'Huge game' awaits Mississippi State football after bye week

This year's edition of the annual Egg Bowl rivalry will have a lot more at stake than just instate bragging rights for a year.

Mississippi State Bulldogs quarterback Blake Shapen (2) celebrates after scoring a touchdown against the Missouri Tigers during the second half of the game at Faurot Field at Memorial Stadium. | Denny Medley-Imagn Images

One doesn’t even need to venture in the land of social media and message boards to know Mississippi State’s fans are not happy.

While it does make for entertaining reading (y’all are crazy and I love it), a lot of what’s being said would be forgotten if the Bulldogs win their final game of the season.

“It’s important to a lot of people,” Mississippi State coach Jeff Lebby said after Saturday’s loss to Missouri. “It’s dang sure important to me and it’s dang sure important to a ton of guys in the locker room.

“My stress is to everybody in there, are you doing everything you possibly can to not leave it up to chance? We need to be obsessed with it, all day, every day, to be able to go chase this thing and play the way we need to play Friday morning at 11 to be able to go win.”

A win in the Egg Bowl always comes with instate bragging rights, but a Mississippi State win this year would make the Bulldogs bowl-eligible and eliminate No. 7 Ole Miss from a spot in the College Football Playoff.

A win wouldn’t mean the problems aren’t real and the “concerns” expressed aren’t valid, but winning cures all types of wounds.

The problem for Mississippi State is that the odds are not in their favor.

Official betting lines haven’t been released yet (at least not on FanDuel Sportsbook), but ESPN’s matchup predictor gives the Rebels a 78.2 percent chance at winning the Egg Bowl.

When other odds and SP+ Projections are made for this year’s Egg Bowl, you can expect similar odds. But that’s nothing new for Mississippi State who, despite all of the negative things that have happened since it started 4-0, can still accomplish its biggest goal of going to a bowl game.

“For our guys, and I will continue to talk about it, we have a ton in front of us,” Lebby said. “We all understand what (the Egg Bowl) game means. It also gives us the ability to be bowl eligible in Year 2 as we’re building this thing.

“It’s a huge game for us, huge game for our university, our program, everybody individually and collectively. I have great belief that our guys will respond the right way. We need to play in a way that gives us the opportunity to go win. But that will happen through the preparation.”

The Bulldogs have plenty of time to prepare for an Ole Miss team who can also achieve its goal of making the CFP. Luckily, Lebby and his staff won’t have to deal with the outside distractions that Rebels’ coach Lane Kiffin is dealing with.

Unless he looks at those message boards.