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Can a high school football coach make a good U.S. vice president? It depends.

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mississippitoday.org – Rick Cleveland – 2024-08-15 11:04:10

As many Americans, this writer eagerly read all I could about Tim Walz after Kamala Harris chose him as her running mate.

I didn’t have to hear or read more than three paragraphs before I became far more interested. There it was: Tim Walz was a former high school football coach, the defensive coordinator of a state championship winning team in Minnesota. He also taught geography and social studies.

Rick Cleveland

Now then, I have spent a professional lifetime dealing with high school coaches and have some observations:

  • Number one, some of the smartest, most inspiring, most common-sense leaders I have ever known were high football coaches.
  • Number two, some of the most intellectually challenged, ineffective people I have ever known were high school football coaches.

You could say the same about workers in just about any profession, including doctors, lawyers, business execs and sports writers. There are really, really good ones; there are really, really awful ones. I have known scores of high school football coaches who would have been successful in any profession they chose.

Gulfport coaching legend Lindy Callahan comes immediately to mind. Coach Callahan is 96 years young now, and I’d probably still vote for him no matter the office. He could, in the words of the great Jake Gaither, take his’n and beat your’n, or take your’n and beat his’n. He would have been a terrific mayor, congressman or governor. You could say the same about Marion “Chief” Henley, who won 116 games and lost only eight as the coach at old Carver High School in Picayune in the days before integration.

Callahan and Henley both possessed all the qualities and traits and people skills that make football coaches successful. They were smart, yes, but they also surrounded themselves with competent people. They inspired the young folks who played for them. They commanded respect, but they also engendered uncommon love and devotion. They were quick on their feet, adjusted well when the game was on the line. They worked and worked and worked. They inspired others to work just as hard as they did.

I play a lot of golf these days with Mike Justice, another highly successful, championships-winning high school football coach who would have been successful no matter what he did, even if he had been a pulpwood hauler like his father was in Itawamba County. We were talking the other day about whether or not the same qualities and characteristics that make a successful football coach might also make a good vice president or even president. As we know all too well, a vice president is just one heartbeat away from a promotion.

Justice believes the No. 1 path to success as a high school football coach “is the ability to surround yourself with good people, run a system that you believe in and get really good at it. Stay hitched to it, no matter what.”

Said Justice, “You better believe in what you are doing and you better be able to inspire your players to believe in it and buy into it.”

Sounds a lot like qualities and characteristics you need to be an effective leader in government, although I still have a difficult time imagining Justice in the Oval Office – or wearing a suit and tie every day for that matter. So does he.

Here, we haven’t that many coaches venture into politics, although in small-town Mississippi a winning football coach is often the most popular, most respected man in town. One possible reason: By law, a retired coach would have his or her PERS state retirement payments frozen the day he or she took office.

For what it’s worth, we have had more cheerleaders than players or coaches become powerful movers and shakers in government. Sen. John Stennis was a yell leader at Mississippi State. Sens. Trent Lott and Thad Cochran were both Ole Miss cheerleaders. I am not sure what that tells us. “Hotty Toddy” and “Hail State,” I guess.

And I know what many readers are thinking: But what about Tommy Tuberville, the ex-Ole Miss football coach-turned-Alabama senator, who told us he would only leave Oxford in a pine box but then left on a private jet bound for Auburn?

Frankly, I don’t count Tuberville any more than I trust him. He spent four years at Ole Miss during which he won 25 games and lost 20. Indeed, I am not sure Alabamans should count him as one of their own, either. After all, he was living in Florida – and had been for years – when he decided to run for the U.S. Senate from Alabama.

You ask me, Tuberville’s record as a senator is not a great advertisement for coaches becoming politicians. For nearly a year in 2023, he held up all promotions of U.S. military senior officers, drawing the ire of the nation’s military brass and many in his own party who believed he was putting the nation’s security at risk.

“There’s nobody more military than me,” said Tuberville, who has never served one second in any branch of the service.

But back to the original theme of this column. Can a high school football coach become an effective national leader?

My take: Some could, and many could not. This much is certain: Many of the same qualities that make for a highly successful coach would serve a vice president or president equally well.

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

Mississippi Today

On this day in 1946

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mississippitoday.org – Jerry Mitchell – 2024-12-23 07:00:00

Dec. 23, 1946

Chuck Cooper Credit: Wikipedia

University of Tennessee refused to play a basketball game with Duquesne University, because they had a Black player, Chuck Cooper. Despite their refusal, the all-American player and U.S. Navy veteran went on to become the first Black player to participate in a college basketball game south of the Mason-Dixon line. Cooper became the first Black player ever drafted in the NBA — drafted by the Boston Celtics. He went on to be admitted to the Basketball Hall of Fame.

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

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Mississippi Today

Podcast: Ray Higgins: PERS needs both extra cash and benefit changes for future employees

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mississippitoday.org – Bobby Harrison – 2024-12-23 06:30:00

Mississippi Today’s Bobby Harrison talks with Ray Higgins, executive director of the Mississippi Public Employees Retirement System, about proposed changes in pension benefits for future employees and what is needed to protect the system for current employees and retirees. Higgins also stresses the importance of the massive system to the Mississippi economy.

READ MORE: As lawmakers look to cut taxes, Mississippi mayors and county leaders outline infrastructure needs

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

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‘Bringing mental health into the spaces where moms already are’: UMMC program takes off

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mississippitoday.org – Sophia Paffenroth – 2024-12-23 06:00:00

A program aimed at increasing access to mental health services for mothers has taken off at the University of Mississippi Medical Center. 

The program, called CHAMP4Moms, is an extension of an existing program called CHAMP – which stands for Child Access to Mental Health and Psychiatry. The goal is to make it easier for moms to reach mental health resources during a phase when some may need it the most and have the least time. 

CHAMP4Moms offers a direct phone line that health providers can call if they are caring for a pregnant woman or new mother they believe may have unaddressed mental health issues. On the line, health providers can speak directly to a reproductive psychiatrist who can guide them on how to screen, diagnose and treat mothers. That means that moms don’t have to go out of their way to find a psychiatrist, and health care providers who don’t have extensive training in psychiatry can still help these women. 

“Basically, we’re trying to bring mental health into the spaces where moms already are,” explained Calandrea Taylor, the program manager. “Because of the low workforce that we have in the state, it’s a lot to try to fill the state with mental health providers. But what we do is bring the mental health practice to you and where mothers are. And we’re hoping that that reduces stigma.”

Launched in 2023, the program has had a slow lift off, Taylor said. But the phone line is up and running, as the team continues to make additions to the program – including a website with resources that Taylor expects will go live next year. 

To fill the role of medical director, UMMC brought in a California-based reproductive psychiatrist, Dr. Emily Dossett. Dossett, who grew up in Mississippi and still has family in the state, says it has been rewarding to come full circle and serve her home state – which suffers a dearth of mental health providers and has no reproductive psychiatrists

“I love it. It’s really satisfying to take the experience I’ve been able to pull together over the past 20 years practicing medicine and then apply it to a place I love,” Dossett said. “I feel like I understand the people I work with, I relate to them, I like hearing where they’re from and being able to picture it … That piece of it has really been very much a joy.”

As medical director, Dossett is able to educate maternal health providers on mental health issues. But she’s also an affiliate professor at UMMC, which she says allows her to train up the next generation of psychiatrists on the importance of maternal and reproductive psychiatry – an often-overlooked aspect in the field. 

If people think of reproductive mental health at all, they likely think of postpartum depression, Dossett said. But reproductive psychiatry is far more encompassing than just the postpartum time period – and includes many more conditions than just depression. 

“Most reproductive psychiatrists work with pregnant and postpartum people, but there’s also work to be done around people who have issues connected to their menstrual cycle or perimenopause,” she explained. “… There’s depression, certainly. But we actually see more anxiety, which comes in lots of different forms – it can be panic disorder, general anxiety, OCD.”

Tackling mental health in this population doesn’t just improve people’s quality of life. It can be lifesaving – and has the potential to mitigate some of the state’s worst health metrics.

Mental health disorders are the leading cause of pregnancy-related death, which is defined by the Centers for Disease Control as any death up to a year postpartum that is caused by or worsened by pregnancy. 

In Mississippi, 80% of pregnancy-related deaths between 2016 and 2020 were deemed preventable, according to the latest Mississippi Maternal Mortality Report.

Mississippi is not alone in this, Dossett said. Historically, mental health has not been taken seriously in the western world, for a number of reasons – including stigma and a somewhat arbitrary division between mind and body, Dossett explained.

“You see commercials on TV of happy pregnant ladies. You see magazines of celebrities and their baby bumps, and everybody is super happy. And so, if you don’t feel that way, there’s this tremendous amount of shame … But another part of it is medicine and the way that our health system is set up, it’s just classically divided between physical and mental health.”

Dossett encourages women to tell their doctor about any challenges they’re facing – even if they seem normal.

“There are a lot of people who have significant symptoms, but they think it’s normal,” Dossett said. “They don’t know that there’s a difference between the sort of normal adjustment that people have after having a baby – and it is a huge adjustment – and symptoms that get in the way of their ability to connect or bond with the baby, or their ability to eat or sleep, or take care of their other children or eventually go to work.”

She also encourages health care providers to develop a basic understanding of mental health issues and to ask patients questions about their mood, thoughts and feelings. 

CHAMP4Moms is a resource Dossett hopes providers will take advantage of – but she also hopes they will shape and inform the program in its inaugural year. 

“We’re available, we’re open for calls, we’re open for feedback and suggestions, we’re open for collaboration,” she said. “We want this to be something that can hopefully really move the needle on perinatal mental health and substance use in the state – and I think it can.”

Providers can call the CHAMP main line at 601-984-2080 for resources and referral options throughout the state. 

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

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