Mississippi Today

Is Ole Miss this good? Are Mississippi State, Southern Miss this bad?

Published

3 days ago

September 15, 2024

mississippitoday.org – Rick Cleveland – 2024-09-15 16:05:51

Is Ole Miss this good? Are Mississippi State, Southern Miss this bad?

After 13 hours of watching college football Saturday – and enduring seemingly 21,989 TV timeouts – this bleary-eyed correspondent is left with more questions than answers.

For instance, is Ole Miss, the nation’s fifth-ranked team, really this good? (Honestly, I think the Rebels are.)

Are Mississippi State and Southern Miss this bad? (The season is still a puppy, but, boy, those are two teams that really need for something good to happen. Soon.)

Through three games, Lane Kiffin’s offense averages nearly 700 yards per game, nearly nine yards per play and exactly 56 points per game. Granted, the Rebels have not played a really good football team yet, but these eyes see no weaknesses, glaring or otherwise. Apparently, Wake Forest doesn’t either because the Demon Deacons are paying Ole Miss $750,000 to not play the return game in Oxford next year.

As for Mississippi State, there was nothing holy about Toledo. The Rockets earned a $1.2 million paycheck and dominated the Bulldogs in every phase of the game in a 41-17 victory that was ever bit as one-sided as it sounds. The pertinent question seems not so much how can a 10.5-point underdog win by 24 points on the road, but why was Toledo ever a double-digit underdog in the first place?

Toledo plays in the Mid-American Conference, where the league’s best teams are nearly always competitive with Power 5 conference teams. We saw it a week ago when Northern Illinois won at Notre Dame. That was a week after Notre Dame won on the road at Texas A&M and a week before the Irish crushed Purdue 66-7. That same Saturday, Bowling Green led for much of the game before losing at Penn State. Last year, Toledo lost to Illinois by three points in its opener before winning 11 regular season games and the MAC regular season title.

My point: Toledo is a well-coached, veteran team, used to success, and no doubt came to Starkville expecting to win. What the Rockets couldn’t have expected was to dominate. But Toledo led 14-0 early, 28-3 at halftime and 35-3 in the third quarter. It could have been worse than the final 41-17.

For State, the worst part is that the Bulldogs were dominated at the line of scrimmage on both sides of the ball. There was nothing fluke-y about it. Twenty of Toledo’s 73 offensive plays gained 10 for more yards. On the flip side, Toledo defenders combined for five sacks, six tackles for losses. State ran the ball 27 times for a paltry 66 yards.

That’s particularly sobering when you realize that the Bulldogs’ remaining schedule includes five of the nation’s top seven ranked teams. After Florida, in Starkville, this Saturday, State’s next two games are against the nation’s top two teams, Texas and Georgia, both on the road.

Meanwhile, Ole Miss continued its early season demolition of inferior competition. After clubbing Furman and Middle Tennessee State by a combined 128-3, the Rebels faced their first Power 5 competition and first road game of the season. The Rebels made it look easy. The first possession of the game pretty much set the tone: 75 yards and five plays in 87 seconds, touchdown Ole Miss. It was almost like a dummy drill. Before the first quarter was over, Ole Miss would score three touchdowns, and it easily could have been four.

Jaxson Dart has now completed 73 of 88 passes for 1,172 yards. That’s 83 percent. He throws lasers.

Ole Miss now plays a good Sun Belt team Georgia Southern, at home, before beginning conference play the following week against Kentucky. Road games at South Carolina and LSU follow that. The Rebels will be favored in all.

At Hattiesburg, Southern Miss started fast, taking a 14-0 lead over a talented South Florida team that had played Alabama on even terms for three and a half quarters the previous week. After USM’s quick start, reality set in. South Florida scored the next 28 points en route to a dominant, 49-24 victory. Most disheartening of all for USM: The Golden Eagles’ defensive front was supposed to be the strength of the team, but South Florida gashed USM for 369 yards rushing. Southern Miss now goes on the road to face Rich Rodriguez’s Jacksonville State team, which won nine games and the New Orleans Bowl last year.

Elsewhere:

Previously No. 1 Georgia, for once, looked human in a 13-12 win at Kentucky.
Previously No. 2 Texas lost Quinn Ewers but used Arch Manning’s five-touchdown performance to trounce UTSA 56-7 and move up to No. 1 ahead of Georgia. To this observer of three generations of quarterbacks named Manning, the athletic, 19-year-old Arch, whose performance included a 67-yard touchdown run, looked far more like his grandfather Archie than either of his famous quarterbacking uncles Peyton and Eli.
No. 4 Alabama went on the road to blast Wisconsin 42-10.
No. 16 LSU outlasted South Carolina 36-33 in a game marred by officiating that was sketchy at best.
Vanderbilt fell from the unbeaten ranks, dropping a 36-32 decision to Georgia State of the Sun Belt Conference.
Jackson State trounced Southern University 33-15 for its fifth straight victory over the Jaguars before a crowd of just over 32,000 at Veterans Memorial Stadium.
Colorado bounced back with a 28-9 victory over Colorado State. Former Jackson State coach Deion Sanders had his son, Shadeur, throwing the ball and padding his stats with a 19-point lead with under two minutes to play. CBS announcers, understandably, were both incredulous and critical. Alas, sportsmanship will never be Deion’s long suit.

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

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Crooked Letter Sports Podcast

Podcast: New Orleans sports columnist and author Jeff Duncan joins the podcast to talk about his new Steve Gleason book and the new-look New Orleans Saints.

Published

4 hours ago

September 18, 2024

Staff Editor

mississippitoday.org – Rick Cleveland and Tyler Cleveland – 2024-09-18 10:00:00

Jeff Duncan went from the Mississippi Book Festival in Jackson on Saturday to Jerry World in Dallas on Sunday where he watched and wrote about the Saints’ total dismantling of the Dallas Cowboys. We talk about both events and also about what happened in high school and college football last weekend and what’s coming up this weekend.

Stream all episodes here.

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 1899

Published

8 hours ago

September 18, 2024

Staff Editor

mississippitoday.org – Jerry Mitchell – 2024-09-18 07:00:00

Sept. 18, 1899

Scott Joplin, known as “the King of Ragtime,” copyrighted the “Maple Leaf Rag,” which became the first song to sell more than 1 million copies of sheet music. The popularity launched a sensation surrounding ragtime, which has been called America’s “first classical music.”

Born near Texarkana, Texas, Joplin grew up in a musical family. He worked on the railroad with other family members until he was able to earn money as a musician, traveling across the South. He wound up playing at the World’s Fair in Chicago in 1893, where he met fellow musician Otis Saunders, who encouraged him to write down the songs he had been making up to entertain audiences. In all, Joplin wrote dozens of ragtime songs.

After some success, he moved to New York City, hoping he could make a living while stretching the boundaries of music. He wrote a ragtime ballet and two operas, but success in these new forms eluded him. He was buried in a pauper’s grave in New York City in 1917.

More than six decades later, his music was rediscovered, initially by Joshua Rifkin, who recorded Joplin’s songs on a record, and then Gunther Schuller of the New England Conservatory, who performed four of the ragtime songs in concert: “My faculty, many of whom had never even heard of Joplin, were saying things like, ‘My gosh, he writes melodies like Schubert!’”

Joplin’s music won over even more admirers through the 1973 movie, “The Sting,” which won an Oscar for the music. His song, “The Entertainer,” reached No. 3 on Billboard and was ranked No. 10 among “Songs of the Century” list by the Recording Industry Association of America. His opera “Treemonisha” was produced to wide acclaim, and he won a Pulitzer Prize in 1976 for his special contribution to American music.

“The ragtime craze, the faddish thing, will obviously die down, but Joplin will have his position secure in American music history,” Rifkin said. “He is a treasurable composer.”

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

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Mississippi Today

Insurance chief Chaney hopes Mississippi’s homeowner rates are stabilizing

Published

8 hours ago

September 18, 2024

Staff Editor

mississippitoday.org – Bobby Harrison – 2024-09-18 05:00:00

Mississippi Insurance Commissioner Mike Chaney says he is hopeful that the homeowner insurance rates that have spiked in recent years are now beginning to stabilize.

Chaney said he is hopeful that legislation passed during the 2024 session that provides grants to help homeowners put more wind resistant roofs on their homes will help lower the cost of premiums. He said the Legislature placed $5 million in the program.

“While this will help launch the program, the Legislature will need to provide additional annual funding well above this amount so that the program can provide the necessary benefits to reach a significant number of policyholders across our state,” Chaney said via email.

While homeowners’ insurance rates in Mississippi have risen significantly, the increases have been less than in many surrounding states, according to various studies.

Chaney said his agency, which regulates the insurance industry in Mississippi, has received requests for double digit increases.

“We worked with companies to consider less than what their indicated need was … We feel that rate pressures will begin to stabilize along with inflation. Some companies that requested rates over 15% last year are now seeing a much lesser need – many are now in single digits,” Chaney said.

Inflation and the frequency of severe weather causing insurance claims are the two primary reasons for the increases in the homeowners’ insurance rates, according to Chaney.

Earlier this year the U.S. Senate issued a report addressing the rising costs of homeowners insurance premiums. The Democratic majority cited weather associated with climate change as the primary reason for the increase. Republicans discounted climate change and blamed the increase on inflation.

According to data compiled by Insurance.com and updated this month, the average cost of a policy for a $300,000 home in Mississippi is $3,380 per year, which is $779 or 30% above the national average.

The cost in Mississippi, though, is lower than many other Southern states. For instance, the cost in Louisiana is 38% above the national average and 52% above the national average in Arkansas. Florida is 70% above the national average while Texas is 48%. Other Southern states — Georgia, Alabama, Tennessee and Kentucky — are below the national average.

Realtor Magazine in May cited a report from Insurify, a virtual insurance company, saying, “The states with the highest home insurance costs are prone to severe weather events. Florida, Louisiana, Texas, Arkansas and Mississippi are vulnerable to hurricanes. Texas, Colorado and Nebraska face a growing wildfire risk. Nebraska, Texas and Kansas are at high risk for tornadoes, being located in an area nicknamed ‘Tornado Alley.’”

Chaney said there are two types of processes for how insurance companies get rate increases. He said Mississippi is “a prior approval” state where the companies must receive approval from the regulator before an increase can be enacted. Other states –file and use states – allow the company to enact the increase before receiving approval.

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

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