Mississippi State headed to Music City Bowl against Louisville

Published 5:48 pm Sunday, December 8, 2019

Mississippi State and Louisville have not played each other in the regular season since a four-game home-and-home series in the 1970s.

It’s starting to seem, however, that they can’t avoid each other in the postseason.

Mississippi State (6-6) and Louisville will play each other in the Franklin American Mortgage Music City Bowl Dec. 30 in Nashville, it was announced Sunday.

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The game will start 3 p.m. and be televised on ESPN.

It is the second time in three years that the two teams will face each other in a bowl game. Mississippi State beat Louisville 31-27 in the TaxSlayer Bowl in Jacksonville, Florida, to finish the 2017 season.

The Bulldogs’ only previous appearance in the Music City Bowl was in 2011, when they beat Wake Forest 23-17. They won three of their last four games this season to qualify for a bowl for the 10th year in a row.

Louisville had an eight-year bowl streak snapped in 2018, but bounced back this year to finish with a 7-5 record in the Atlantic Coast Conference.

Its only other appearance in the Music City Bowl was the last bowl game it won, a 27-21 victory over Texas A&M in 2015. The Cardinals lost to LSU in the 2016 Citrus Bowl and to Mississippi State in the 2017 TaxSlayer Bowl.

About Ernest Bowker

Ernest Bowker is The Vicksburg Post's sports editor. He has been a member of The Vicksburg Post's sports staff since 1998, making him one of the longest-tenured reporters in the paper's 140-year history. The New Jersey native is a graduate of LSU. In his career, he has won more than 50 awards from the Mississippi Press Association and Associated Press for his coverage of local sports in Vicksburg.

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