If you haven't seen it yet, that big story I promised can be found right here. It's a look at the current state of Mississippi State's athletic program and where it might be headed under the new leadership of president Mark Keenum, AD Greg Byrne and football coach Dan Mullen. As with any story of this scale, there were plenty of good leftovers. So, a sampling, starting with lead Dog Keenum:

• On Byrne: "He’s done a good job in helping identify our needs, our facility needs on our campus for our athletic program, and working very hard to help secure resources to meet our facility needs."

• "We’ve got a lot of goals, a lot of exciting agendas for our university as we move forward. I know Greg does, and I know that Coach Mullen, his goal is to win championships for us in football. We could win next year, I don’t know, but we’re going to work together as a team, all of us working together, our collective administrative staff, our faculty leadership, to move and advance our university to the heights and recognition that it deserves."

From Byrne:

• On keeping up with the competition: "You can’t be all things to all people, but you have to have an extremely high energy level, especially at Mississippi State, where we are competing obviously against some very strong programs, and if we’re going to be outworked or outhustled or have somebody be more creative than us, then that’s going to be a challenge. We need to always make sure we’re continuing to be forward thinking and be hopefully ahead of the curve in the way we build our business."

• On current opportunities: "I think there’s a tremendous focus and interest by our fan base, and there’s tremendous support by the president, and there’s a tremendous commitment on our part, to do everything we can to make the program be as strong as possible, to have as many people involved in Mississippi State athletics and the university as possible. How that relates to the past, I think that would be better served by other people answering that."

From Mullen:

• On succeeding quickly: "I think with new people on board, I think it’s important for us to have success so people will believe in the direction we going in."

• On Byrne: "When I got to campus, what I saw was what I expected. Greg always was talking about this is what we need to do, this is what we need to improve."

Now from some others, starting with baseball coach John Cohen:

• On Mullen: "I think I like the innovation, I like the fact he wants to do new things. I think Dan also is a great communicator. I think he’s got that nice combination of wanting to be innovative but also wanting to use players’ strengths, molding his ideas around the strengths of his players."

• On basketball coach Rick Stansbury: "I think he’s one of the best coaches in any sport in the Southeastern Conference. I think what he has done for Mississippi State basketball, I think it’s amazing. I’m saying that as an alum who doesn’t know anything about it other than what I read and what I see."

From Stansbury:

• On Mullen: "I think that he really seems to be energetic, very excitable, and I know full of energy. I think that kind of seems to have rubbed off and created a lot of excitement among our fans. And that’s good. We all know that football has been and can be and should be the backbone of the athletic department."

I also had a good conversation with Byrne's predecessor, Larry Templeton:

• On Byrne: "I think he’s done a great job. I think there’s been some challenges in which they’ve handled tough decisions that they’ve handled quite well. It’s a tough job, and you’ve got to make tough decisions, and I think Greg has done that early this past year."

• On Keenum: "I don’t think he came in blind, he knew exactly what he was waking into. He’s got the enthusiasm and energy to lead our university for a long, long time. I think it’s great to have a Mississippi State guy running the ship."

• On Keenum, Byrne and Mullen staying together: "The longer they stay, the better the program will be, because sometimes I’m not sure everybody understands how difficult it is to compete in this conference. If we think the Tennessees and Floridas and LSUs are going to sit around and wait on us, we’re crazy. So you better be going full speed every day."