It was a lost weekend for Mississippi’s college football teams and the New Orleans Saints. Ole Miss lost in overtime to LSU. Mississippi State again showed improvement in a loss to Georgia. Southern Miss lost again at Louisiana-Monroe. And the Saints dropped a division game to the Tampa Bay Bucs. Tyler Cleveland: “Every team I pull for loses.” So, is there a fix in sight?

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The Mississippi Sports Hall of Fame Tuesday announced its 2025 induction class, and it is star-studded with championship coaches and athletes from football, baseball, basketball and golf.

In alphabetical order, the 2025 inductees are:

• Scott Berry, baseball coach, at first Meridian Community College and more famously at Southern Miss, where his teams won 10 conference championships. Combined record as a head coach: 500 victories. At Southern Miss his teams won 528 games, lost 276 and tied one. They won 10 conference championships and he was five times a conference coach of the year.
• Steve Freeman, Mississippi State and NFL football star and longtime NFL official, who is among the career pass interception leaders at both State and for the Buffalo Bills. He was one of the key cogs of State’s 1974 Sun Bowl team that won nine games and was one of the leaders of a Bills’ defense that was the NFL’s best in 1980.
• Mike Justice, high school football coach. His teams won 297 games and lost only 98 over 35 seasons. He won championships at virtually every level of high school football. His 1999 Madison Central team is generally considered one of the best — if not the best — in Mississippi history.
• Dexter McCluster, Ole Miss and NFL running back/kick returner who made All-SEC and All American for the Rebels and then played eight seasons in the NFL.
• Derrick Nix, Southern Miss running back. Nix, who also coached collegiately at Southern Miss and Ole Miss and is currently the offensive coordinator at Auburn, was one of the all-time greats at Southern Miss, despite playing much of his career with a life-threatening kidney disease.
• Steve Rives, high school and Delta State basketball coach, whose teams won more than 700 games. At Jackson Prep, his teams won 260 games while losing only 23. At Delta State, Rives’ coaching record was 388-188.
• Robbie Webb, golfer and golf teacher, who will be inducted posthumously. After at outstanding college career at Southern Miss, Webb became the longtime pro at Canton and Deerfield country clubs. Webb taught and coached many future college golfers and amateur and professional champions.
• Mo Williams, basketball standout in high school, college and NBA, now the head basketball coach at Jackson State. Williams was a McDonald’s All-American at Murrah before playing two years at Alabama and then 13 years in the NBA. Williams averaged 13 points and five assists a game for his 13-year pro career.

Clearly, it’s an outstanding class, which includes several sports heroes. I have had the good fortune to cover all as a journalist and have fond memories of each. What follow are some stories you may not know:

As a junior golfer growing up in Gulfport, Webb played often with Mississippi Sports Hall of Famer Mary Mills, who would go on to win nine LPGA golf championships, including three majors. Later on, Mills played No. 1 on the Millsaps men‘s golf team when Webb was playing No. 1 at Southern Miss. In a dual match once at the old Millsaps golf course, Mills led Webb one-up at the nine-hole turn. Southern Miss coach B.O. Van Hook chided Webb: “Hell, Webb, you gonna let a girl beat you.” Webb promptly took his golf bag off his shoulders and handed his clubs to his coach, saying, “Here, Hook, you try her…”

Mo Williams will be remembered as one of Mississippi’s most accomplished basketball players in history, but probably could have played professionally in baseball or football as well. Says John Richardson, the former Ole Miss football player who coached Williams at Chasten Middle School and now works as a jack-of-all-trades at the MSHOF museum, “Mo could have been a great quarterback in the SEC or probably a Major League shortstop. He was just so gifted and worked so hard at anything he tried. He was my quarterback at Chastain and we were undefeated. He could throw it or run it and nobody could stop him. I was a little disappointed when he chose to concentrate on basketball, but I’d say it worked out OK for him.”

I covered state championship victories for Justice both at Louisville and Madison Central. In a quick interview after his undefeated 1999 Madison Central team ransacked Provine in a state championship game, I asked, already knowing the answer: “Mike, do you know how many passes y’all threw tonight?” He thought for a couple seconds and then answered: “Well, I know if we threw one it was a damned audible.” They threw none.

McCluster originally committed to play football at South Florida before a late recruiting visit from then-Ole Miss coach Ed Oregon. Said McCluster: “I’ll never forget it. We were playing football, using a couch pillow for the ball, in my living room. Coach O would fake a handoff to me and throw a pass across the room to my mother. He sold me, sold my whole family. He told me I could be Reggie Bush at Ole Miss. That man could recruit.” And Dexter McCluster surely could run.

Before Tuesday’s press conference, I knew Steve Rives won a whole bunch of basketball games both in high schools and at Delta State. I knew coaches around the state considered him a master strategist and motivator. What I did not know is this: At Delta State, Rives was 8-0 vs. Mississippi Sports Hall of Famer Davey Whitney, one of my favorite all-time coaches and people. I guarantee you this: Nobody else, anywhere, can say that.

Nix was recruited by virtually every football power in the country but chose Southern Miss because his brother Tyrone played and coached there and because Jeff Bower promised him he could play running back, whereas Alabama, Auburn, Florida and others were recruiting him primarily as a linebacker. He became surely one of the greatest backs in USM history and surely would have made millions in the NFL if not for the kidney disease that almost killed him. “Derrick Nix had it all,” Pittsburgh Steelers scout Dan Rooney once told Sports Illustrated. “He reminded me of Deuce McAllister. He had a gliding style, so strong and fast. He was a can’t-miss prospect, the kind any NFL team would love to have.”

Steve Freeman has retired as an NFL official, but his son, Brad, the former Mississippi State baseball star, still officiates in the league. Asked if he misses it, Steve replied, “Nah, man, I am too old for all that travel. At 67, I looked around and noticed most of the guys were 25 to 30 years old. I knew it was time for me to go to the house.” Both the Freemans have officiated Super Bowls.

Over the years, Scott Berry has reminded me of Mississippi baseball legend Boo Ferriss in so many ways, most of them involving character and integrity and how much he cared about his players. One other similarity was how the two men manicured their baseball fields, at least until Southern Miss switched to artificial turf. Like Ferriss, Berry tended to the baseball field, making sure every blade of grass and every speck of dirt was just so. Once, when his daughter Kathryn Grace went to work with him, and watched him tend the field so painstakingly, the little girl asked him, “Daddy, is this your garden?” It really was, and on it Berry grew winners. He retired in 2023 after his seventh straight 40-victory season at a time when no other Division I program in the country had more five.

The Class of 2025 will be inducted in ceremonies next August.

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

Oct. 16, 1901

President Theodore Roosevelt invited Booker T. Washington, founder of the Tuskegee Institute who was perhaps the best known African American of his day, to a meeting in the White House. When the meeting went long, the President asked Washington to stay for dinner, the first Black American to do so. The President’s act drew harsh criticism from many white Americans. 

“The outrage was just unbelievable,” said Deborah Davis, author of “Guest of Honor: Booker T. Washington, Theodore Roosevelt, and the White House Dinner That Shocked a Nation”. 

“‘Dining,’ and I put it in quotation marks, was really a code word for social equality.”

That outrage continued, she said. “There was hell to pay, first weeks, then months, then years, then decades. This story did not go away. And, you know, an assassin was hired to go to Tuskegee to kill Booker T. Washington. He was pursued wherever he went. Theodore Roosevelt was criticized in ways that presidents were not criticized. There were vulgar cartoons of Mrs. Roosevelt that had never been done before. This was all new territory.”

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