On paper, at least the paper on which the recruiting rankings are printed, the Alabama-Mississippi State game looks like a mismatch.
But the No. 1 Bulldogs are proving this season that contending for a championship isn't necessarily contingent on stacking up a bunch of top-five finishes on national signing day.
Bluebloods such as Alabama, Ohio State, Texas and USC don't recruit. They select, although having your pick of the litter in recruiting doesn't always translate to success on the field.
It's a fact that great players make great coaches, but it's also a fact that it matters more what you do with those players once you get them on campus.
And when you're coaching at Mississippi State, the reality is that you're not going to be raking in four- and five-star prospects out of high school.
Dan Mullen is OK with that. Matter of fact, he and his staff have embraced the idea that what counts is how many stars a player has when he leaves Mississippi State, not how many he has when he enters.
"There aren't a lot of ready-made players out there, and most of them go to the Alabamas of the world," said Mullen, who has made a living with the Bulldogs when it comes to developing what he calls the "hidden talent" in the state.
Alabama and Mississippi State meet Saturday in Bryant-Denny Stadium as two of the top five teams in the current College Football Playoff rankings. Yet, when it comes to the high school pedigrees of the players on the two teams' rosters, they are worlds apart.
"A lot of people get caught up in the big names," Mississippi State fifth-year senior safety Jay Hughes said. "A lot of us weren't big names coming out of high school, and Mississippi State hasn't been a big name as far as the tradition of college football and the SEC.
"At the same time, though, all that matters is how you play. We've got a lot of hungry guys on this team who might have been overlooked at one point, but not anymore."
Alabama has been a recruiting machine under Nick Saban, putting together three straight No. 1 classes nationally. By contrast, Mississippi State has had just one top-25 recruiting class nationally in the past five years (2010-14), and that was when the Bulldogs were ranked No. 25 in 2013.
Even more telling, the Bulldogs haven't finished higher than ninth in the SEC in ESPN's recruiting rankings any of the past five years. There are only four players on Mississippi State's roster that Alabama seriously recruited all the way to the end and/or offered out of high school, and one of those, offensive tackle Damien Robinson, isn't playing this season after tearing his ACL in the preseason.
Nonetheless, here the Bulldogs are, unbeaten with wins over Auburn, LSU and Texas A&M and hell-bent on debunking the myth that you can't win big in the SEC primarily with three-star prospects.
"If you get too caught up in the hype of recruiting, if you spend too much time trying to win signing day instead of getting the guys for your program, in the end, you can hurt your program and set yourself off in the wrong direction," Mullen said. "It's great if you win signing day and have all these great players. That can help you an awful lot, but you better make sure that they were great players in your evaluations and didn't just have a lot of stars."
Mullen and his staff haven't been blinded by stars and instead have trusted their eyes and evaluations. In fact, they've typically not wasted their time in going after the four-and five-star prospects unless they're from Mississippi. Sophomore defensive tackle Chris Jones was on everybody's list toward the end of his senior season and was ranked as one of the top defensive line prospects in the country. But when he committed to the Bulldogs the summer before his senior year, he weighed just 250 pounds and had yet to blow up on the recruiting scene.
"We try to do a great job of figuring out not where they are right then as high school players, but where they're going to be when they get put in a program," Mullen said. "At some of the little 1A schools in our state, they might have a bench, rack and a few weights for their weight room.
"Who knows what some of the kids are eating? Are they eating three good meals a day? Get them in a weight program, get them with a nutritionist and get them at the right position, and then see what you've got. We've had a lot of success with those types of kids from the state of Mississippi."
Of Mississippi State's 22 starters, only one was a four-star prospect coming out of high school -- sophomore linebacker Beniquez Brown of Florence, Alabama. He's one of the handful of players on Mississippi State's roster Alabama seriously recruited.
By comparison, of Alabama's 22 starters, 16 were four-stars or higher. And when you start looking at the two schools' classes over the past five years, the discrepancy is even wider.
Alabama has signed 88 players who were four-star prospects or higher over the past five classes, including nine five-star prospects. Mississippi State in that same span has signed 19 players who were four-star prospects and no five-star prospects.
To Alabama's credit, when the Crimson Tide get a five-star player, he usually leaves as a five-star player. There haven't been many busts under Saban in college. See Amari Cooper, T.J. Yeldon, Landon Collins and Cam Robinson -- and in years gone by -- Julio Jones, Mark Barron, Trent Richardson, Dee Milliner, D.J. Fluker and C.J. Mosley.
"One of the big things in recruiting is your ability as a program to develop players regardless of how they come in or what their accolades are relative to how they get rated," Saban said. "I think it's really, really important to have a good program all the way around. That's the key."
In Mississippi State's case, the Bulldogs have been building toward this season. They're a rarity these days in the SEC in that they have an exceptionally strong fifth-year senior class, guys who've been in the program since 2010.
So many times in the SEC, the blue-chip recruits who excel are off to the NFL in three or four years. But the Bulldogs have as many as 15 fifth-year seniors who are solid contributors, including 10 who are starters. Only one of those, reserve tight end Brandon Hill, was a four-star prospect. (Alabama has seven fifth-year players who are regular starters.)
It's a class that included three of the Bulldogs' starting offensive linemen -- center Dillon Day, right guard Ben Beckwith and left tackle Blaine Clausell -- and none of the three was even ranked by ESPN coming out of high school.
Day weighed 240 pounds when he graduated from high school and was asked to grayshirt. Beckwith was from a small private school (Benton Academy) and walked on, while Clausell played mostly basketball until he got to high school.
"In this day and age in college football, with all the underclassmen going out for the draft, it's very difficult to keep a team together for that long and gain that kind of experience and that kind of maturity," Saban said. "They've had those guys in their program for a long time and do a great job in their program of developing their players."
Even Mississippi State's most visible player, Heisman Trophy candidate Dak Prescott, was a three-star prospect coming out of Haughton, Louisiana, and didn't get much interest from LSU until late in the recruiting process.
As it turns out, that 2011 class was pretty good to the Bulldogs. Star linebacker Benardrick McKinney arrived on campus weighing 205 pounds after playing quarterback as a senior in high school. The 6-foot-5 McKinney now weighs 250 pounds and is being projected as a first-round NFL draft pick. Cornerback Taveze Calhoun also was a last-minute add after Jermaine Whitehead flipped to Auburn. Calhoun was likely headed to Jackson State before Mississippi State called.
"We're all better coaches when we have better players," Mullen said. "There are a lot of great football players in our state, enough that I believe we can win a championship here. Sometimes, though, you just have to be a little bit more patient in finding them and developing them."