The Golden Egg trophy[edit]
The Aggies (Bulldogs) dominated the early days of the series including a 13-game A&M winning streak from 1911 to 1925 during which time the Aggies outscored the Red and Blue by a combined 327–33.[10] Through 1925 Ole Miss had won only five times out of 23 total contests. In 1926 when the Red and Blue ended their 13-game losing streak by defeating A&M 7–6 in Starkville, the Ole Miss fans rushed the field with some trying to tear the goalposts down. A&M fans did not take well to the Ole Miss fans destroying their property and fights broke out. Some A&M fans defended the goal posts with wooden chairs, and several injuries were reported. According to one account:
To prevent such events in the future, students of the two schools created The Golden Egg, a large trophy which has been awarded to the winning team each year since 1927. In the event of a tie, the school that won the game the previous year kept the trophy for the first half of the new year and then the trophy was sent to the other school for the second half of the new year.[12]
The trophy is a large football-shaped brass piece mounted to a wooden base and traditionally symbolizes supremacy in college football in the state of Mississippi for the year. The footballs used in American football in the 1920s were considerably more ovoid and blunter than those in use today and similar to the balls still used in rugby; the trophy thus, to modern eyes, more resembles an egg than a football.[citation needed]
The game was given the nickname "Egg Bowl" by The Clarion-Ledger sportswriter Tom Patterson in 1979.[13]