The Making Of The Dawg Pound Rock
November 01, 2023 | Football, Joel Coleman
In 1998, on the way to an SEC West title, Kenzaki Jones turned up the volume in Starkville.
STARKVILLE – It was one random day at football practice back in 1998, and Mississippi State was on the way to winning the Southeastern Conference Western Division championship when a group of players simply decided to have some fun. Little did anyone know at the time, that fun was the foundation for what would become one of the most iconic visuals in Bulldog football history.
The Dawg Pound Rock. Who can forget it?
The beat of Chuck Smooth's version of "Who Let The Dogs Out" would blare out of the Scott Field speakers, those in Maroon and White on the gridiron began bouncing and suddenly, Starkville was shaking.
The man who started it all was State's Kenzaki Jones. Now 25 years later, he still remembers the dance's origins well.
"It started with a group of us defensive backs and at the time, [defensive coordinator Joe Lee Dunn] wasn't doing a lot of subbing," Jones recalled. "There were about 15 of us in our meeting room, we were playing a nickel package and a lot of guys weren't getting the opportunity to play much. So, we ended up on special teams.
"One day in practice, we were just messing around. A couple of guys from Atlanta, they had this dance made popular by the rap group Outkast. We basically were just bouncing around together one day at practice, so I got the guys together and was like, 'Hey, we're going to come out on the field and bounce up and down and kind of rock back and forth. Then as we go to our spots, kind of ad lib.' Man, it went from that in practice to one day, we finally did it in the game."
Almost immediately, it caught on and became a can't-miss part of MSU game day.
Perhaps surprisingly, it was a bit of a coincidence that "Who Let The Dogs Out" became the track for the dance. Jones and company didn't pick out any song. They just had the moves down.
"But they just started playing the song on the PA system and we just kind of started attaching what we did with the beat on there with the song," Jones said. "It wasn't something we chose; it was just whoever was over the music kind of put it all together."
The routine caught everyone's attention, not just folks in Starkville.
"A newspaper reporter came to practice one day and asked what was going on," Jones said. "I said, 'Well, we play in The Dawg Pound, so we call it The Dawg Pound Rock.' It then just started taking off. It ended up that a couple of high schools locally were doing it. It even got national recognition."
It perhaps got a little too much recognition, which Jones thinks made the dance all the more memorable.
"It started being considered as a form of taunting the other team," Jones said. "So, after we did it a few times, we were no longer allowed to do it on the middle of the field and had to do it on the sideline. Which I think brought even more excitement to it since it became kind of a banned thing. But really, it was all about trying to motivate our fans and maybe give a little insight to people that's not on the field as much so maybe they could be seen a little bit."
New incarnations of The Dawg Pound Rock have been seen in the years since at Davis Wade Stadium, but no matter how many generations of Bulldogs dance, they'll do so on a dance floor laid by Jones and that legendary 1998 group.
This weekend, with many of the '98 Bulldogs back in the house for homecoming, the 25th anniversary of the Western Division title and the return of the iconic interlocking MSU logo, maybe – just maybe – The Dawg Pound Rock originators have one more dance left in them, too.
"If that's what they want to do, then we're gonna rock," Jones said. "I probably can't rock as much as I used to. I'm getting old now, but we'll still bounce around a little bit."