals who’d like to change their address to 1600 Pennsylvania Ave. in January.

Because this is Mississippi and because Ole Miss was the violent crucible for integration of higher education at public universities in the South, many white Mississippians have voiced on-going angst over what they often refer to as “all that being dredged up again.” University administrators, notably Chancellor Robert Khayat, take a different tack. Their approach is to allow the bloody confrontation over the admission of James Meredith to serve as a foundation against which the university of today can be measured. It’s an open approach, one we’d all be well-advised to take.

A lot of people rightly ask when Mississippi’s penance will be served. They might as well ask when Dealy Plaza in Dallas will no longer be associated with an assassination, when Pearl Harbor will no longer be a reminder of war or whether any tourist will ever look at the Pentagon without thinking of Sept. 11, 2001.

For most Mississippians alive today, there’s been an aura that we’re not on the same footing as other states. Some feel atrocities committed during the expansion of civil rights put us in the position of needing to offer a continuing apology to the rest of the nation. Others espouse denial.

Either way, there has too often been a spirit of differentness, even of defeatism. The weight of history has been a heavy load to bear.

Before the Olympics in Beijing, all the commentators chattered about how the international athletic competition was a “coming out party” for a new China. There was no denying the centuries of isolation, no claim to perfection. But the world’s largest nation planned to take center stage as an equal, nothing less.

Mississippi is far from the largest of the United States, but the parallel is obvious.

The actual debates could take place in a tiny studio anywhere. It’s all the scene-setting stories and commentaries that will put Mississippi on display. That helps explain the excitement. It’s a big deal. It’s a really big deal for a state too long disrespected and too often disregarded.