Southern Miss begins a new chapter Saturday when first-year head coach Charles Huff leads the Golden Eagles against in-state rival Mississippi State at M.M. Roberts Stadium. Kickoff is set for 11 a.m. CT in Hattiesburg, the first meeting in the Hub City since 2015 and the latest entry in a series that stretches back nine decades.
Huff, hired in December as the school’s 23rd head football coach after a 32–20 tenure at Marshall that included the 2024 Sun Belt championship, becomes the first sitting FBS head coach Southern Miss has brought in. His résumé includes stops at Alabama and Mississippi State, and his arrival has recalibrated expectations in Hattiesburg.
The series itself began in 1935 and has cycled through on-campus meetings, long pauses, and a memorable neutral-site run in Jackson at Mississippi Veterans Memorial Stadium. The signature game of that era remains Nov. 7, 1981, when the 20th ranked Golden Eagles edged 15th ranked State 7–6 before 64,112— at the time largest sports crowd in Mississippi history. That afternoon cemented the matchup as a statewide event.
Jackson hosted several more notable contests through the 1980s. The Golden Eagles hold a 6-4 record in the series from 1981-1990. The 1975–76 games, played in Starkville (75) and Hattiesburg (76) as forfeits on State’s side, due to having played an ineligible player.
Brett Favre faced State every year of his Southern Miss career and split the series 2–2. As a freshman and sophomore, he won back-to-back Jackson games—18–14 in 1987 and 38–21 in 1988. State answered during Favre’s junior and senior seasons: 26–23 in 1989 at Hattiesburg on Joel Logan’s 34-yard field goal with :04 left, then 13–10 in 1990 at Starkville on another late Logan kick (42 yards, 3:01 to play).
Before Favre, USM’s veer years under Bobby Collins produced the rivalry’s most famous stretch. Quarterback Reggie Collier—the first D-I QB to pass and rush for 1,000 yards in a season (1981)—and tailback Sammy Winder headlined a run of statement wins: 1978 at The Rock (22–17, Winder two 1-yard TDs), 1979 in Starkville (21–7), and the 1980 blowout in Starkville (42–14) with Collier running the show. The signature was Nov. 7, 1981 in Jackson: USM 7–6, sealed by the “Nasty Bunch” with two fourth-down stops after Winder’s goal-line TD; attendance set a state record and the victory anchored USM’s top-10 season. Wideout/return man Louis Lipps was part of that nucleus (USM ’80–83) before becoming a first-round pick of the Steelers.
On the Mississippi State side, the rivalry’s eras are stamped by a run of Bulldogs who changed games on their own. John Bond piloted the early-’80s wishbone through the Jackson showdowns, with Kent Hull anchoring the line and Johnnie Cooks roaming sideline-to-sideline for a defense built for tight finishes. At the turn of the ’90s, Joel Logan swung two straight meetings—hitting the winner with four seconds left in 1989 at The Rock, then drilling another late field goal in Starkville in 1990. The modern revival belonged to Dak Prescott, who authored efficient, controlled performances in 2014–15, throwing to reliable targets like Fred Ross and De’Runnya Wilson while Brandon Holloway flipped the field with a kickoff-return touchdown in Hattiesburg. Up front, disruptors such as Chris Jones helped tilt the trenches during that stretch. Taken together, those names—Bond, Hull, Cooks, Logan, Prescott, Ross, Wilson, Holloway, Jones—trace a through-line of Bulldog moments that have defined Mississippi State’s end of this series from the neutral-site years to the present.
After 1990, the rivalry went mostly dormant until a two-game renewal last decade. In 2014, Dak Prescott and Mississippi State opened the season with a 49–0 win in Starkville. The return game in 2015 drew a record crowd at The Rock, where State won 34–16 despite Nick Mullens throwing for 300-plus. Those back-to-back openers reintroduced a new generation of fans to the tone of the series: intense, statewide, and rarely short on storylines.
The most recent meeting, Nov. 18, 2023 in Starkville, was tighter than the final score. Mississippi State prevailed 41–20, but Southern Miss struck early and later pulled within one possession on Jakarius Caston’s 98-yard kickoff return with 7:52 to play before the Bulldogs closed it out.
Saturday’s opener layers those histories onto two programs seeking traction. For Southern Miss, Huff’s debut presents an immediate barometer against an SEC opponent and a chance to set a tone in front of a home crowd that has responded in big numbers to this matchup before. For Mississippi State, it’s an opportunity to reset after a difficult 2024 and to establish early identity under a revamped staff.
In terms of Hattiesburg history, tomorrow will be just the sixth meeting at M.M. Roberts Stadium—the previous five were 1935, 1976, 1978, 1989, and 2015. Mississippi State leads the series in Hattiesburg 4-1.
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