(Photo from Ole Miss Athletics)
- The Egg Bowl is Mississippi-on-Mississippi violence, and it matters.
In the college football product that we’ve created, people come and go.
Players play for multiple teams, sometimes for just a season at a time.
Playing for your teammates, for your school, for the people who care so much about the program, are rally cries with less impact than in days gone by.
Many fans liked those days better, when they walked on campus when the fall colors changed and the things that mattered to them also mattered to their players.
Just when you admit that times are different, that the game has changed and that you can let go of college football or change with it, there’s the Egg Bowl.
In Mississippi, we take pride in the weird. We embrace it.
In Oxford Friday, there was chippiness but no fights, no mock urination, no – at least visible – flying birds from a player of one team to fans of the other.
There were no jabs from coaches, no “school up north” or other passive aggressive poking of the other guys.
No fights, still weird
The weird, though, came in the sense that a team that had not won an SEC game and had lost by three touchdowns six times this season led the team with the explosive offense for much of the first half and remained just a touchdown behind until the middle of the fourth quarter.
I didn’t predict this, but I warned of it.
There was a part of me that believed, even sans Trey Harris, that Jordan Watkins and Cayden Lee would make big catches and that Ole Miss would pull away, that eventually the Egg Bowl would become another three-touchdown loss for Mississippi State.
I warned, though, that a team in control of its playoff fate just a week before, only to see its chances reduced to near nothing after losing at Florida, could be mentally off its game.
I believed the Bulldogs would play hard because amid the chaos the effort has been there.
But I discounted the weird and thought the Rebels would pull away faster and farther than they did.
“This is a huge game in this state, and I think we felt that early, even though we told them records don’t matter. Weird things happen in these Egg Bowls,” Ole Miss coach Lane Kiffin said.
In his postgame, State coach Jeff Lebby talked about turnovers and opportunities lost.
Lebby has watched his team play hard for stretches, and for him, maybe State being in position to win didn’t seem weird.
The questions for Lebby were less about the game – many Bulldogs fans feared the worst – and more about the plan to get the program back on track in Year 2 of his administration.
A quick turn for Lebby won’t happen without a handful of key transfer portal signees. That’s how quick turns happen in 2024, and only quick turns are acceptable.
Kiffin, who many thought wouldn’t be around for five Egg Bowls, has won four of them.
He’s made the Rebels nationally prominent through his management of the portal.
Few locals with impact on offense
In Egg Bowl 2024, only one Mississippi State player who registered offensive statistics had any background in Mississippi.
Johnnie Daniels, a junior running back, played at Crystal Springs High School then Copiah-Lincoln CC.
He rushed six times for 10 yards and had one catch for 4 yards.
Same at Ole Miss, and that guy, JJ Pegues of Oxford, is a defensive tackle.
It was a little better on the defensive side.
State’s top two tacklers, Stone Blanton and Issac Smith, are from Jackson and Fulton.
Pegues again carried the Mississippi banner for Ole Miss, finishing with six tackles and 1 ½ tackles for loss.
Walter Nolen has a mixed Mississippi-Tennessee background.
Natives Zavian Harris, Suntarine Perkins and Jamarious Brown were there too.
Foreign operatives from distant lands like Florida, Georgia, Texas, and this year, London and Australia, are not uncommon.
The objective is to win the game, and when that happens previous addresses are irrelevant.
The next best thing is when the out-of-state player gets it, and the Egg Bowl matters.
Like it does for Jaxson Dart.
Though they failed to pull away, the Rebels seemed in control in the second half. Still, leading by only three or six left them just one big play from disaster.
State quarterback Michael Van Buren looked better on the deep balls throughout the day than did Dart but ultimately couldn’t hit the big play enough to matter. Dart, who faced a three safety-deep look for much of the day, finally hit on his 19-yard touchdown pass to tight end Caden Prieskorn in the early minutes of the fourth quarter.
Kiffin mentioned that Dart continues to feel the pain of the ankle he twisted early against Georgia on Nov. 9.
“He cares about this team. He cares about this university. That doesn’t happen a lot in college football. This guy’s special. I hope people appreciate that,” Kiffin said.
Though it once mattered to more players, Kiffin is on the mark there.
The people care, too, regardless of circumstances. The Egg Bowl is Mississippi-on-Mississippi violence, and it matters.
It was evident with social media commentary among State fans, some taking pride in the Bulldogs’ performance, others angry that Lebby’s offense couldn’t score with a first-and-goal from the 1 late in the game.
Dart’s take on ‘messy’ Egg Bowl
It was evident when 67,896 crowded Vaught-Hemingway Stadium on a cold day made colder by winds out of the north.
And it was evident when Dart and Kiffin were on the field taking pictures with the Egg Bowl trophy an hour after the game.
“The game’s always messy,” Dart said, adding that he drew on feelings from the Rebels’ 2022 loss to then-Mike Leach’s Bulldogs.
“My first year here when we lost it was like the worst thing ever. It carried on until we played them again. After that game I made a note to myself that I would never lose this game again. That was something that I cared about and was very passionate about.”
In modern day college football Dart is a little different. He’s now spent three years at his second school and has developed an attachment, he says, to Kiffin and to Ole Miss fans who have embraced him and his family.
He’s learned some Egg Bowl lessons along the way. The Egg Bowl matters.
“There’s a lot of hate in this rivalry. That’s just how it is. I think I didn’t fully understand it until I experienced both sides of it.”
Parrish Alford
