The Egg Bowl (traditionally named the Battle for the Golden Egg) is an American college football rivalry game played annually between Southeastern Conference members Mississippi State University and Ole Miss (The University of Mississippi).
The teams first played each other in 1901. Since 1927 the winning squad has been awarded possession of The Golden Egg trophy. The game has been played every year since 1944, making it the tenth longest uninterrupted series in the United States. Ole Miss leads the series 67–46–6 through the 2025 season.
It is contested at the end of the regular season, during the Thanksgiving weekend. The Egg Bowl has been played on Thanksgiving 23 times, including from 1998 to 2003, in 2013, and from 2017 to 2023. The game now alternates between the two campuses. Contests in odd-numbered years are played in Starkville, at Mississippi State and even-numbered years in Oxford, at Ole Miss.
Series history The first game in the series was played on October 28, 1901, at Mississippi State. Mississippi State, defeated Ole Miss, nicknamed the Red and Blue at that time, by a final score of 17–0. The two squads met on the gridiron every year from 1901 until 1911 and then, after a three-year hiatus, resumed the series in 1915; since that 1915 meeting the two teams have met on the field every season with the exception of the 1943 season, when neither school fielded teams due to World War II.
From 1973 through 1990, the game was played at Mississippi Veterans Memorial Stadium in Jackson, which seats about 62,000. The stadium was centrally located in the state and the state's only venue capable of seating the anticipated crowds. For many years Vaught–Hemingway Stadium in Oxford seated only about 32,000 and Scott Field in Starkville seated only about 31,000. Indeed, well into the 1990s, both schools used Veterans Memorial Stadium as an alternative home venue. Both campus venues have been considerably expanded and are now capable of accommodating the expected crowds, and both have been continually upgraded to the point where they are superior in amenities to Veterans Memorial Stadium.
Mississippi State dominated the first part of the series with a 17–5–1 record against Ole Miss. Ole Miss now leads the series, in part due to its performance in the rivalry under Johnny Vaught, who went 19–2–4 against Mississippi State, and later by Billy Brewer who went 8-3. Ole Miss has a similar advantage in winning percentage in games played both in Oxford and Starkville.
The Golden Egg trophy The Bulldogs (Mississippi State) dominated the early days of the series including a 13-game A&M winning streak from 1911 to 1925 during which time the bulldogs outscored the Red and Blue by a combined 327–33. Through 1925 Ole Miss had won only five times out of 23 total contests. In 1926 when the Red and Blue ended their 13-game losing streak by defeating A&M 7–6 in Starkville, the Ole Miss fans rushed the field with some trying to tear the goalposts down. Mississippi State fans did not take well to the Ole Miss fans destroying their property and fights broke out. Some State fans defended the goal posts with wooden chairs, and several injuries were reported. According to one account:
To prevent such events in the future, students of the two schools created The Golden Egg, a large trophy which has been awarded to the winning team each year since 1927. In the event of a tie, the school that won the game the previous year kept the trophy for the first half of the new year and then the trophy was sent to the other school for the second half of the new year.
The trophy is a large football-shaped brass piece mounted to a wooden base. The footballs used in American football in the 1920s were considerably more ovoid and blunter than those in use today and similar to the balls still used in rugby; the trophy thus, to modern eyes, more resembles an egg than a football.
The game was given the nickname "Egg Bowl" by The Clarion-Ledger sportswriter Tom Patterson in 1979.
Notable games
1901: The first ever meeting between the two schools was delayed for 40 minutes because of a dispute between the rivals over the eligibility of A&M's Norvin E. (Billy) Green, who had played for the Ole Miss squad the year before. Eventually it was agreed that Green would not play and the game kicked off with A&M going on to win by a score of 17–0. 1902: The second contest resulted in the first Ole Miss victory by a score of 21–0. 1903: The third meeting between the Aggies and the Red and Blue resulted in the first tie in series history and marked the first time that neither team was shut out. A&M entered the contest undefeated, untied, and unscored upon. A&M led 6–0 for most of the games, but Ole Miss tied the score with less than a minute to go when halfback Fred Elmer went 70 yards for a touchdown and Edgar Moss kicked the extra point to make it 6–6 (touchdowns were worth 5 points at the time). Those were the only points that the Aggies would surrender that season, as they went to tie Tulane in their final contest of the season by a score of 0–0. 1904: This marked the first time that the game was played off campus, with the two squads meeting at the Mississippi and West Alabama Fairgrounds as part of the fair. Ole Miss went on to win 17–5. 1905: This game featured two firsts, the first time the game was played in Jackson and the first time the game was played on Thanksgiving. The games was held at the Mississippi State Fairgrounds and because there was no barrier to stop them, the crowd poured out onto the playing field for a closer look at what, for many, was their first college game. The curious got so close that at one point, the Ole Miss captain refused to continue until the field was cleared. A&M won 11–0. 1906 – Passing Fancy: James C. Elmer of Ole Miss caught the first forward pass in the history of the rivalry. Elmer's kicking accounted for 13 points in a 29-5 rout. For the first time the game marked the end of the season for not one but both teams. 1907: Ole Miss and Mississippi A&M played a scoreless first half in extremely muddy conditions. Before the second half began, Ole Miss head coach Frank A. Mason brought out an urn filled with whisky-laced coffee in an attempt to warm his players. Sloppy second-half play resulted in a 15-0 A&M victory. After the game, many of the Ole Miss players blamed Mason for the loss. When asked if his team was returning home that night, Mason replied "Yes, the team is going north at 11 o'clock. I'm going in another direction, and hope I never see them again!" It would be his final game as head coach. 1908: With a 44–6 victory the Aggies became the first of the squads to claim consecutive wins in the series. A&M scored a total of eight touchdowns (only worth five points at that time) in the game. 1911: Earlier that week a new set of stands had been added on the east side of The Fairgrounds in Jackson. As the teams prepared for kickoff the new stands collapsed injuring at least 60 people, some seriously. Despite the disaster, the game proceeded without interruption and resulted in A&M winning 6-0. The Aggies would end the season in Havana, Cuba for their first ever postseason appearance, a 12–0 victory over the Havana Athletic Club in the Bacardi Bowl. 1915: After a three-year hiatus the two squads met on the gridiron in a game played in Tupelo. A&M rolled to a 65–0 victory. The contest remains the most one-sided in series history. 1918 – Gotcha! Twice!: This marked the only time that the two teams would square off twice in the same season. A&M won the first game in Starkville 34–0 and completed the sweep taking the second in Oxford 13–0. The Rebels were coached that season by legendary future A&M baseball coach C.R. "Dudy" Noble 1926 – A&M's Streak Ends: Ole Miss ended a 13-game losing streak to A&M with a 7-6 win in Starkville. The ensuing melee between fans prompted the purchase of a football-shaped trophy to be awarded to the winner each year upon their victory, and kept on their respective campus until the game was played again the following year. 1927 – First Game for The Trophy: In the first game after the commissioning of the Golden Egg Trophy was played on Thanksgiving Day in Oxford. Ole Miss posted back-to-back wins against A&M for the first time since 1909–10, winning 20–12. 1936: Mississippi State got its first win in the series since the creation of the Golden Egg ending an Ole Miss 10-game unbeaten streak (9–0–1) in the series by a final score of 26–6. 1947: In the first game in the series for legendary Ole Miss coach John Vaught, the Rebels won 33-14, beginning an unbeaten streak for Ole Miss that would not be broken until seventeen years later. 1964: The 17-year unbeaten streak (14–0–3) by Ole Miss against MSU came to an end as the Bulldogs claimed a 20–17 victory. 1973: In the first game between the Rebels and the Bulldogs in Jackson since 1925 and the final game of Coach Vaught's career (he returned as Ole Miss coach in an interim capacity earlier in the season), Ole Miss defeated State 38-10. This would be the largest margin of victory for Ole Miss in Jackson in the modern era to this day, and the largest ever since a 30-0 Ole Miss victory in Mississippi's capital city since 1910. 1976 and 1977: Mississippi State won the Egg Bowl these two years but had to forfeit the wins due to NCAA sanctions. 1983 – The Immaculate Deflection, or the Wind Bowl: In what has become known to Ole Miss and State fans as "The Immaculate Deflection," the 1983 Egg Bowl played in Jackson is notable because the wind helped preserve Ole Miss' 24–23 victory. Down by a point with 24 seconds left in the game, State kicked what would have been a 27-yard game-winning field goal. Bulldog freshman kicker Artie Cosby kicked it straight and long and what appeared to be over the crossbar, but as the ball reached the goal posts, a 40 mph gusting wind suspended the ball midair before it reached the uprights, after which it fell short of the goal post, securing the victory for the Rebels. 1986: With a 24-3 victory in a rainstorm and on a muddy field, Ole Miss defeated State four years in a row, the longest on-the-field winning streak for the Rebels since 1958-1962, a streak that stands to date. 1990: In what is the last game of the series to this day played in Jackson and in what would be the final game for Coach Rockey Felker of Mississippi State, the Rebels overcame a somnolent start to win 21-9. In the ten years from 1980-1989 or 1981-1990, by either decade measurement, the Rebels defeated the Bulldogs in Jackson eight out of ten times. 1991 – Back to Campus: In the first Egg Bowl played on either campus since 1972 and the first played at Starkville since 1971, first year head coach Jackie Sherrill led the Bulldogs to a 24–9 win, State's first over Ole Miss in Starkville since 1942, ending an 0–11–3 drought. 1992 – The Stand: In a defensive struggle that saw a combined 12 turnovers between the two, a goal line stand of epic proportions by the "Red Death" defense ultimately gave Ole Miss the win. State had 11 plays on consecutive possessions inside the Rebel 10 with under four minutes to play, but Ole Miss kept them out of the end zone. The first possession ended on a third down pass that was intercepted in the end zone by Michael Lowery who returned the ball out to the 2-yard line. A couple of plays later, Rebel running back Cory Philpot fumbled the ball back to the Dogs, the Rebels' 7th turnover on the day. On the ensuing possession, MSU had fourth and goal and the pass was incomplete. However, pass interference on Orlanda Truitt kept the drive alive, moving the ball to the 2. However, the next four plays resulted in negative yardage, with the final pass falling incomplete with only 20 seconds remaining. The Rebels won 17–10.