The Jackson State–Southern football rivalry, often informally called the BoomBox Classic, is a college football rivalry between the Tigers of Jackson State University (JSU) and the Jaguars of Southern University (SU). An annual conference game between two historically black universities in the Southwestern Athletic Conference (SWAC), its location usually rotates between JSU's Mississippi Veterans Memorial Stadium in Jackson, Mississippi and SU's A. W. Mumford Stadium in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, but it has also been held at larger venues to accommodate the large crowds that the game draws. Through 2026, the all-time series is tied on the field, 37–37; however, 2 of those wins by Southern were vacated.
Background The teams first met on Friday, November 1, 1929, in Jackson—a 97–0 win by Southern. After that game, the series was not resumed again until 1958, when Jackson State joined the SWAC. Since then, the conference rivals have played each other every single season—including twice in the same season on four separate occasions, because of appearances in the SWAC Championship Game. In fact, both schools are among the most successful SWAC members. Through 2025, Jackson State and Southern have won 19 and 18 SWAC football titles respectively, the second and third most in the conference.
Past venues and atmosphere Both JSU and SU are known to have finished among the top ten NCAA Division I Football Championship Subdivision schools in past annual home attendance figures. Due to the game's substantial crowds, it has sometimes been played at alternative venues to accommodate the numbers. In fact, over the years, it has often been played in a "classic" style of game. In 1961 it was played in Mobile, Alabama as the second annual "Claver Classic." It was played in Baton Rouge's Memorial Stadium in 1978, since it could hold upwards of 25,000 fans, while Southern's stadium could only hold 13,000 at the time. It was played in New Orleans in 2000, 2002, and 2004—the latter game as the third annual "Big Easy Classic" series. In 2009, Southern voluntarily surrendered a home game to keep it at JSU’s home stadium to take advantage of the larger capacity. The 2012 game was played as the fifth annual "W. C. Gorden Classic" series. The 2023 game was played as the sixth annual "Pete Richardson Classic." However, with JSU's current win streak in the series, the Jackson Clarion Ledger newspaper declared the game as "[n]ot a rivalry anymore."
The intense rivalry extends beyond the game itself, featuring a battle between the schools' well-respected and popular marching bands, Jackson State's "Sonic Boom of the South" and Southern's "Human Jukebox." Hence, in the past, the game had been commonly referred to informally by using a portmanteau of the bands' names—the BoomBox Classic. The BoomBox battle traditionally starts about an hour before the game begins and continues for about an hour after the game has been decided, known as the "Zero Quarter" and "Fifth Quarter" respectively in the HBCU community.
Recent national attention JSU's hiring of Deion Sanders as head coach in 2020 drew a great deal of attention to the Tiger program in general and the JSU-SU series in particular. On October 23, 2022, ESPN's College GameDay program announced that it would broadcast live from Mississippi Veterans Memorial Stadium on the morning of the game. GameDay had previously made appearances at only three other HBCU games: the 2005 Grambling State–Southern game at the Bayou Classic in Houston, the 2008 Florida A&M–Hampton game in Tallahassee, Florida, and the 2021 Alcorn State–North Carolina Central game at the MEAC/SWAC Challenge in Atlanta.
Game results
See also List of NCAA college football rivalry games List of black college football classics
References