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They call it the Egg Bowl, but the annual Mississippi StateOle Miss football game has nothing to do with the state’s agricultural prowess. According to Department of Agriculture data, Iowa is actually the top producer of eggs in the United States (15%), followed by Ohio and Indiana (both 9%). Mississippi doesn’t even get a mention in this “Egg-STAT-ic” post from 2021.

So what’s the deal with the nickname? Well, it’s what happens when fans need something shiny to distract them from thoughts of malice and a newspaper headline writer decides to take matters into his own hands.

Let’s start with the trophy and the original nickname. Although the rivalry dates back to 1901 — State won the first game, Ole Miss the second — there was no postgame prize handed out until 1927. And the reason for the change was practical: Officials needed something to hold spectators’ attention once the game was over. A year earlier, a massive brawl had broken out among the fan bases. So both student bodies, in an effort to “foster clean sportsmanship,” commissioned a trophy to be called “The Golden Egg.” It was gold and glossy and beautiful … and because it was more obtuse than the common football and lacked any raised edges to mimic the stitching of a football, it looked exactly like a golden egg.

Fast-forward half a century and the game-day edition of The Clarion-Ledger in 1978. Executive editor Tom Patterson — perhaps tired of an unnecessarily wordy nickname, perhaps intent on a certain style of pun — wrote the headline, “Egg Bowl Is Up For Scramble.” And the Egg Bowl evolved from shorthand to a sort of official-unofficial nickname that both schools use interchangeably with The Battle for the Golden Egg.

But this is all backstory. They could call it The Battle for the Fuzzy Soybean (the state’s top agricultural export) and it would still be compelling. Although Alabama-Auburn, Michigan-Ohio State and Florida-Florida State might have more national relevance in terms of their impact on the national championship race, no rivalry week game produces more drama than Mississippi State-Ole Miss. (One SEC power broker once told ESPN’s Mark Schlabach that the rivalry “makes Ohio State-Michigan and Auburn-Alabama look like Sunday school.”) The first time they played, there was a one-hour delay because Ole Miss accused State of playing nonstudents.

There have been plenty of fights and more than enough pettiness shared between the two schools. When Dan Mullen was still the head coach of the Bulldogs, he refused to call the Rebs by their name. Instead, he simply referred to “The School Up North” in interviews. In-house game schedules made use of the slight, subbing in T.S.U.N. for Ole Miss.

The two current coaches are actually quite chummy these days, but the two programs can’t help but feud. They can’t even agree on basic facts. Although they both cite Ole Miss as the leader in the series with a record of 64-48-6, Mississippi State says the game has been played on Thanksgiving 27 times and Ole Miss puts the number at 30.

Whatever record book you subscribe to, the rivalry will be played for the 119th time this Thanksgiving (7 p.m. ET, ESPN). To get you ready, here are some of the most interesting games in Egg Bowl history.

1983: The Immaculate Deflection

Sometimes nicknames are misleading. The “Immaculate Deflection” wasn’t really a deflection at all — unless you believe in cosmic events. Mississippi State, which had surrendered a 17-0 lead and trailed 24-23 with 24 seconds left to play, had a game-winning field goal within its grasp. Artie Crosby attempted the 27-yard kick and it looked to be well on its way — good height, good line, good everything. State fans started celebrating. But then the ball just stopped at its apex. It was as if Mother Nature swatted it down herself, the strong wind gust sending the ball to the far left of the goalposts.

Mississippi State coach Emory Bellard marveled, “I’ve never seen a kick come backwards in my years of coaching. It was like something reached down and stopped the ball in flight.”


1999: The pick and the kick

This game might be the best in the rivalry’s history. It was one of those rare occasions when both schools were ranked: Ole Miss 23rd, Mississippi State 18th. The Rebs jumped out to a 20-6 lead, but the Bulldogs fought back to tie the game with only 27 seconds remaining.

And rather than play for overtime on the road, Ole Miss had Romaro Miller air it out downfield. Except Robert Bean deflected the pass and kicked it up in the air. Eugene Clinton got under it and caught the interception around the 50-yard line and ran the ball back to the 27 with 8 seconds left. Scott Westerfield then connected on the 44-yard game-winning field goal. Once Ole Miss went out of bounds on the kickoff return, fans rushed the field.


2013: Dak announces his arrival

Legends are made in rivalry games. Before Dak Prescott led Mississippi State to the No. 1 ranking in 2014 and before he set school records on his way to becoming a fourth-round draft pick a year later, he was a sophomore in his first season as a starter, dealing with an arm injury that knocked him out of the two games before the Egg Bowl. And for the first three quarters against Ole Miss, he stood on the sideline.

But, with the Bulldogs trailing by a field goal with 11 minutes left, Prescott persuaded Mullen to let him in the game. After knocking off the rust during his first drive, he drove the offense 59 yards on 13 plays to secure a game-tying field goal. Then, in overtime, he ran for the winning touchdown.


2019: The costly dog pee penalty

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Mississippi State escapes with a 21-20 victory after Ole Miss WR Elijah Moore was penalized for celebrating a touchdown by pretending to urinate like a dog and the Rebels missed the ensuing extra point.

First, there needs to be context about the Egg Bowl to end all Egg Bowls. Because if you thought the 2019 game was the first time an Ole Miss player faked urinating on Mississippi State’s field, you’d be wrong. Two years earlier, after a pregame scuffle, DK Metcalf scored a touchdown late in the third quarter, hiked his leg to mimic a dog peeing and incurred a 15-yard penalty.

And just to make sure the fire was still burning before the return trip to Starkville, let’s not forget A.J. Brown’s would-be touchdown at the end of a third-quarter blowout in Oxford and the pushing and shoving that turned into a bench-clearing brawl. To punctuate the lack of civility, referees assessed a penalty to every player on both teams.

OK, now on to 2019. There have been wild plays and wild finishes throughout Egg Bowl history, but no game has produced more fireworks than the one in 2019. After playing to a tie in the first half, the Bulldogs went ahead on a Garrett Shrader 5-yard touchdown run in the third quarter. And it looked as if that was that as Ole Miss punted twice and threw an interception in the fourth quarter. But then, with 2 minutes left, Matt Corral, who had come on in relief of starter John Rhys Plumlee, drove the Rebs 80 yards on 11 plays. On the 2-yard line with only 4 seconds remaining, Corral found Elijah Moore in the end zone for what looked like the tying score. Except Moore repeated Metcalf’s antics, hiked his leg right in front of a referee and was flagged for unsportsmanlike conduct. The touchdown held, but you can guess what happened next. Pushed back 15 yards from the penalty, Luke Logan missed the point after attempt and State won.

In a game in which both coaches were on the hot seat, neither survived. Ole Miss fired Matt Luke days later and replaced him with headline-grabbing Lane Kiffin. Not to be outdone, Mississippi State fired Joe Moorhead and got a big name of its own in Mike Leach.

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Baffert’s Rodriguez wins Wood, enters Derby field

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Baffert's Rodriguez wins Wood, enters Derby field

Rodriguez led all the way to win the $750,000 Wood Memorial on Saturday, earning enough points to move into the 20-horse field for next month’s Kentucky Derby.

Breaking from the rail, the Bob Baffert-trained colt ran 1 1/8 miles on a fast track in 1:48.15 under Hall of Famer Mike Smith in light rain and 45-degree temperatures at Aqueduct in New York. Rodriguez won by 3 1/2 lengths.

The victory was worth 100 qualifying points for the May 3 Derby, potentially giving Baffert three entrants as he seeks a record-setting seventh victory in his return to the race from which he was banned for three years.

Later Saturday, Baffert was to saddle Citizen Bull, last year’s 2-year-old champion, and Barnes in the $500,000 Santa Anita Derby in California, where it was sunny and 82 degrees.

He sent Rodriguez to New York to split up his Derby contenders. The colt was sent off at 7-2 odds in the 10-horse field and paid $9.30 to win the 100th edition of the Wood. He is a son of 2020 Kentucky Derby winner Authentic.

“Bob told me this horse is probably quicker than you think,” Smith said. “He can get uptight pretty easy, and the whole key was just letting him alone out there. I don’t think he necessarily has to have the lead. He just wants to be left alone.”

Smith has twice won the Kentucky Derby. Rodriguez would be his first mount since 2022. At 59, he would be the oldest jockey to win.

“That’s up to all the owners and Bob,” Smith said. “I was glad they pulled me off the bench and I hit a 3-shot for them.”

Grande, trained by Todd Pletcher, was second. He went from having zero qualifying points to 50, which should get him into the Derby starting gate for owner Mike Repole, who is 0 for 7 in the Derby.

Passion Rules was third. Captain Cook, the 9-5 favorite, finished fourth for trainer Rick Dutrow, who hasn’t had a Derby runner since 2010 after winning the 2008 race with Big Brown.

The $1.25 million Blue Grass Stakes at Keeneland was postponed from Saturday to Tuesday due to heavy rain and potential flooding in the region. That race and the Lexington Stakes on April 12 are the final Derby preps of the season.

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Nebraska transfer WR Gilmore dismissed from team

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Nebraska transfer WR Gilmore dismissed from team

LINCOLN, Neb. — Nebraska receiver Hardley Gilmore IV, who transferred from Kentucky in January, has been dismissed from the team, coach Matt Rhule announced Saturday.

The second-year player from Belle Glade, Florida, had come to Nebraska along with former Kentucky teammate Dane Key and receivers coach Daikiel Shorts Jr. and had received praise from teammates and coaches for his performance in spring practice.

Rhule did not disclose a reason for removing Gilmore.

“Nothing outside the program, nothing criminal or anything like that,” Rhule said. “Just won’t be with us anymore.”

Gilmore was charged with misdemeanor assault in December for allegedly punching someone in the face at a storage facility in Lexington, Kentucky, the Lexington Herald Leader reported on Jan. 2.

Gilmore played in seven games as a freshman for the Wildcats and caught six passes for 153 yards. He started against Murray State and caught a 52-yard touchdown pass on Kentucky’s opening possession. He was a consensus four-star recruit who originally chose Kentucky over Penn State and UCF.

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What are torpedo bats? Are they legal? What to know about MLB’s hottest trend

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What are torpedo bats? Are they legal? What to know about MLB's hottest trend

The opening weekend of the 2025 MLB season was taken over by a surprise star — torpedo bats.

The bowling pin-shaped bats became the talk of the sport after the Yankees’ home run onslaught on the first Saturday of the season put it in the spotlight and the buzz hasn’t slowed since.

What exactly is a torpedo bat? How does it help hitters? And how is it legal? Let’s dig in.

Read: An MIT-educated professor, the Yankees and the bat that could be changing baseball


What is a torpedo bat and why is it different from a traditional MLB bat?

The idea of the torpedo bat is to take a size format — say, 34 inches and 32 ounces — and distribute the wood in a different geometric shape than the traditional form to ensure the fattest part of the bat is located where the player makes the most contact. Standard bats taper toward an end cap that is as thick diametrically as the sweet spot of the barrel. The torpedo bat moves some of the mass on the end of the bat about 6 to 7 inches lower, giving it a bowling-pin shape, with a much thinner end.


How does it help hitters?

The benefits for those who like swinging with it — and not everyone who has swung it likes it — are two-fold. Both are rooted in logic and physics. The first is that distributing more mass to the area of most frequent contact aligns with players’ swing patterns and provides greater impact when bat strikes ball. Players are perpetually seeking ways to barrel more balls, and while swings that connect on the end of the bat and toward the handle probably will have worse performance than with a traditional bat, that’s a tradeoff they’re willing to make for the additional slug. And as hitters know, slug is what pays.

The second benefit, in theory, is increased bat speed. Imagine a sledgehammer and a broomstick that both weigh 32 ounces. The sledgehammer’s weight is almost all at the end, whereas the broomstick’s is distributed evenly. Which is easier to swing fast? The broomstick, of course, because shape of the sledgehammer takes more strength and effort to move. By shedding some of the weight off the end of the torpedo bat and moving it toward the middle, hitters have found it swings very similarly to a traditional model but with slightly faster bat velocity.


Why did it become such a big story so early in the 2025 MLB season?

Because the New York Yankees hit nine home runs in a game Saturday and Michael Kay, their play-by-play announcer, pointed out that some of them came from hitters using a new bat shape. The fascination was immediate. While baseball, as an industry, has implemented forward-thinking rules in recent seasons, the modification to something so fundamental and known as the shape of a bat registered as bizarre. The initial response from many who saw it: How is this legal?


OK. How is this legal?

Major League Baseball’s bat regulations are relatively permissive. Currently, the rules allow for a maximum barrel diameter of 2.61 inches, a maximum length of 42 inches and a smooth and round shape. The lack of restrictions allows MLB’s authorized bat manufacturers to toy with bat geometry and for the results to still fall within the regulations.


Who came up with the idea of using them?

The notion of a bowling-pin-style bat has kicked around baseball for years. Some bat manufacturers made smaller versions as training tools. But the version that’s now infiltrating baseball goes back two years when a then-Yankees coach named Aaron Leanhardt started asking hitters how they should counteract the giant leaps in recent years made by pitchers.

When Yankees players responded that bigger barrels would help, Leanhardt — an MIT-educated former Michigan physics professor who left academia to work in the sports industry — recognized that as long as bats stayed within MLB parameters, he could change their geometry to make them a reality. Leanhardt, who left the Yankees to serve as major league field coordinator for the Miami Marlins over the winter, worked with bat manufacturers throughout the 2023 and 2024 seasons to make that a reality.


When did it first appear in MLB games?

It’s unclear specifically when. But Yankees slugger Giancarlo Stanton used a torpedo bat last year and went on a home run-hitting rampage in October that helped send the Yankees to the World Series. New York Mets star Francisco Lindor also used a torpedo-style bat last year and went on to finish second in National League MVP voting.


Who are some of the other notable early users of torpedo bats?

In addition to Stanton and Lindor, Yankees hitters Anthony Volpe, Austin Wells, Jazz Chisholm Jr., Cody Bellinger and Paul Goldschmidt have used torpedoes to great success. Others who have used them in games include Tampa Bay’s Junior Caminero, Minnesota’s Ryan Jeffers and Toronto’s Davis Schneider. And that’s just the beginning. Hundreds more players are expected to test out torpedoes — and perhaps use them in games — in the coming weeks.


How is this different from a corked bat?

Corking bats involves drilling a hole at the end of the bat, filling it in and capping it. The use of altered bats allows players to swing faster because the material with which they replace the wood — whether it’s cork, superballs or another material — is lighter. Any sort of bat adulteration is illegal and, if found, results in suspension.


Could a rule be changed to ban them?

Could it happen? Sure. Leagues and governing bodies have put restrictions on equipment they believe fundamentally altered fairness. Stick curvature is limited in hockey. Full-body swimsuits made of polyurethane and neoprene are banned by World Aquatics. But officials at MLB have acknowledged that the game’s pendulum has swung significantly toward pitching in recent years, and if an offensive revolution comes about because of torpedo bats — and that is far from a guarantee — it could bring about more balance to the game. If that pendulum swings too far, MLB could alter its bat regulations, something it has done multiple times already this century.


So the torpedo bat is here to stay?

Absolutely. Bat manufacturers are cranking them out and shipping them to interested players with great urgency. Just how widely the torpedo bat is adopted is the question that will play out over the rest of the season. But it has piqued the curiosity of nearly every hitter in the big leagues, and just as pitchers toy with new pitches to see if they can marginally improve themselves, hitters will do the same with bats.

Comfort is paramount with a bat, so hitters will test them during batting practice and in cage sessions before unleashing them during the game. As time goes on, players will find specific shapes that are most comfortable to them and best suit their swing during bat-fitting sessions — similar to how golfers seek custom clubs. But make no mistake: This is an almost-overnight alteration of the game, and “traditional or torpedo” is a question every big leaguer going forward will ask himself.

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