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52 years later: a Ford Pinto, a flat tire, and poignant memories of Bear Bryant

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Bear Bryant gets a victory ride after the last game of his remarkable coaching career in December, 1982. (Photo courtesy University of Alabama)

Someone recently asked me: Who is the most unforgettable coach you have encountered in your long sports writing career?

The answer was and easy one, but requires some background. Indeed, it requires a story, which follows.

Rick Cleveland

This was back in September of 1971. I was an 18-year-old sports reporter, who could easily have passed for 13, for my hometown newspaper The Hattiesburg American. My beat was the Southern Miss football team, and they were about to play Bear Bryant’s Alabama Crimson Tide juggernaut. I was assigned to do a feature story on Bryant and was dispatched to Tuscaloosa for his weekly Tuesday press conference.

The Bear, as everyone called him then, had just unveiled a surprise Wishbone offense and stunned No. 3 Southern Cal at the Coliseum in Los Angeles, reversing a three-touchdown defeat the year before. Younger readers need to know that back in the the 1960s and 70s, Bryant was practically deity in the Deep South. The word “legendary” doesn’t begin to describe the hold he had on football fans in this part of the country. Some folks in Alabama claimed Bryant could walk on water. I was not so sure he couldn’t. I was in awe of him.

Five years into my sports writing career, I was finally making just enough money to purchase a new car — just not much of one. My 1971 Ford Pinto sounded like a sewing machine and maneuvered only slightly better. I left 30 minutes early to make the 180-mile trip with time to spare. Just across the state line, my left rear tire blew. This was during a September heat wave. I struggled and struggled to get the lug nuts off, and then had problems with the flimsy jack. So I sweated and I cussed and I got grease all over me. Then I sweated some more and cussed some more, knowing I was late and knowing I couldn’t make up time in my sewing machine.

Greasy, sweaty and quite embarrassed, I arrived at the Alabama athletic offices a few minutes after the press conference ended. Charley Thornton, Alabama’s splendid sports publicist, took one look at me and asked what happened. I told him, and added, “Mr. Thornton, if I don’t get an interview with Coach Bryant, they might fire me back home.”

Thornton said he’d see what he could do and he walked down the hallway. Then he came back and told me to follow him, and I did. We walked into this spacious office, filled with huge trophies and with a desk that seemed about as big as an end zone. Behind that mammoth desk, leaning back in his chair, eating a barbecue rib with his huge, socked feet propped up, was the man himself.

He might as well have been God.

Mr. Thornton said, “Coach said he has 10 minutes for you,” and then he left. It was Bear and me, all alone. He shoved a box of sweet-smelling ribs over and said in that deep, gravelly voice of his, “Charley tells me you’re Ace Cleveland’s boy. Is your mama as pretty as she always was? Here, son, have a rib…”

I would have choked on it. I was still hot and sweaty with a parched throat, and now I was nervous as all Hades. I said no thanks, but that I really appreciated him letting me interrupt his lunch.

“Suit yourself,” he said. “They’re mighty good. What can I do for you?”

I had prepared questions the night before, rehearsed them on my way over. In my haste, I had left all that in the sewing machine. I opened my mouth and . . . nothing came out. I froze. I choked.

Bryant waited several seconds, and then his lips curled into a smile. This is what he said: “Aw, shit, son, spit it out.”

It was as if he knew just what to say. My brain freeze ended instantly. I got a splendid interview that was more like a conversation and lasted much longer than 10 minutes. He of course told me he was really worried about Southern because they always played Alabama tough and he knew his boys might be cocky after winning at Southern Cal. He made USM, an average team at best, sound like the Green Bay Packers.

After a while, the great man asked, “Are you in a hurry to get back to Hattiesburg? Why don’t you come out to practice with me?” And then he drove us out to practice in his golf cart. And then he took me up on his tower with him. I noticed several veteran Alabama writers, who had covered the Tide for years, down below. I am pretty sure they were glaring up at me thinking, “Who the hell is that greasy little kid?”

Bear Bryant in his customary pre-game position: Leaning on a goal post. (Photo courtesy University of Alabama)

After a while, I told Coach Bryant I really did have to go home and get to work. He told me to hand him my notebook, and then he wrote down a man’s name and the tire store where he worked. “Tell Joe I sent you,” he said. And so I did. Joe put on a new tire and wouldn’t let me pay. “If Coach Bryant sent you, the tire’s on us,” the guy said.

Five days later, I returned to Tuscaloosa — in somebody else’s car — and watched Bryant’s boys dismantle Southern Miss 42 to 6. It could have been 70 to nothing had Bryant not been such a benevolent gentleman. I covered many more of Bryant’s games over the years, games against Ole Miss, State and Southern Miss and also in bowl games that won national championships. I was standing right next to Bryant at his press conference after the 1979 Sugar Bowl when No. 2 Bama defeated No. 1 Penn State 14-7 for the national championship. Bill Lumpkin, a longtime Birmingham sports writer, asked Bryant how close a Penn State running back came to scoring a game-tying fourth quarter touchdown. Answered Bryant, smiling and holding his index finger and his thumb about an inch apart, “Bill, he was about as close as the length of your ying-yang.”

I also covered Bear’s last game at the Liberty Bowl in December of 1982, silently pulling hard for the Crimson Tide to beat Illinois, which they did. And I covered his funeral a month later. Trust me, presidents and kings have been buried with less fanfare. I, as hundreds of others, cried.

Many believe Bear Bryant was the greatest coach ever. I agree. I know this for certain: Nearly 52 years later, he remains my all-time favorite. 

This article first appeared on Mississippi Today and is republished here under a Creative Commons license.

Mississippi Today

Pharmacy benefit manager reform likely dead

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mississippitoday.org – Gwen Dilworth – 2025-04-01 17:26:00

Hotly contested legislation that aimed to increase the transparency and regulation of pharmacy benefit managers appeared dead in the water Tuesday after a lawmaker challenged the bill for a rule violation.

The bill was sent back to conference after Rep. John Hines, D-Greenville, raised a point of order challenging the addition of code sections to the bill, which will likely kill it. 

House members in the past have chosen to turn a blind eye to the rule, which would require the added code sections to be removed when the bill is returned to conference. This fatal flaw will make it difficult to revive the legislation. 

“It will almost certainly die,” said House Speaker Jason White, who authored the legislation. “And you can celebrate that with your pharmacist when you see them.”

“…This wasn’t ‘gotcha.’ Everybody in this chamber knew that code sections were added, because the attempt was to make 1123 more suitable to all the parties.”

The bill sought to protect patients and independent pharmacists, who have warned that if legislators do not pass a law this year to regulate pharmacy benefit managers, which serve as middlemen in the pharmaceutical industry, some pharmacies may be forced to close. They say that the companies’ low payments and unfair business practices have left them struggling to break even.

The bill underwent several revisions in the House and Senate before reaching its most recent form, which independent pharmacists say has watered the bill down and will not offer them adequate protection. 

House Bill 1123, authored by White, originally focused on the transparency of pharmacy benefit managers. The Senate then beefed up the bill by adding provisions barring the companies from steering patients to affiliate pharmacies and prohibiting spread pricing – the practice of paying insurers more for drugs than pharmacists in order to inflate pharmacy benefit managers’ profits. 

House Speaker Jason White brings the House of Representatives to order at the beginning of the new legislative session at the State Capitol, Tuesday, Jan. 7, 2025 in Jackson.

Independent pharmacists, who have flocked to the Capitol to advocate for reform this session, widely supported the Senate’s version of the bill. 

The Senate incorporated several recommendations from the House into its bill, saying that they believed that the legislation would have the House’s support. 

Instead, the House sent the bill to conference and requested additional changes, including new language that would eliminate self-funded insurance plans, or health plans in which employers assume the financial risk of covering employees’ health care costs themselves, from a section of the bill that prohibits pharmacy benefit managers from steering patients to specific pharmacies.

This language seeks to satisfy employers, who argue that regulating pharmacy benefit managers’ business practices will lead to higher health insurance costs. 

Sen. Rita Parks, R-Corinth, who has spearheaded pharmacy benefit manager reform efforts in the Senate, previously said that adding the language to the bill would “remove any protection out of the law.” But she signed the conference report that included the language Monday after a heated conference meeting between lawmakers. 

Rep. Hank Zuber, R-Ocean Springs and co-author of the bill, said the bill has something for everybody, gesturing to its concessions for employers and independent pharmacists. He said the bill gives independent pharmacists 85% of what they wanted. 

Mississippi Independent Pharmacies Association director Robert Dozier was not available for comment by the time the story published. 

Zuber told House members Tuesday to “blame the Senate” for the slow progress of pharmacy benefit manager reform in Mississippi, citing the body’s failure to take up a drug pricing transparency bill half a decade ago, for three years in a row.

“If the Senate had followed the leadership and the legislation that we drafted those many years ago, we would not be here,” Zuber said. “We would have the information on drug pricing, we would have the information and transparency on (pharmacy benefit managers) and we would have the ultimate reason as to why drug costs continue to rise.”

Members of the House expressed dissatisfaction with the legislation Tuesday, arguing it did not do enough to ensure lower prescription drug costs for consumers. 

“I’m going to try to do something next year that goes even further,” Zuber responded.

For the past several years, lawmakers have proposed bills to regulate pharmacy benefit managers, but none have made it as far as this session. 

“We’ll go another year,” said White. 

This article first appeared on Mississippi Today and is republished here under a Creative Commons license.

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Feuding GOP lawmakers prepare to leave Jackson without a budget, let governor force them back

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mississippitoday.org – @MSTODAYnews – 2025-04-01 19:23:00

After months of bitter Republican political infighting, the Legislature appears likely to end its session Wednesday without passing a $7 billion budget to fund state agencies, potentially threatening a government shutdown if they don’t come back and adopt one by June 30. 

After the House adjourned Tuesday night, Speaker Jason White said he had presented the Senate with a final offer to extend the session, which would give the two chambers more time to negotiate a budget. As for now, the 100 or so bills that make up the state budget are dead.

The Senate leadership was expected to meet and consider the offer Tuesday evening, White said. But numerous senators both Republican and Democrat said they would oppose such a parliamentary resolution, and Lt. Gov. Delbert Hosemann has also said it’s unlikely and that the governor will have to force lawmakers back into special session.

White said he believes, if the Senate would agree to extend the session and restart negotiations, lawmakers could pass a budget and end the 2025 session by Sunday, only a few days later than planned.

But if the Senate chooses not to pass a resolution extending the session, White said the House would end the session on Wednesday.

It would take a two-thirds vote of support in both chambers to suspend the rules and extend the session. The Senate opposition appears to be enough to prevent that. 

Still, the speaker said he believes Lt. Gov. Delbert Hosemann and Senate leaders are considering the proposal. But he said if he doesn’t hear a positive response by Wednesday, the House will adjourn and wait for Gov. Tate Reeves to call a special session at a later date. 

“We are open to (extending the session), but we will not stay here until Sunday waiting around to see if they might do it,” White said.  

White said leaving the Capitol without a budget and punting the issue to a special session might not cool tensions between the chambers, as some lawmakers hope. 

“I think when you leave here and you end up in a special session, some folks say, ‘Well everybody that’s upset will cool down by then.’ They may, or it may get worse. It may shine a different and specific light on some of the things in this budget and the differences in the House and Senate,” White said. “Whereas, I think everybody now is in the legislative mode, and we might get there.”

The Mississippi Constitution does not grant the governor much power, but if Gov. Tate Reeves calls lawmakers into a special session, he gets to set the specific legislative agenda — not lawmakers. 

White said the governor could potentially use his executive authority to direct lawmakers to take up other bills, such as those related to education, before getting to the budget. 

“When we leave here without a budget, it is entirely the governor’s prerogative to when he (sets a special session) and how he does that.”

While the future of the state’s budget hangs in the balance, lawmakers have spent the remaining days of their regular session trying to pass the few remaining bills that remained alive on their calendars. 

House approves DEI ban, Senate could follow suit on Wednesday 

The House on Tuesday passed a proposal to ban diversity, equity and inclusion programs from public schools, and both chambers approved a measure to establish a form of early voting. 

The House approved a conference report compromise to ban DEI programs and a list of “divisive concepts” from K-12 schools, community colleges and universities. If the Senate follows suit, Mississippi would join a number of other Republican-controlled states and President Donald Trump, who has made rooting DEI out of the federal government one of his top priorities. 

The agreement between the Republican-dominated chambers follows hours of heated debate in which Democrats, all almost of whom are Black, excoriated the legislation as a setback in the long struggle to make Mississippi a fairer place for minorities. Legislative Republicans argued the legislation will elevate merit in education and remove from school settings “divisive concepts” that exacerbate divisions among different identity groups. 

The concepts that will be rooted out from curricula include the idea that gender identity can be a “subjective sense of self, disconnected from biological reality.” The move reflects another effort to align with the Trump administration, which has declared via executive order that there are only two sexes.

The House and Senate disagreed on how to enforce the act, but ultimately settled on an agreement that would empower students, faculty members and contractors to sue schools for violating the law, but only after they go through an internal campus review process that would give schools time to make changes. The legislation could also withhold state funds from schools that don’t comply. 

Legislature sends ‘early voting lite’ bill to governor 

The Legislature also overwhelmingly passed a proposal to establish a watered down version of early voting, though the legislation is titled “in-person excused voting,” and not early voting.

The proposal establishes 22 days of in-person voting before Election Day that requires voters to go to the circuit clerk’s office or another location county officials have designated as a secure early voting facility, such as a courtroom or a board of supervisors meeting room. 

To cast an early vote, someone must present a valid form of photo ID and list one of about 15 legal excuses to vote before Election Day. The excuses, however, are broad and would, in theory, allow many people to cast early ballots. 

Examples of valid excuses are voters expecting to work on Election Day, being at least 65 years old, being currently enrolled in college or potentially travelling outside of their county on Election Day. 

Since most eligible voters either work, go to college or are older than 65 years of age, these excuses would apply to almost everyone. 

“Even though this isn’t early voting as we saw originally, it makes this more convenient for hard working Mississippians to go by their clerks’ office and vote in person after showing an ID 22 days prior to an election,” Senate Elections Chairman Jeremy England said. 

Republican Gov. Tate Reeves opposes early voting, so it’s unclear if he would sign the measure into law or veto it. 

Both chambers are expected to gavel at 10 a.m. on Wednesday to debate the final items on their agenda. 

This article first appeared on Mississippi Today and is republished here under a Creative Commons license.

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‘A lot of us are confused’: Lacking info, some Jacksonians go to wrong polling place

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mississippitoday.org – @mintamolly – 2025-04-01 18:43:00

Johnny Byrd knew that when his south Jackson neighborhood Carriage Hills changed wards during redistricting last year, his neighbors would have trouble finding their correct polling place on Election Day.

So he bought a poster board and inscribed it with their new voting location – Christ Tabernacle Church.

“I made a sign and placed it in front of the entrance to our neighborhood that told them exactly where to go so there would be no confusion,” said Byrd, vice president of the Association of South Jackson Neighborhoods.

Still, on April 1, a car full of voters from a senior living facility who should have gone to Christ Tabernacle were driven to their old polling place. 

“I thought it was unfortunate they had to get there and find out rather than knowing in advance that their polling location was different,” said Sen. Sollie Norwood, a Democrat from Jackson who was on the ground Tuesday helping constituents with voting.

One of those elderly women became frustrated and said she no longer wanted to vote, Norwood said, though her companions tried to convince her otherwise. By midday Tuesday, 300 people had voted at Christ Tabernacle, one of the city’s largest precincts currently in terms of registered voters, but among the lowest in turnout historically.

Voting rights advocates and candidates vying for municipal office in Jackson are keeping an eye on issues facing voters at the polls, though without official results, it remains to be seen if that will dampen turnout this election with the hotly contested Democratic primary.

“I still believed it was gonna be low,” Monica McInnis, a program manager for the nonprofit OneVoice, said of turnout. “I was expecting it would be a little higher because of what is on the ballot and how many people are running in all of the wards as well as the mayor’s race.”

A daughter helps her mother casts her votes as mayoral candidate John Horhn chats with voter at Christ Tabernacle Church in south Jackson, Tuesday, April 1, 2025.

The situation is evolving as the day goes on, but the main issues are twofold. One, thousands of Jackson voters have new precinct locations after redistricting last year put them into a new city council ward. 

Two, some voters didn’t realize their polling place for the municipal elections may differ from where they voted in last year’s national elections, which are run by the counties. 

In Mississippi, voters are assigned two precincts that are often but not always the same: A municipal location for city elections and a county location for senate, gubernatorial and presidential elections 

“People in Mississippi, we go to the same polling location for three years, and that fourth year, it changes,” said Jada Barnes, an organizer with the Jackson-based nonprofit MS Votes. “A lot of us are confused. When people are going to the polling place today, they’re seeing it is closed, so they’re just going back home which is making turnout go even lower.” 

Barnes said she’s hearing this primarily from a few Jackson voters who called a hotline that MS Votes is manning. Lack of awareness around polling locations is a big deterrent, she said, because most people are trying to squeeze their vote in between work, school or family responsibilities. 

“Maybe you’re on your lunch break, you only got 30 minutes to go vote, you learn that your polling location has changed and now you have to go back to work,” she said. 

Norwood said he heard from a group of students assigned to vote at Christ Tabernacle who had attempted to vote at the wrong precinct and were told their names weren’t on the rolls. They didn’t know they had been moved from Ward 4 to Ward 6, Norwood said, meaning they expected to vote in a different council race until reaching the polls Tuesday.

Though voters have a duty to be informed of their polling location, Barnes said city and circuit clerks and local election commissioners are ultimately responsible for making sure voters know where to go on Election Day. 

Angela Harris, the Jackson municipal clerk, said her office worked to inform voters by mailing out thousands of letters to Jacksonians whose precincts changed, including the roughly 6,000 whose wards changed during the 2024 redistricting. 

“I am over-swamped,” she said yesterday. 

Despite her efforts, at least one voter said he never got a letter. Stephen Brown learned through Facebook, not an official notice, that he was moved from Ward 1 to Ward 2. 

Stephen Brown, a resident of Briarwood Heights in northeast Jackson, ran into difficulty voting April 1.

A resident of the Briarwood Heights neighborhood in northeast Jackson, Brown’s efforts to vote Tuesday have been complicated by mixed messages and a lack of communication. He has yet to vote, even though he showed up at the polls at 7:10 this morning. 

His odyssey took him to two wrong locations, where the poll managers instructed Brown to call his ward’s election commissioner, who did not answer multiple calls, Brown said. Brown finally learned through a Facebook comment that he could look up his new precinct on the Mississippi Secretary of State’s website — if he scrolled down the page past his county precinct information.

This afternoon, Brown has a series of meetings planned, so now he’s hoping for a 30-minute window to try voting one more time, even though he’s skeptical it will make a difference. 

“I’m a very disenchanted voter, because I’ve been let down so much,” he said. “I vote because it’s the thing that I’m supposed to do and because of the sacrifices of my ancestors, but not because I truly believe in it, you know?” 

Brown’s not alone in facing turbulence. Back at Christ Tabernacle, one Jackson voter, who declined to give her name, said she’s frustrated from having to drive to three polling locations in one day.

“I’m dissatisfied with the fact that I had to drive from one end of this street and all of the back to come over here when I usually vote over here on Highway 18,” she said. “This was a great inconvenience, gas wise and time wise.”

The same thing happened to Rodney Miller. He called the confusion some voters are facing in this election “unnecessary.” 

“That ain’t the way we should be handling business,” he said. “We should be looking out for one another better than that, you know? It’s already enough getting people out to vote, and when you confuse them when they try? Come on now. That’s discouraging.”

Christ Tabernacle is the second largest precinct in the city in terms of registered voters, with 3,330 assigned to vote there as of 2024, according to documents retrieved from the municipal election committee. But it had one of the lowest voter turnout rates – 10% in the 2021 primary election before redistricting and before it became so large.

Byrd mentioned the much higher turnout in places like Ward 1 in northeast Jackson, compared to where he lives in south Jackson. Why does Byrd think this is?

“Civics,” Byrd said. “They took civics out of school. If you ask the average person what is the role and responsibility of any elected official, they can’t tell you.”

This article first appeared on Mississippi Today and is republished here under a Creative Commons license.

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