Golden Eagles

Hattiesburg sits in the pine belt of southern Mississippi, and for much of the last century the city's autumn Saturdays have run on the fortunes of the University of Southern Mississippi's football team. Locals call them the Golden Eagles.

The program traces back to 1912, though the Golden Eagles name itself did not arrive until decades later. What stuck was a run of success that peaked twice at the Division II level: national championships in 1958 and 1962 remain the high-water mark of that era, won before Southern Miss climbed into the top tier of college football.

Conference USA became the stage for the next chapter. Southern Miss claimed the league title five times between 1996 and 2011, a stretch that also produced back-to-back bowl wins — the Liberty Bowl in 1997 and 1999, then the New Orleans Bowl in 2004 and 2005.

Home games are played at M. M. Roberts Stadium, which holds 36,000.

All of it began quietly enough in 1912, with a football team fielded by a young teachers' college long before anyone called it Southern Miss, let alone Golden Eagles.