Was That Jackson State’s Last Game at the Vet? The Law Keeps the Stadium JSU’s Until the Tigers Move, and Lawmakers Have Not Funded a Replacement.

Jackson State beat Mississippi Valley State 38-7 on Saturday in its final regular-season home game of 2026, a Senior Day win at Mississippi Veterans Memorial Stadium that left the Tigers 7-2 overall and 5-0 at home, according to ESPN. Jared Lockhart threw for 299 yards and three touchdowns. The Tigers finish the regular season on the road, at Alabama State on Nov. 14 and at Alcorn State on Nov. 21. One more home game is possible. The SWAC championship game on Dec. 5 is played at the home stadium of the division champion with the best conference record, according to NCAA.com, and the Darkhorse Press reported before Saturday’s game that Jackson State could still win the East Division if it won out and both Alabama A&M and Bethune-Cookman lost a game.

The question hanging over the stadium is whether the Tigers will be back. On Oct. 22, the University of Mississippi Medical Center broke ground on its Cancer Center and Research Institute, a five-story building that Mississippi Today reported will sit on State Street across from the medical center, next to the American Cancer Society’s Hope Lodge. The day before, Austin Barbour of The Clearwater Group outlined for Fondren business leaders a land-use study of roughly 110 acres of mostly state-owned land around UMMC and the stadium, and the Clarion Ledger published the map with a caption describing “the area under discussion for potential development in place of Mississippi Veteran’s Memorial Stadium.”

The Wire’s reading of the public record: they will be back, at least for now. Under a 2011 state law, the stadium belongs to Jackson State until the university “relocates its home football games to another venue,” and only then passes to UMMC. Jackson State has no other venue. The most recent funding bill the Wire could confirm, House Bill 117, died in committee in February. The university’s own budget request for the year that begins July 1, 2027, asks for $19 million in athletic-facility safety work that includes the Vet. And in April, UMMC won approval for a five-year transportation contract that includes shuttles for employees and students who park at the stadium, running through April 2031.

The stadium has been part of the state’s story for 76 years. It opened in 1950 as War Veterans Memorial Stadium and was later called Hinds County War Memorial Stadium, according to Jackson State’s athletics department. In the 1960s, WLBT wrote in 2017, Ole Miss, Mississippi State and Southern Miss were the only schools playing football there, and Gov. Ross Barnett “used Veterans Memorial Stadium as a venue for his divisive platform.” That changed on Oct. 21, 1967, when Jackson State played its first game there, a 20-14 win over Grambling State. “It was the first time we had ever played at Mississippi Veterans Memorial Stadium, after Dr. Peoples had been lobbying for years for us to get into the stadium,” Walter Reed, a member of the Jackson State and Mississippi sports halls of fame, told WLBT, referring to John A. Peoples Jr., who became the university’s president that year.

The Tigers made the stadium their home in 1970, the university says, and the Egg Bowl was played there every year from 1973 through 1990. That 1967 game, WLBT wrote, “would pave the way for Walter Payton, Robert Brazile, Jackie Slater, and countless stars in blue and white.” On Oct. 29, 2022, ESPN’s College GameDay broadcast from outside the stadium for the first time, and 53,885 fans watched Deion Sanders’ team beat Southern 35-0 to start 8-0 for the first time in school history, Andscape reported. Jackson State has led the FCS in average attendance since the 2018 season, WLBT reported in January, and fans voted the Vet the best stadium in the FCS in 2024 and 2025 in a poll run on X by the College Football Campus Tour account, WTOK reported.

The stadium has been Jackson State’s since July 1, 2011, the university says. House Bill 1158 passed the House 108-9 in February 2011, WLBT reported, and Gov. Haley Barbour approved it on March 16, 2011, according to the Legislature’s bill history. Before that, the state Department of Finance and Administration had owned the stadium for nearly 60 years, WLBT reported. In its original form, the bill would have handed control to UMMC, the Jackson Free Press reported, and Jackson State called the revised arrangement a “win-win.”

Jackson State was plain about where the deal was headed. “When JSU eventually moves to a new stadium, the subsequent transfer of the stadium property to the University of Mississippi Medical Center, which currently parks nearly 3,000 cars per weekday at the stadium, will secure vital room for future expansion for this growing academic medical center,” the university said in a 2011 statement quoted by the Jackson Free Press.

The law, now Section 55-23-6 of the Mississippi Code, turns on one sentence. The part of the stadium property that includes the stadium itself “shall be transferred from the Department of Finance and Administration to Jackson State University, until such time as Jackson State University relocates its home football games to another venue. Once Jackson State University relocates its home football games to another venue, the portion of Mississippi Veterans Memorial Stadium Property conveyed to Jackson State University under this subsection (1) shall be transferred to the University of Mississippi Medical Center.”

The wording matters. The trigger is Jackson State moving its games, not the state building a stadium. There is no deadline and no price. Nothing in the law requires the university ever to move, and nothing in it lets UMMC start the clock. A companion section, 55-23-9, says Jackson State “shall acquire possession of, operate, maintain and improve” the stadium until it moves. The university keeps all stadium money, including the amusement tax on tickets and concession sales, for the stadium and its athletics programs, and it must “seek appropriate state funding” through the finance department for the safety work, repairs and renovations that department determines are necessary, to be done by its Bureau of Building, Grounds and Real Property.

The law split the property. It assigned land covered by a 1993 development lease between the finance department and a developer to UMMC, subject to an agreement with the developer and minus a parcel carved out by a 2009 Hinds County court settlement. The remainder, including the stadium, went to Jackson State. Under Section 55-23-8, both schools must honor existing leases unless a tenant breaches or defaults or the parties agree to end them, including one the finance department signed with UMMC on Feb. 23, 2009; the Wire has not seen that lease and does not know which property it covers. The same section bars using eminent domain to take an interest held under the old development lease before it runs out. The law also gave Jackson State a three-year option, starting when it took possession, to hand its share back to the state. The stadium is still Jackson State’s, so the university did not use it.

The 2011 law directs the finance department to make the transfer, and the Wire did not find a recorded deed. Its search of the Hinds County chancery clerk’s general index for March 2011 through December 2012 covered the names Jackson State and Veterans Memorial and found no deed conveying the stadium, which does not rule out an instrument filed under another name. A separate section of the stadium chapter, 55-23-15, covers the parking ground bounded by North State Street, Taylor Street, North West Street and Stadium Drive. It says the part that was undeveloped on Jan. 1, 1996, other than the strip west of the stadium, “shall remain undeveloped unless the Legislature enacts legislation approving the development of such property.” Building on that undeveloped ground would take another act of the Legislature.

UMMC uses that pavement every weekday. Its website offers free parking at the stadium “across from the main hospital,” with shuttles to the hospitals and clinics from 5:30 a.m. to midnight on weekdays. On game days, Jackson State takes it back. An August 2025 UMMC memo told staff that all stadium lots close to UMMC personnel during events, that the overflow lot must be cleared by 5:30 p.m. the Friday before a Jackson State home game for tailgating, and that cars left in any stadium lot after 4 a.m. on game day will be towed.

UMMC has contracted for shuttle service from those lots for five years. On April 16, the Board of Trustees of State Institutions of Higher Learning approved a five-year UMMC contract with Groome Transportation of Texas, estimated at $16.6 million, that covers, among other services, “transportation services for employees and students parking at Mississippi Veterans Memorial Stadium,” according to the board’s minutes. It runs through April 30, 2031.

Barbour has called the cancer center the catalyst. “The cancer center opened the door for people to start asking what else could happen here,” he said at the Fondren meeting, the Clarion Ledger reported. UMMC says the project serves its goal of earning National Cancer Institute designation, which would be a first for the state. The building costs about $250 million, the Wire reported in October. The Legislature put in $100 million, which Gov. Tate Reeves signed in April. UMMC said in its groundbreaking announcement that its $125 million private campaign, launched with a $25 million gift from Sandy and John Black, had raised more than 80% of its goal. Together, the state money and the private campaign put roughly $200 million toward the building. Mississippi’s congressional delegation has also backed $22 million in federal money, Mississippi Today reported.

No document the Wire found ties that money to the stadium. UMMC broke ground with Jackson State’s season under way, and the Wire reported in October that nothing on the record requires the stadium to go first. The stadium land figures in the larger plan: the district study, which the Clarion Ledger reported is being led by the Great City Foundation with concepts drawn by Jackson firm Wier Boerner Allin, looks at housing, restaurants, retail, research space and more medical development.

“If this happened, where would Jackson State football go?” Barbour asked at the Fondren meeting. “That’s a question that has to be answered.” He said that study and Jackson State’s own analysis of stadium options and costs should be done within several weeks and would go to Reeves, House Speaker Jason White and Lt. Gov. Delbert Hosemann, the Clarion Ledger reported. He also cautioned that any redevelopment would take years and need legislative support. City Councilman Kenneth Stokes said in February, “Governor, do your job. Give Jackson State this new stadium so we can have the cancer center built right,” according to Black Enterprise. He added that the center “will be built right now where the stadium sits.” UMMC broke ground in October with the stadium still in use, and the Wire has not found a site plan showing where the building sits relative to the stadium.

So who holds the leverage? Here is the Wire’s read. Jackson State holds the trigger. Under the law, nothing happens to the land until the Tigers move, and on game days the lots are the university’s. Its weakness is the building and the budget. The stadium has had no major renovation since 1981, when it grew from 46,000 to 60,000 seats, WLBT reported. Jackson State’s request for the coming budget year lists $19 million for athletic-facility safety work, including the Vet, and says stadium improvements “are particularly urgent due to structural, seating and accessibility concerns that impact large-scale public safety.” WLBT separately reported that the university’s 2025 requests included $19 million to revamp the stadium. The law directs Jackson State to seek state money for the safety repairs and renovations the finance department finds necessary.

UMMC holds the future interest and the momentum. The law names it the land’s next owner, and its cancer center drew Reeves, Hosemann, White, both U.S. senators and Rep. Michael Guest to the groundbreaking, according to UMMC. What it cannot do is make Jackson State leave, and it needs the stadium lots in the meantime. In a Northside Sun story published nearly eight years after the 2011 law, UMMC spokesman Marc Rolph said expansion involving the stadium was “not something that’s on our radar” and that the stadium was “serving a valuable purpose right now.” In January, Rep. Robert Johnson told WLBT that UMMC’s expansion plans had changed and that there was now uncertainty about the stadium property.

The Legislature holds everything else. It wrote the 2011 law and can rewrite it, and it controls the money a new stadium would need. A $40 million Senate bill by John Horhn, now Jackson’s mayor, died in 2022 over a disagreement about location, WLBT reported. Johnson’s version died in committee in 2025 and again this February; it would have provided “seed money for planning, design, and initial building stages” of a stadium Johnson estimates at about $250 million. Reeves said in September 2022 that he was “not real excited about Jackson State building a football stadium,” adding, “At most of our universities, they build stadiums through donations of alumni,” HBCU Sports reported. Weeks later, after College GameDay’s visit, he said he was “hopeful that there will be some agreements that can get in place to potentially find a way to finance that new stadium and in a location that makes sense for everyone,” according to HBCU Gameday. None of those bills passed. The Wire could not confirm what became of House Bill 1121, a 2026 bill that, as the Wire reported in October, would have authorized Jackson State to build elsewhere and transferred the stadium property.

Above both schools sits the Board of Trustees of State Institutions of Higher Learning. It governs Jackson State and UMMC alike, must approve any lease UMMC signs on its stadium property, and in April named Denise Jones Gregory Jackson State’s president.

The Wire’s read of where this goes: the Tigers play at the Vet in 2027 and likely for several seasons after. The land cannot move until they do, they cannot move without a stadium, and even the bill that died this year would only have paid for planning, design and the first stages of construction. UMMC’s transportation contract, which runs through April 2031, includes shuttle service for people parking at the stadium.

From there, the record points to three paths. Lawmakers could fund some or all of Jackson State’s repair request, which would likely keep the Tigers at the Vet for now. They could make the deal the 2011 law was written for: pay for a new stadium, after which the Vet’s land passes to UMMC. A state-funded feasibility study ranked Jackson State’s own campus land, near John R. Lynch Street and Dr. Robert Smith Sr. Parkway, as the top site, WLBT reported in 2022. Or they could rewrite the 2011 law to move the land without a new stadium. The Legislature has that power, but the Wire found no public proposal to do so.

Only the second path gives Jackson State a new stadium and opens the land to the medical district, which is why the two studies headed to the governor, the speaker and the lieutenant governor matter. They put a stadium’s cost and the land’s value in front of the same officials at the same time. What lawmakers do with them in the 2027 session will say more about the Vet’s last game than Saturday did.

What’s next: Jackson State plays at Alabama State on Nov. 14 and at Alcorn State on Nov. 21, and the SWAC championship game is Dec. 5 at the home stadium of the division champion with the best conference record. Barbour said Oct. 21 that the district study and Jackson State’s stadium analysis would be done within several weeks. The Legislature’s 2027 session, which convenes in January, will take up Jackson State’s $19 million facilities request and any stadium bill; Johnson told WLBT in January that he would keep pushing for state money for a new stadium or for renovations to the current one. Any change to the 2011 law would need to pass both chambers and be signed by the governor, and any lease UMMC signs on its stadium property needs the college board’s approval.