5 Things Mississippians Do at a High School Game That Nobody Else Would
Nearly 20 Mississippi high school football games hit the radio live on the same Friday night, according to SuperTalk Mississippi Media’s fall schedule.
That’s just the part you hear from home.
Inside the stadiums themselves, Mississippians keep up a whole set of game-night habits that would confuse people from other parts of the country.
These are the things Mississippians do at a high school game that nobody else would.
1. Little Brown Jug
Mississippians in the Pine Belt do something no scoreboard tracks: They’ve shown up for the Little Brown Jug game every single autumn since 1922.
WDAM, the Hattiesburg TV station, calls it the longest continuous rivalry in the state.
No hurricane broke the streak.
Laurel and Hattiesburg kept playing through wartime and through the region’s worst storms too.
According to the most common version of the story, two men riding the train to early games bet a jug of whiskey on the outcome.
That bet is why the trophy still carries the name today.
Whichever school wins each fall keeps the jug on display until the two teams meet again the next season.
In their most recent meeting, Hattiesburg held off Laurel 27-25 in the 105th meeting, stretching the Tigers’ hold on the jug to five straight games.
Whoever wins in Hattiesburg or Laurel each fall gets bragging rights, and a jug to prove it.
2. Seven Champions, One Weekend
High school fans pack the same stadium all weekend every December to watch seven different classes crown seven different state champions.
One trip covers every class.
The Mississippi High School Activities Association (MHSAA) has rotated the championship host among four college stadiums since 2016.
Vaught-Hemingway Stadium at Ole Miss, Davis Wade Stadium at Mississippi State, M.M. Roberts Stadium at Southern Miss, and Jackson State’s Veterans Memorial Stadium have all taken a turn.
This December, the trophies go out again at Davis Wade Stadium in Starkville, Mississippi State’s second year running as host.
One stadium hands out all seven trophies.
The smallest Class 1A schools kick off one afternoon, and the biggest Class 7A programs settle their title the next.
Fans who love an underdog can watch a tiny 1A team fight for a title.
Then they can walk to the same seats and watch a 7A powerhouse do the same thing hours later.
3. One Class, Three Trophies
Fans who follow MAIS high school football watch something MHSAA fans never see: One classification crowning three separate state champions in the same season.
One class crowns three champions.
The Midsouth Association of Independent Schools (MAIS) overhauled its playoff format in November 2024, splitting its largest classification into three separate brackets.
About 13.4 percent of MAIS teams playing 11-man football now end a season as a state champion of some kind.
That’s roughly four times the odds of an MHSAA public school team.
A team can miss the top bracket, land in Division II or Division III instead, and still walk away with a trophy in December.
MAIS fans checking whether their team is still alive have to scan three separate brackets, not one.
MAIS’s 8-Man Football, Explained
MAIS’s Class 1A football looks different from the games many Mississippians grew up watching.
The field runs 40 yards wide instead of the usual 53⅓ used in 11-man football.
Each side also fields three fewer players, eight instead of eleven.
Nationally, 8-man football tends to run higher-scoring than the standard game, partly because teams without a dedicated kicker often go for two points instead of one.
4. Chain Crew of the Week
The state’s high school athletic association puts a spotlight on one of the least noticed jobs at any football game: The chain crew.
Somebody holds the sticks.
Every week of the season, MHSAA and Mississippi Farm Bureau give one school’s chain crew a statewide feature.
The volunteers who carry the down markers up and down the sideline rarely get their names read out anywhere else in the country.
Wayne County, Oxford, Ocean Springs, Philadelphia: Crews from tiny towns and county-seat schools alike have all had their turn.
A Friday night job many fans never think twice about turns into a statewide shoutout, one school at a time.
5. Facing Alabama’s Best
Mississippi sends its best graduating seniors to face Alabama’s best every December, in a high school all-star game many out-of-staters have never heard of.
The two states settle it.
Coaches from both states have staged the Mississippi/Alabama All-Star Football Game for nearly four decades.
WLOX, the Gulf Coast TV station, counted the December 2025 meeting as the 39th annual game.
Alabama leads the all-time series by a wide margin, 28 wins to Mississippi’s 11 through that 39th meeting.
That most recent game ended 40-10 at M.M. Roberts Stadium in Hattiesburg, the same Southern Miss stadium that sometimes hosts the state’s high school championships.
Every one of those seniors grew up playing on a Friday night somewhere in the state, and this is the last high school snap many of them will ever take.
Psst! How much do you know about Mississippi high school football beyond Friday nights? Take our quiz and see how many you can get right.
Quiz
Mississippi Gridiron Trivia
How much do you know about Mississippi high school football beyond Friday nights? We bet you can’t get them all right. Prove us wrong?
Hall of Famer Brett Favre played his high school football at which Mississippi school?
Nineteen Games, One Dial
Local radio stations don't slow down once the Friday night games kick off.
SuperTalk Mississippi Media carries 19 games live across 12 stations every week of the season, reaching from the Delta to the Gulf Coast.
That's just one network.
Its Mississippi Farm Bureau High School Scoreboard Show follows every Friday night, ninety minutes of recaps, analysis and interviews from the week's top games.
SuperTalk calls it the longest-running scoreboard show in the state, now in its third decade on the air.
A fan two hundred miles from the stadium can still know the final score before the team bus leaves the parking lot.
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