Little Brown Jug of Mississippi

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The Little Brown Jug game is the longest continuously played high school football rivalry in Mississippi. The game, played each year since 1921, is between Laurel, Mississippi and Hattiesburg, Mississippi. Laurel leads the series 43-37-4. The most recent game, played on September 10, 2005, shortly after Hurricane Katrina hit the area hard on August 29, attracted a crowd of nearly 4,000. This game proved to be a real nail-biter. The score remained 2-0 until the final seconds of the meeting. A 52 yard game-winning touchdown pass from quarterback Marcus Barnes to senior wide-receiver Frank Lee gave Hattiesburg the victory. Each year the winner of the game takes home the treasured little brown jug, which is inscribed with each year's game date and score.

When football was established in Mississippi, teams in the "Big Eight" conference (a collection of schools numbering greater than eight but was the conference for the larger schools) modeled their uniforms after college teams. Laurel chose as its team the University of Minnesota: hence the "Little Brown Jug" connection.