Ole Miss announces full details for 'Grove Bowl Games'

Ole Miss head coach Lane Kiffin let out little sprinkles of information pertaining to this weekend’s first-ever ‘Grove Bowl Games’ on Tuesday, which will put on a bow on the 2024 spring practices.

But now the full details for how this Saturday’s event inside Vaught-Hemingway Stadium, which is free to the public, will go down have been released with Ole Miss also revealing some former players will be in attendance along with world champion hot-dog eater Joey Chestnut.

The ‘Grove Bowl Games’ will start at 3 p.m. CT and air on SEC Network+ for those not attending it in person.

Replacing the annual Grove Bowl is a 7-on-7 competition that will consist of four quarters. Between each quarter and halftime there will be three events. The hot dog eating competition will serve as the halftime entertainment with Chestnut.

Landing Chestnut, winner of 16 of the last 17 Nathan’s Hot Dog Eating Contest, was as simple as Kiffin using a familiar method of social media.

“Kind of how everybody does nowadays, just DM’d him. Slid in his DMs,” Kiffin said.

The day will start with a dunk contest and followed by the first quarter of 7-on-7 play. Between the first and second quarters will be a tug-of-war event and an obstacle course event will split the third and fourth quarters.

Scoring for the Grove Bowl games, which will see the roster split into Red and Blue teams, will include points from the 7-on-7 as well as points from the dunk contest, hot dog eating competition, tug-of-war and obstacle course. The 7-on-7 will feature traditional football scoring with touchdowns earning six points, a point-after-attempt for a point at the five yard-line and two points from the 10 yard-line.

Those who earn a spot in the finals of the dunk contest will notch a point for their respective team and the winner of the dunk contest earns another seven points. Tug-of-war will be split into five rounds and the winning team of each round earns five points. Whichever person wins the hot dog eating competition will earn 12 more points for their team, second place gets seven points and third place is awarded three points.

The ‘Grove Bowl Gauntlet,’ as the obstacle course is called, will be split into three rounds and each round’s winner gets five points.

Saturday’s event is a signal for how Kiffin is evolving the annual spring event for Ole Miss moving forward.

With an emphasis on player health and how spring practices are being regarding are the driving forces in trying to create more of a party atmosphere and put fan entertainment first.

Former Ole Miss players AJ Brown and Elijah Moore will be in attendance.

“I think if you think outside of the box and traditional way of doing things, which I think it’s well known we do, and I think over time the spring game isn’t much value,” Kiffin said. “If you watch people and what they do, unless a coach is on the hot seat and wants to please the fans, very rarely do they run more than a few types of runs and schemes. I don’t know if the traditional spring game gives you very much from an evaluation standpoint. I think it was just kind of done because it jused to be done that way in the book. NFL doesn’t do that way. So we’ll see what this is like.”

Gates will open at 2 p.m. CT. Students must enter through Gates 1 and 2. The north end zone student section will be reserved for students only. Other Ole Miss fans are allowed to enter through any other gates on the east and west sides of the stadium.

Students are permitted to bring in coolers with food and beverages. Students aged 21 and up are permitted to bring in coolers with alcoholic beverages and a maximum cooler size is 20 quarts.