Jackie Sherrill weighs in on return of iconic interlocking Mississippi State logo

Originally posted on Mississippi State Bulldogs on SI
By Taylor Hodges | Last updated Aug 22, 2025 6:52 PM ET

STARKVILLE, Miss. — Here’s a fun trivia question you can use to stump your friends:

In the 152 games Jackie Sherrill coached at Mississippi State his teams wore the same interlocking MSU logo in every game except one. What game was that?

(Yes, you’ll have scroll to the bottom of this story for the answer.)

Sherrill presided of the most successful time in Mississippi State’s history, winning 75 games, a share of the SEC West title in 1998 and appearance in the SEC Championship game that season, and is the only coach in Mississippi State’s history to have a winning record against Ole Miss.

ICYMI: Former Mississippi State coach Jackie Sherrill weighs in on SEC’s nine-game format

And his teams wore the interlocking MSU logo in all but one game. When presented with this fact, Sherrill had a simple response.

“In that time, I believe only Florida and Tennessee won more games than us,” Sherrill said. “So, that was a very successful time period for us.”

The logo on the side of the helmets weren’t what led Sherrill and the Bulldogs to their most successful seasons. Sherrill’s final season in Starkville was in 2003 and he retired after the season. The following season, Mississippi State switched to a new helmet design (the large “M” with “state” on a banner across the “M”).

“The old logo was what we had for years,” Sherrill said. “I don’t know why they decided to change it…actually, I do, they wanted it to match the baseball team.”

The new logo would be used for nearly 20 seasons before being replaced by the current helmet logo, the “State” written in script.

But the interlocking logo is coming back.

|| 09.27.25#HailState pic.twitter.com/fEGovvzcpx
— Mississippi State Football (@HailStateFB) August 14, 2025

Thanks in large part to a very loud, grass-roots, social media movement, Mississippi State is bringing back the interlocking logo for at least one game.

“A lot of students from then who are older now and even the alumni then like the logo,” Sherrill said. “The players liked it, too.”

The football team will wear the iconic logo to celebrate the 25th anniversary of the “Snow Bowl” Independence Bowl game victory against Texas A&M that was played in a snow storm when Tennessee comes to Starkville on September 27.

It’s a game that will be hard for Sherrill to forget, if only because it was snow game played in Louisiana.

“The bowl people in Shreveport weren’t prepared for snow, but it was a very unusual situation,” Sherrill said. “We knew the weather report, which is why we wore all white. You could see their wide receivers and defensive backs a lot easier than if they were all white, so I think it helped.”

Sherrill also admitted the Bulldogs got lucky with the crew of officials assigned to that year’s Independence Bowl.

“We had officials from the Mountain West, so the snow was no big deal to them,” Sherrill said. “They spotted the ball and said ‘let’s play’.”