BATON ROUGE — As players from Southern and Jackson State stretched during pregame warmups, the BoomBox Classic stage was set—two blue blood Southwestern Athletic Conference programs with a history of tradition in a battle for bragging rights beyond the gridiron.
From the weeklong trash talk and pregame shenanigans, there lies the epic battle of the bands—SU's "Human JukeBox" and JSU's "Sonic Boom of the South"—that intensifies an already raucous environment inside A.W. Mumford Stadium.
But for Jackson State, this game—with SWAC title dreams attached to it—was an emotionally-charged one before any of the players entered the field.