MHSAA Football State Championships Leaving Jackson for Starkville, Oxford

CLINTON, Miss. (WCBI) — Mississippi will have a new home(s) to crown its high school football state champions in 2014.

The Mississippi High School Activities Association announced Monday that the football state championship games will be moving from Mississippi Veterans Memorial Stadium to Davis Wade Stadium and Vaught Hemingway Stadium on a rotating basis beginning this upcoming season. 

The rotating basis will be centered around the Battle for the Golden Egg between Mississippi State and Ole Miss. The MHSAA football state championship games will be played in the stadium that does not host the Egg Bowl that year.

Mississippi State will host this year’s and the 2016 MHSAA football state championship games while Ole Miss will host the 2015 and 2017 state championship games.

While Southern Miss does not feature into the state championship rotation for the next four years, M. M. Roberts Stadium will host the Mississippi-Alabama All-Star Football game in 2015 and 2017.

The 2015 game will be the first time in history that the All-Star Classic will be played on Mississippi soil. Mobile, Alabama’s Cramton Bowl will host the 2014 and 2016 MS/AL All-Star games.

In other news, the MHSAA also announced the basketball state championships will remain in Jackson with an expanded format.

The state basketball tournament will now feature a total of 84 games between the boys and girls, instead of 36 which was the number in the previous years.

Jackson State’s Lee E. Williams Athletics and Assembly Center will host the boys basketball state tournament quarterfinals while the Mississippi Coliseum will host the girls basketball state tournament quarterfinals.

The ‘Big House’ will once again be the host for the state basketball semifinals and state championship games.

Lastly, the MHSAA has moved its state swimming championships from Delta State to the new Tupelo Aquatic Center, which opened in December 2013.