STARKVILLE — The Mississippi State Bulldogs reached their first waypoint of the 2009 season on Friday, then prepared to leave town for a while.

The Bulldogs practiced for two hours in the morning sun, answered questions from the media in the afternoon, then packed up their things for a weeklong stay in an off-campus hotel beginning today.

Friday’s workout, the first in full pads, marked the end of the first week of fall practice and the transition to the next phase — two-a-days. Starting today, State will have four days of two-a-days spread out over the course of the next week. The season-opener is Sept. 5 at Davis-Wade Stadium against Jackson State.

“I’m real excited for the season, real excited to get it going,” MSU coach Dan Mullen said. “It’s still a ways off, but you walk from here to the other side of campus and you see that stadium waiting for us, it’s hard not to get excited.”

Most of the questions fired toward Mullen and his players at Friday’s media day activities centered around the Bulldogs’ new spread offense. Mullen, who as offensive coordinator helped Florida win two national championships with the spread, brought it with him when he was hired as State’s head coach in January.

Under former coach Sylvester Croom, the Bulldogs had tried to become a West Coast offense and settled into a traditional mold with talented tailback Anthony Dixon getting 20 to 30 carries a game. Molding the players familiar with and recruited to play in those systems could be like squeezing square pegs into round holes. Mullen, though, said part of the spread’s charm is that bits and pieces of it work with different kinds of players. Finding which parts work with which players is the key to success.

“I’ve never been on a team that runs the whole offense, because it won’t fit with all the personnel you have in a given year,” Mullen said. “That first season at Florida, we weren’t running the offense that fit our personnel. We were running the wrong 60 percent of the offense. When we found the personnel to tweak it for us, that’s when we became successful.”

The new scheme also seems to be catching on with State’s players. Although it will take some time to grasp all the nuances, center J.C. Brignone said spreading the field will make the job much easier on the offensive line and open holes for the running backs.

“Last season we were more try to shove it down your throat and teams knew us like that. They’d put nine or 10 guys in the box to stop us,” Brignone said. “For an offensive lineman, (the spread) is wonderful because it gives you a chance to block five people with five people, instead of 10 people with five people.”

The spread is also paying dividends on the other side of the ball. Several of State’s opponents this season — including Florida and SEC West rival LSU — run some variation of the spread. Seeing it every day in practice should help the Bulldogs’ defense when those teams’ date on the schedule rolls around.

“When you first start running plays on defense, you start with the I-formations and the pro sets and at the end you get to five-wide. Since the first day we’ve been going against four- and five-wide,” senior linebacker Jamar Chaney said.

*

Contact Ernest Bowker at ebowker@vicksburgpost.com