JACKSON ― The Egg Bowl between Ole Miss football and Mississippi State will be skipping the turkey and dressing in 2024, moving off Thanksgiving in favor of a 2:30 p.m. CT kick on Black Friday set to be televised by ABC.

The rivalry game has been college football's Thanksgiving centerpiece since 2017, excluding the 2020 pandemic season, when it was played on Saturday.

Speaking at an alumni event at the Country Club of Jackson on Tuesday night, Ole Miss Athletic Director Keith Carter explained the change for the 2024 contest, which the Rebels will host.

"In that negotiation, ABC came to us and said we want this date, and we wanna play at this time," Carter said. "And we actually did have a little negotiating power on another game that we got scheduled at the time we wanted on the road."

Carter did not specify which road game he was referring to. The Rebels will play four SEC games, and Disney ‒ which owns ABC and the ESPN family of networks ‒ holds the television rights to all of them.

A Tuesday announcement revealed that two of those games will be played in the early window, generally considered the best spot to avoid raucous home crowds as the visiting team. Ole Miss' Nov. 23 game at Florida will kick off at 11 a.m., while a Nov. 2 trip to Arkansas will begin between 11 a.m. and noon.

An Oct. 5 trip to South Carolina is slated for an afternoon or evening kick. And an Oct. 12 visit to LSU, on paper Ole Miss' toughest road game of the season, will get the primetime treatment.

"It's interesting," Carter said. "At times, when they want something to happen, they'll work with you a little bit. But the times that they just wanna impose their (kickoff times) they do. Again, we get paid a lot of money to play at whatever time they say and that's kind of how it works."

Ole Miss coach Lane Kiffin is 3-1 in Egg Bowls since his arrival, earning a 17-7 victory in Starkville last season.

Zach Arnett, who Mississippi State fired before that game, is now on Kiffin's staff as an analyst. And Jeff Lebby, a former offensive coordinator of Kiffin's, is leading the Bulldogs into the 2024 campaign.

David Eckert covers Ole Miss for the Clarion Ledger. Email him at deckert@gannett.com or reach him on Twitter @davideckert98.

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This article originally appeared on Mississippi Clarion Ledger: Why Egg Bowl between Ole Miss, Mississippi State will be played on Friday