Mississippi State promotes 2024 SEC schedule with nightmare-inducing AI images of rival mascots

The 2024 SEC schedule pairings were released on Wednesday night, bringing with it a wave of excitement as fans look forward to welcoming Oklahoma and Texas to the league officially.

With the schedule reveal came a wave of graphics put out by the various teams, to help fans easily visualize the 2024 SEC schedule.

Some even incorporated the use of generative AI into their graphics, leading to some… well, wild results. Mississippi State did just that, dropping a schedule graphic that had some hilarious — and even hard to understand — facets to it. Check it out below.

More info: https://t.co/PhFb9so8HT pic.twitter.com/zaDrbuZtaI

— Mississippi State Football (@HailStateFB) June 15, 2023

OK, at first glance it looks a bit ridiculous, but you can at least see what the AI overlords were attempting in certain spots in the image.

Like the image for Florida, which appears to be a distorted version of the Geico gecko, only as an alligator biped with jorts because, you know, Florida.

Or the Ole Miss version, which even Katy Perry would be proud of, a representation of the “landshark” theme the Rebels have played on for the last several years.

Then there are some hard to understand ones out there on the 2024 SEC schedule reveal graphic.

Like Texas A&M, for example. The Aggies are represented by a set of legs with a large thumbs up crudely affixed to the waist. The thumbs up sign is supposed to be representative of “Gig ‘Em” but ultimately looks like something out of a drunken nightmare.

Tennessee is shockingly Syracuse-esque, with a James and the Giant Peach looking orange plopped on top of a set of legs with checkerboard pants.

A few of the others — Arkansas, Missouri, Georgia and Texas — are all relatively straightforward AI versions of the program’s respective animal mascot turned into biped form.

In any case, Mississippi State also released a video (embedded above) showing how the graphic came about with the use of AI.

The Athletic interview a couple of the Mississippi State staffers responsible for creating the very viral 2024 SEC schedule image, walking through the process of how everything unfolded.

It’s well worth checking out.

But the bottom line is Mississippi State’s schedule graphic did exactly what it was supposed to. It got the people going.

“I was really worried it wouldn’t go over well, that people might not realize it’s a joke and ask why we’re designing terrible graphics,” Mississippi State director of creative design John Swinney said. “The video really sold the (joke) part of it. It’s easily the most interacted-with graphic I’ve ever made. It’s done exactly what we hoped for. Every 10 minutes I check it.”