The Egg Bowl (traditionally named the “Battle for the Golden Egg”) is the name given to the Mississippi State–Ole Miss football rivalry. It 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 64–46–6 through the 2022 season. The game is a typical example of the intrastate sports rivalries between public universities. These games are usually between one bearing the state's name alone, and the land-grant university, often styled as "State University." Like most such rivalries, it is contested at the end of the regular season, in this case 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 2022. The game now alternates between the two respective campuses. Contests in odd-numbered years are played in Starkville, Mississippi at Miss St, and even-numbered years in Oxford, Mississippi at Ole Miss. Series history The first game in the series was played on October 28, 1901, at Mississippi State. Mississippi State, then known as the Mississippi A&M College and nicknamed the Aggies, 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 crowd; for many years Vaught–Hemingway Stadium in Oxford seated only about 32,000 and Scott Field in Starkville seated only about 31,000. 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.