Meet Neil Price, the Mississippi State radio voice about to call his first Egg Bowl

When Neil Price traveled the state of Mississippi in the months leading up to his first season as Mississippi State’s radio voice, he would have a question for the groups that were supposed to be asking him questions: “Should I wrap it in maroon and white?”

The responses, invariably, were 50/50. So was the small group on campus convened to answer that question — would Price, hired months before to replace Jim Ellis, in any way imitate or reference the legendary broadcaster Jack Cristil’s famous call, said at the end of each and every Mississippi State win for 58 years?

It’s a question that speaks to the relationship a school and its fans have with its radio play-by-play man, even in 2017. Those are chairs that one man has sat in for decades, and thereby forged a relationship with generations of listeners. His call became the standard for that school, and so the question to the question was whether or not a Mississippi State fan listening to the radio call would expect to hear those words in some form or fashion.

“In the course of 58 years of saying it he made it the tradition of the place,” Price told me.

A solution was ultimately decided upon. So at the end of Saturday’s win at Arkansas, like he has in each of the seven other wins Mississippi State has this season and hopes to again on Thursday in the Egg Bowl, Price said this: “To quote the immortal Jack Cristil you can wrap this one in maroon and white, in thrilling fashion.”

More:An oral history of the Egg Bowl that started with a brawl and ended with a gutsy call

***

The influence of the radio play-by-play has understandably waned from the days of Cristil and Georgia’s Larry Munson and Tennessee’s John Ward, to name a few. Every game being on television now is the biggest reason for that.

But it’s remained still a visible position in Mississippi for a couple of reasons, one of them being that the rural nature of the state means there are still pockets where the radio call is probably the best option most weeks. Come hunting season, there are men who carry their little transistor radio into the deer stand with them. And then there are those who like me, who are at one game or the other every week and invariably spend time listening to one game while driving to the other.

Which is how I first listened to Price, and I was instantly astounded by his call. It’s clear and direct — you know the score, down and distance and time left, which is so underrated in what you want from a radio guy — with great detail and just enough flourish so that when you know his voice raises it’s in appreciation of a play that actually earned it. Mississippi State found a really good one, and it went outside the family to do it.

Price said he grew up listening to Ward call Tennessee games from the passenger side of his dad’s car in east Tennessee. By the time Price was in the seventh grade, he figured something out.

“It just clicked to me, ‘This is a pretty cool deal,’” Price said. “This guy gets a free ticket to the game. He gets to tell people what’s going on and in that state at that time (mid-1990s) they were pretty good and everybody in the state was hanging on every word he had to say.”

A few years later, Price was traveling with the local radio crew to help out covering his high school, Morristown East. He was calling games while he was in junior college and eventually matriculated to Middle Tennessee State, where there was a need for someone to call women’s basketball and baseball games.

Upon graduation, Price went to Kentucky, where he spent the last 12 years doing both sports and hosting a couple of coaches’ shows and the pregame football show. Price met his wife, Beth, and they were happy.

But Price had also come to Mississippi State in 2015 for a Kentucky game and thought to himself, as he looked around Davis Wade Stadium, “There’s something here.”

There was and is, and a year half later Ellis decided to step away from doing football and men’s basketball games. There was an opening and a search, and Price made his interest known as he went through the interview process. It was no guarantee, though.

More:For Mississippi State, an Egg Bowl win is another opportunity to prove doubters wrong

“I applied for a handful of jobs in the least two years before I got this one and I wasn’t good enough to go to Georgia Southern,” Price said. “I wasn’t good enough to go to North Dakota State. Montana. Some of that is not ability, it’s fit. I get that.

“I think back to how disappointed I was when every one of those jobs didn’t pan out and then this one does. The Lord works in mysterious ways.”

***

So here Price is, calling football games fulltime for the first time in his life and loving every minute of it.

This will be Price’s first Egg Bowl, and you’ll probably hear it in his voice on Thursday. Not in a bad way, but how can you not be a little extra amped in that situation, and doing so in Davis Wade Stadium with what should be a rollicking home crowd around you?

This is his job and his life now, even if there’s one part of it he’s still not used to.

“The whole voice of the Bulldogs thing — I told a group this earlier in the week — I have not adjusted to that because that’s Jack,” Price said. “I’m the radio broadcaster. Jack was the voice of the Bulldogs and I’m just the guy lucky enough to sit in the seat he and Jim occupied for 60 years.”

More Egg Bowl coverage

More:There once was a Mississippi State bulldog mascot named Rebel

More:The Egg Bowl represents the end of the road for Ole Miss

More:Which Ole Miss players will and won't be healthy for the Egg Bowl?

More:Which Mississippi State players will and won't be healthy for the Egg Bowl?

More:Mississippi State flipped the 2015 script, now has edge in Egg Bowl rivalry: The A-Gap