You don’t have to be a fan of either school to know that the Egg Bowl is one of the SEC’s most heated rivalries 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, 365 days a year.

Tempers regularly flare when the two Mississippi schools meet on the gridiron, and last year in Oxford, they boiled over into benches clearing late in the third quarter with both teams receiving unsportsmanlike conduct penalties and multiple players ejected. SEC commissioner Greg Sankey shared at SEC Media Days that he met with (now former) Ole Miss AD Ross Bjork and Mississippi State AD John Cohen to try to prevent future incidents.

“Yes, Ross, John and I had a really healthy conversation in early May,” said Sankey. “At a meeting of athletics directors, we took some time at the end of one day, both shared their perspectives, both concerns and ideas for how we can move through football games without that type of negative activity.”

Since that meeting, however, Bjork left Ole Miss to become Texas A&M’s new athletics director. Keith Carter is the school’s interim athletic director.

“We’ve obviously had a change in the athletics Director Ole Miss,” Sankey acknowledged. “Keith and I talked. I think we’ve had what I would describe as healthy conversations with the focus always being to move through these contests without those types of conflicts.”

Just don’t describe the incident as a fight if you’re talking to Sankey.

“Actually it wasn’t defined as fighting,” It was flagrant personal fouls just to be technical on the rule. And there is a difference,” he said.