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Alan Partin: From Ole Miss football to a remarkable medical career

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Alan Partin: From Ole Miss football to a remarkable medical career

They are called the Partin Tables, named for Dr. Alan Partin, the renowned Johns Hopkins urologist who created the ground-breaking medical reference material. Partin developed the tables when he wasn’t performing hundreds and hundreds of often life-saving prostate surgeries a year.

Alan Partin, former Ole Miss football player, became a renowned surgeon at Johns Hopkins.

And you may wonder why a sports writer would write about such an obscure (if invaluable) medical reference. It is because Partin, who died on March 28 at age 62, grew up in Grenada and played college football at Ole Miss.

“Smartest damn guy I ever met,” said Madison resident Tim Bell, who was a student trainer for the Ole Miss football staff during the early 1980s when Partin played in the offensive line for the Rebels.

“Most guys played college football hoping to get to the pros,” Bell said. “Alan Partin knew he was gonna be a doctor, knew he was going to be a surgeon, knew he was going to study at Johns Hopkins. He was super, super intelligent and he was driven.”

So much for the hackneyed image of offensive linemen as dumb jocks. Partin, a chemistry and pre-med major, made straight A’s at Ole Miss. He was brilliant. He was far from alone among offensive linemen, and we’ll get to that.

Rick Cleveland

Just google “Partin Tables” if you want to learn how smart Partin was. Developed in 1993, the tables are based “on thousands of nerve-sparing radical retropubic prostatectomies…”

Asked to put the Partin Tables in layman’s terms, Dr. Charles Pound, division chief of urology at University of Mississippi Medical Center (UMMC), said, “It was a big deal. It is a big deal. For many years, it was the best tool you had to help doctors and patients make decisions on prostrate treatment. It gave you the info about the stage of your disease. It is still very helpful today. I still use it.”

As it turns out, Pound studied under Partin at Johns Hopkins and they were good friends. Indeed, Pound was the best man in Partin’s second wedding.

“I met him when I was a student and he was a resident at Johns Hopkins, and then we worked together for three or four years,” Pound said. “Clearly, Alan was really, really intelligent, but I’m not so sure that his drive and determination were not his greatest assets. He would take on anything with sheer determination and nearly always succeed. He was special.”

Dr. Theodore L. Deweese, CEO of Johns Hopkins Medicine, worked closely with Partin for years and issued a statement at the time of his cohort’s death. “Throughout his career as a researcher, clinician and a leader, Alan Partin was consistently at the heart of discovery and innovation in the filed of urology, always keeping a singular focus on improving the outcomes for our patients.”

Football, Partin often said, helped prepare him for his medical career. In a 2016 interview, Partin talked about the correlation. “You think you’re running to the right, then the defense changes and now you’re going left. Everything can change in a split second…” Partin said. “As a surgeon, you have to do that non-stop. No surgery is the same.

“Everybody has anatomical variations,” he continued. “I remove men’s prostates when they have cancer. There are literally 387 well-defined maneuvers in that operation. Then you get inside a patient and notice an artery that isn’t supposed to be there is running across the area where you are operating. You have to change what you are doing. You have to adapt to that moment. That’s like coming up to the line and expecting to see one defense and they’ve shifted into another other. You still want to move the ball forward, so you have to think quickly, change up what you were doing and run the play.”

Alan Partin at Ole Miss.

There’s one other striking similarity between playing in the offensive line and being a doctor. Put it this way: An offensive lineman is the only position in which the ultimate goal is to protect someone else.

More than half a century of experience covering the sport has led this writer to this conclusion: Offensive linemen are often not only the smartest, but also most diligent and most selfless players on the field.

Selfless might be the most important of those traits. An offensive lineman toils mostly in obscurity, noticed only when an umpire throws his flag, and the referee announces over the loudspeaker, “Holding, number 75, 10-yard penalty, repeat first down.”

Quarterbacks, running backs and wide receivers get the headlines; offensive linemen – often referred to as the Big Uglies, for goodness sake, simply pave their way. Certainly not all become nearly as successful as Dr. Alan Partin, but let’s take a quick look at some of Partin’s Ole Miss teammates. Hoppy Cole, Partin’s roommate, owns banks. Murray Whitaker became a cardiologist. David Traxler runs a highly successful technology company in North Carolina. Greg Jeffcoat became a college registrar. Bobby Dye runs a successful resource management and financial planning company. Marc Massengale is another successful financial adviser. And then, of course, there’s Partin. That’s all from one team’s offensive line. Amazing.

Cole, who lives in Ellisville, was Partin’s college roommate for three and a half years.

“Big Al is what we called him,” Cole said. “Such a great guy, such a great friend – funny, kind, thoughtful and so, so smart.”

“Big Al and I made T-shirts that said we were part of the 30-30-30 club,” Cole said.

30-30-30?

“Yeah, that meant we played when we were either 30 points ahead, 30 points behind or there were 30 seconds left,” Cole said, chuckling.

That’s an exaggeration. I covered those Ole Miss teams. They played far more more than that.

The record will show that those Ole Miss teams (1979-82) lost more games than they won.

Thankfully, far more meaningful and lasting measures of achievement exist, which don’t always get reported. And in those measures, Dr. Big Al Partin and his partners in the Ole Miss offensive line, proved smashing successes.

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

Mississippi Today

On this day in 1997

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mississippitoday.org – Jerry Mitchell – 2024-12-22 07:00:00

Dec. 22, 1997

Myrlie Evers and Reena Evers-Everette cheer the jury verdict of Feb. 5, 1994, when Byron De La Beckwith was found guilty of the 1963 murder of Mississippi NAACP leader Medgar Evers. Credit: AP/Rogelio Solis

The Mississippi Supreme Court upheld the conviction of white supremacist Byron De La Beckwith for the 1963 murder of Medgar Evers. 

In the court’s 4–2 decision, Justice Mike Mills praised efforts “to squeeze justice out of the harm caused by a furtive explosion which erupted from dark bushes on a June night in Jackson, Mississippi.” 

He wrote that Beckwith’s constitutional right to a speedy trial had not been denied. His “complicity with the Sovereignty Commission’s involvement in the prior trials contributed to the delay.” 

The decision did more than ensure that Beckwith would stay behind bars. The conviction helped clear the way for other prosecutions of unpunished killings from the Civil Rights Era.

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

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Mississippi Today

Medicaid expansion tracker approaches $1 billion loss for Mississippi

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mississippitoday.org – Bobby Harrison – 2024-12-22 06:00:00

About the time people ring in the new year next week, the digital tracker on Mississippi Today’s homepage tabulating the amount of money the state is losing by not expanding Medicaid will hit $1 billion.

The state has lost $1 billion not since the start of the quickly departing 2024 but since the beginning of the state’s fiscal year on July 1.

Some who oppose Medicaid expansion say the digital tracker is flawed.

During an October news conference, when state Auditor Shad White unveiled details of his $2 million study seeking ways to cut state government spending, he said he did not look at Medicaid expansion as a method to save money or grow state revenue.

“I think that (Mississippi Today) calculator is wrong,” White said. “… I don’t think that takes into account how many people are going to be moved off the federal health care exchange where their health care is paid for fully by the federal government and moved onto Medicaid.”

White is not the only Mississippi politician who has expressed concern that if Medicaid expansion were enacted, thousands of people would lose their insurance on the exchange and be forced to enroll in Medicaid for health care coverage.

Mississippi Today’s projections used for the tracker are based on studies conducted by the Institutions of Higher Learning University Research Center. Granted, there are a lot of variables in the study that are inexact. It is impossible to say, for example, how many people will get sick and need health care, thus increasing the cost of Medicaid expansion. But is reasonable that the projections of the University Research Center are in the ballpark of being accurate and close to other studies conducted by health care experts.

White and others are correct that Mississippi Today’s calculator does not take into account money flowing into the state for people covered on the health care exchange. But that money does not go to the state; it goes to insurance companies that, granted, use that money to reimburse Mississippians for providing health care. But at least a portion of the money goes to out-of-state insurance companies as profits.

Both Medicaid expansion and the health care exchange are part of the Affordable Care Act. Under Medicaid expansion people earning up to $20,120 annually can sign up for Medicaid and the federal government will pay the bulk of the cost. Mississippi is one of 10 states that have not opted into Medicaid expansion.

People making more than $14,580 annually can garner private insurance through the health insurance exchanges, and people below certain income levels can receive help from the federal government in paying for that coverage.

During the COVID-19 pandemic, legislation championed and signed into law by President Joe Biden significantly increased the federal subsidies provided to people receiving insurance on the exchange. Those increased subsidies led to many Mississippians — desperate for health care — turning to the exchange for help.

White, state Insurance Commissioner Mike Chaney, Gov. Tate Reeves and others have expressed concern that those people would lose their private health insurance and be forced to sign up for Medicaid if lawmakers vote to expand Medicaid.

They are correct.

But they do not mention that the enhanced benefits authored by the Biden administration are scheduled to expire in December 2025 unless they are reenacted by Congress. The incoming Donald Trump administration has given no indication it will continue the enhanced subsidies.

As a matter of fact, the Trump administration, led by billionaire Elon Musk, is looking for ways to cut federal spending.

Some have speculated that Medicaid expansion also could be on Musk’s chopping block.

That is possible. But remember congressional action is required to continue the enhanced subsidies. On the flip side, congressional action would most likely be required to end or cut Medicaid expansion.

Would the multiple U.S. senators and House members in the red states that have expanded Medicaid vote to end a program that is providing health care to thousands of their constituents?

If Congress does not continue Biden’s enhanced subsidies, the rates for Mississippians on the exchange will increase on average about $500 per year, according to a study by KFF, a national health advocacy nonprofit. If that occurs, it is likely that many of the 280,000 Mississippians on the exchange will drop their coverage.

The result will be that Mississippi’s rate of uninsured — already one of the highest in the nation – will rise further, putting additional pressure on hospitals and other providers who will be treating patients who have no ability to pay.

In the meantime, the Mississippi Today counter that tracks the amount of money Mississippi is losing by not expanding Medicaid keeps ticking up.

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

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Mississippi Today

On this day in 1911

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mississippitoday.org – Jerry Mitchell – 2024-12-21 07:00:00

Dec. 21, 1911

A colorized photograph of Josh Gibson, who was playing with the Homestead Grays Credit: Wikipedia

Josh Gibson, the Negro League’s “Home Run King,” was born in Buena Vista, Georgia. 

When the family’s farm suffered, they moved to Pittsburgh, and Gibson tried baseball at age 16. He eventually played for a semi-pro team in Pittsburgh and became known for his towering home runs. 

He was watching the Homestead Grays play on July 25, 1930, when the catcher injured his hand. Team members called for Gibson, sitting in the stands, to join them. He was such a talented catcher that base runners were more reluctant to steal. He hit the baseball so hard and so far (580 feet once at Yankee Stadium) that he became the second-highest paid player in the Negro Leagues behind Satchel Paige, with both of them entering the National Baseball Hame of Fame. 

The Hall estimated that Gibson hit nearly 800 homers in his 17-year career and had a lifetime batting average of .359. Gibson was portrayed in the 1996 TV movie, “Soul of the Game,” by Mykelti Williamson. Blair Underwood played Jackie Robinson, Delroy Lindo portrayed Satchel Paige, and Harvey Williams played “Cat” Mays, the father of the legendary Willie Mays. 

Gibson has now been honored with a statue outside the Washington Nationals’ ballpark.

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

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