Jeff Lebby jokes about how he refers to Ole Miss: 'It depends on the setting'

The 2024 Egg Bowl won’t be new Mississippi State Bulldogs head coach Jeff Lebby‘s first. However, it will be his first on the Mississippi State sideline and not coaching for Ole Miss.

The topic of Ole Miss came up while Lebby was making an appearance on the College GameDay podcast. There, he referred to Ole Miss as “the school up the road,” prompting host Rece Davis to ask him if he had any special term he typically likes to use to refer to Ole Miss.

“It depends on the setting,” Jeff Lebby said. “But, man, that’s gonna be a fun one. I think we all know that from my time.”

At that point, Rece Davis pushed that he wasn’t really answering the question. What does he call the University of Mississippi?

“I’ll call them Ole Miss, today,” Lebby smiled.

Jeff Lebby was the offensive coordinator at Ole Miss from 2020 to 2021. After that, he left to be the offensive coordinator at Oklahoma, his alma mater, before Mississippi State hired him to be the team’s next head coach. During that two-year stretch, Ole Miss went 2-0 against Mississippi State.

“I think we all know it’ll be a fun one. Obviously, both offenses and our history together,” Lebby said. “Me spending two years there with Lane and now being able to do this in this state and it being such a huge, pivotal game for our program will be a ton of fun.”

The Egg Bowl has been played since 1901 with no love lost along the way. In recent years, that’s included several memorable moments, like ‘The Egg Brawl’ in 2018 and the Elijah Moore unsportsmanlike conduct in 2019. Most recently, Ole Miss won 17-7 in 2023. With that, Ole Miss moved to 65-47-6 all-time against Mississippi State.

Fans will have to wait for Jeff Lebby to coach his first Egg Bowl for Mississippi State. As usual, the game won’t be played until the final week of the regular season. However, this season, the game is being moved off of Thanksgiving and onto Black Friday.

Jeff Lebby doesn’t believe anyone will go unbeaten in the SEC

The SEC has an excellent slate of teams that Jeff Lebby believes is going to make it so that no individual team is able to go unbeaten.

“I think it’s completely different than it was five, six, seven years ago. I just don’t see multiple SEC teams being undefeated. I don’t know if I see a single team being undefeated in this league,” Lebby said.

“I just think it is so incredibly tough to do to be able to run the table then go win an SEC Championship Game before you get in the playoffs. I think that’s just where we’re at from a college football landscape now. I think there’s a little more parity than there’s been and that bodes well for us.”