At the 2014 Egg Bowl inside Vaught-Hemingway Stadium in Oxford, Miss., an Ole Miss team headed to the Peach Bowl defeated a Mississippi State team bound for the Orange Bowl.
Two years later, the setting may be the same, but the competitors are very different.
After reaching “New Year’s Six” bowl games two years ago and combining for 19 wins last season, when the Rebels made another “New Year’s Six” appearance and demolished Oklahoma State in the Sugar Bowl, the two Magnolia State programs enter Saturday’s matchup mired in disappointment. Dan Mullen’s MSU Bulldogs are 4-7 but could just as easily be 7-4, while Hugh Freeze’s Rebels are 5-6 despite having led in all 11 games.
The latest collapse by Ole Miss occurred last Saturday night at Vanderbilt, when the Rebels grabbed a 10-0 lead before getting flattened 38-17. Ole Miss has scored first in 10 of its 11 games.
“I frequently get asked by a lot of young guys who want to get into coaching what my advice would be,” Freeze said in a news conference after the game in Nashville. “I tell them all the time, ‘If you do anything besides this, you need to do it.’ This is a brutal roller-coaster on you and your family and the young men you work with.”