It’s finally here! It’s game day in the 901 as Mississippi State and Texas Tech get ready to go to war at the Liberty Bowl Memorial Stadium on Tuesday evening. Both Mississippi State and Texas Tech come into the AutoZone Liberty Bowl with bones to pick with the rest of the College Football world. Nobody has given either one of these programs the credit they deserve, but for the last time in 2021, they have the opportunity to leave their mark on the season.

Not to mention, Tuesday’s matchup between Mississippi State will not only have fireworks on the field but off of it as well. It’s been since Mike Leach had anything to do with Texas Tech, and you better believe he’s ready to take on his old team with a bit of vengeance on his mind.

In his AutoZone Liberty Bowl press conference on Monday, Coach Mike Leach had this to say about facing his old school and all the legal ramifications surrounding the rematch.

“I think the people there are great,” Leach said of his time in Lubbock.

“I think some of the leadership, at least when I was there, was very sleazy, slimy, and dirty.”

“There were four bad apples that were determined to cheat me out of my salary and the last four years on my contract, and then continued to hide the documents illegally, But short of that, I thought everybody was great.”

His former quarterback at Texas Tech and current interim Head Coach Sonny Cumbie had this to say about his former Head Coach and friend.

“As a head coach, he took the time to meet me in the parking lot and show me around,” Cumbie recalled from his senior year of high school. “Not a lot of head coaches would do that, especially nowadays.”

“The thing that I take from him is belief in what you do,” Cumbie said. “How you structure practice, how you set up your offense. Those are the things that I take from him as a coach.”

Coach Cumbie also had this to say about his last game as a coach at Texas Tech and the excitement surrounding the Texas Tech program.

” That’s what I want our kids to do tomorrow night. To play with a lot of energy, a lot of passion, and all of those things with a sense of focus and execution to what you’re trying to do game plan-wise.”

Overall, the matchup between Texas Tech and Mississippi State is your classic College Football game with two underdogs going toe to toe for a bowl championship to end a crazy 2021 season. On paper, Mississippi State should win Tuesday night’s AutoZone Liberty Bowl matchup with Texas Tech, but you never know crazier things have happened in this bowl game over the years. Plus, Mississippi State and Texas Tech have a long history of being explosive and filled with a lot of yards and points to light up any scoreboard across the country.

Mississippi State and Texas Tech will kick off in the 63rd AutoZone Liberty Bowl on Tuesday night at 5:45 local time and can be viewed by the millions by turning their television sets to ESPN.