Mississippi Today

Opinions on State’s hire of Lebby, on Kiffin, on USM keeping Hall, and the Conerly Trophy

Published

1 year ago

November 27, 2023

Staff Editor

So much happening in Mississippi sports and so much upon which to comment. Here goes:

Mississippi State hired Oklahoma offensive coordinator Jeff Lebby as its head coach.

No big surprise here, at least not on this end. Lebby’s name came to mind immediately two weeks ago when Zach Arnett was dismissed. Why? Number one, given this year’s struggles, you had to figure State would go offense, and Lebby’s track record as an offensive coordinator is most impressive.

Secondly, Zac Selmon, the man doing the hiring, came to State from Oklahoma so there was a relationship there. And, thirdly, the best coaching hire State has made in recent history was surely Dan Mullen, a successful offensive coordinator at the time of his hiring.

Lebby, a 39-year-old native Texan, strikes me as a solid hire who could well turn out to be splendid head coach.That said, he faces a massive roster overhaul, not to mention a 2024 schedule that will include these eight SEC games: Georgia, Arkansas, Florida, Missouri, Texas A&M, Ole Miss, Tennessee and Texas.

True, with the portal and NIL, you can overhaul a college football roster more quickly than ever before. But keep in mind, where the NIL is concerned, State will be bidding for talent against many of the same schools listed in that previous paragraph, not to mention Alabama, Auburn, Oklahoma and others.

Put it this way: Nick Saban — or Knute Rockne, or Bear Bryant, or Steve Spurrier — would have a difficult time dealing with what Lebby must deal with in the coming months and years.

Ole Miss finished 10-2, Lane Kiffin’s second 10-victory season in three years and his fourth double-digit win season in his last seven years as a head coach.

Kiffin is now 33-15 overall and 20-13 in the SEC at Ole Miss. No Rebel coach since John Vaught has been so successful.

And yet the Rebels, losers to only Alabama and Georgia this season, are ranked behind Missouri, also 10-2, in the College Football Playoff rankings and therefore the bowls’ pecking order. Can someone please explain? I cannot.

Yes, Missouri played Georgia a lot closer than Ole Miss. But the better comparison is this: Both Missouri and Ole Miss both played home games against LSU. LSU beat Missouri 49-39 Ole Miss beat LSU 55-49. Non-conference? Ole Miss’s 10-2 record also includes a 37-20 road victory at Tulane, the Green Wave’s only defeat. On the same Saturday Ole Miss was handing Tulane its only loss in its last 16 games, Missouri was winning 23-19 against Middle Tennessee State, which finished 4-8. Missouri has not beaten a Top 25 team, while Ole Miss is 10-2 against a schedule that is among the nation’s most difficult.

Just don’t see how Missouri rates ahead of Ole Miss, who might be relegated to a non-New Years Six bowl because of it.

Southern Miss finished 3-9, and Will Hall kept his job but dismissed three assistant coaches.

I’d have kept Hall, too, and I’ll tell you why. Southern Miss played its best football the last month of the season after losing seven straight games. Much like his first USM team in 2021, Hall’s Golden Eagles continued to play hard in the face of extreme adversity. Too, he appears to have recruited well if he can hold the current class together.

Patience has been rewarded before at USM. Bobby Collins was 2-9 in his second season in Hattiesburg. Two of Jeff Bower’s first three Golden Eagles teams had losing records. And it has become increasingly apparent in recent years that Bower deserves a statue in the USM football complex.

Back to Hall: USM’s biggest of several issues in his three years has been the lack of competent quarterback play. True freshman Ethan Crawford showed some promise late this season and incoming freshman John White (Madison Ridgeland Academy) is as accurate a high school passer as these eyes have seen. They would appear to be USM’s — and Hall’s — future.

Delta State’s dream season – and Patrick Shegog’s brilliant Statesmen career – ended with a playoff loss to Valdosta State.

Valdosta scored the game’s last 10 points in the last three minutes for a 38-31 victory and avenged an earlier 49-25 home loss to Delta State.

The Division II playoffs lend much credence to the old adage that it’s really difficult to beat a really good team twice in the same season. In the first round, Delta State avenged its only regular season loss to West Florida. In the second round, the Statesmen were defeated at home by a team they beat soundly on the road back in October. Still, Todd Cooley’s Statesmen has won back to back Gulf South Conference championships, no small feat.

Quinshon Judkins or Shegog?

The C Spire Conerly Trophy will be awarded Tuesday night at Country Club of Jackson, and it appears a two-horse race. Ole Miss running back Quinshon Judkins, last year’s winner as a freshman, and Shegog, the former South Panola star, are far and away the leading candidates. Judkins rushed for 1,054 yards and 15 touchdowns as a sophomore after rushing for 1,567 yards and 16 TDs last year. Shegog accounted for 41 touchdowns — 32 passing and nine rushing — this season. The most eye-popping Shegog stat: 32 passing touchdowns vs. two interceptions.

No doubt, Judkins has far more professional football potential. Indeed, his punishing running style reminds this writer so much of the great Walter Payton. But this award is not about pro football potential as the note that accompanied the ballots states: “You should choose the nominees who have made the most impact for their team during the 2023 season. Do not take into consideration their NFL prospects, only their collegiate play for the 2023 complete regular season.”

Regardless, either Shegog or Judkins would be a worthy Conerly winner.

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

Did you miss our previous article…
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Mississippi Today

On this day in 1912

Published

3 hours ago

March 9, 2025

Staff Editor

mississippitoday.org – Jerry Mitchell – 2025-03-09 07:00:00

March 9, 1912

Portrait of Charlotte Bass Credit: Wikipedia

Charlotta Bass became one of the nation’s first Black female editor-owners. She renamed The California Owl newspaper The California Eagle, and turned it into a hard-hitting publication. She campaigned against the racist film “Birth of a Nation,” which depicted the Ku Klux Klan as heroes, and against the mistreatment of African Americans in World War I.

After the war ended, she fought racism and segregation in Los Angeles, getting companies to end discriminatory practices. She also denounced political brutality, running front-page stories that read, “Trigger-Happy Cop Freed After Slaying Youth.”

When she reported on a KKK plot against Black leaders, eight Klansmen showed up at her offices. She pulled a pistol out of her desk, and they beat a “hasty retreat,”

The New York Times reported. “Mrs. Bass,” her husband told her, “one of these days you are going to get me killed.” She replied, “Mr. Bass, it will be in a good cause.”

In the 1940s, she began her first foray into politics, running for the Los Angeles City Council. In 1951, she sold the Eagle and co-founded Sojourners for Truth and Justice, a Black women’s group. A year later, she became the first Black woman to run for vice president, running on the Progressive Party ticket. Her campaign slogan: “Win or Lose, We Win by Raising the Issues.”

When Kamala Harris became the first Black female vice presidential candidate for a major political party in 2020, Bass’ pioneering steps were recalled.

“Bass would not win,” The Times wrote. “But she would make history, and for a brief time her lifelong fight for equality would enter the national spotlight.”

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

Mississippi Today

On this day in 1977

Published

1 day ago

March 8, 2025

Staff Editor

mississippitoday.org – Jerry Mitchell – 2025-03-08 07:00:00

On this day in 1977

by Jerry Mitchell, Mississippi Today
March 8, 2025

March 8, 1977

Henry Marsh — Henry L. Marsh III became the first Black mayor of the Confederacy’s capital.

Henry L. Marsh III became the first Black mayor of the former capital of the Confederacy, Richmond, Virginia.

Growing up in Virginia, he attended a one-room school that had seven grades and one teacher. Afterward, he went to Richmond, where he became vice president of the senior class at Maggie L. Walker High School and president of the student NAACP branch.

When Virginia lawmakers debated whether to adopt “massive resistance,” he testified against that plan and later won a scholarship for Howard University School of Law. He decided to become a lawyer to “help make positive change happen.” After graduating, he helped win thousands of workers their class-actions cases and helped others succeed in fighting segregation cases.

“We were constantly fighting against race prejudice,” he recalled. “For instance, in the case of Franklin v. Giles County, a local official fired all of the black public school teachers. We sued and got the (that) decision overruled.”

In 1966, he was elected to the Richmond City Council and later became the city’s first Black mayor for five years. He inherited a landlocked city that had lost 40% of its retail revenues in three years, comparing it to “taking a wounded man, tying his hands behind his back, planting his feet in concrete and throwing him in the water and saying, ‘OK, let’s see you survive.’”

In the end, he led the city from “acute racial polarization towards a more civil society.” He served as president of the National Black Caucus of Elected Officials and as a member of the board of directors of the National League of Cities.

As an education supporter, he formed the Support Committee for Excellence in the Public Schools. He also hosts the city’s Annual Juneteenth Celebration. The courthouse where he practiced now bears his name and so does an elementary school.

Marsh also worked to bridge the city’s racial divide, creating what is now known as Venture Richmond. He was often quoted as saying, “It doesn’t impress me to say that something has never been done before, because everything that is done for the first time had never been done before.”

He died on Jan. 23, 2025, at the age of 91.

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

Mississippi Today

Judge tosses evidence tampering against Tim Herrington

Published

2 days ago

March 7, 2025

Staff Editor

mississippitoday.org – Molly Minta – 2025-03-07 15:08:00

A Lafayette County circuit judge ended an attempt to prosecute Sheldon Timothy Herrington Jr., the son of a prominent north Mississippi church family who is accused of killing a fellow University of Mississippi student named Jimmie “Jay” Lee, for evidence tampering.

In a March 7 order, Kelly Luther wrote that Herrington cannot be charged with evidence tampering because of the crime’s two-year statute of limitations. A grand jury indicted the University of Mississippi graduate last month on the charge for allegedly hiding Lee’s remains in a well-known dumping ground about 20 minutes from Herrington’s parent’s house in Grenada.

“The Court finds that prosecution for the charge of Tampering with Physical Evidence commenced outside the two-year statute of limitations and is therefore time-barred,” Luther wrote.

In order to stick, Luther essentially ruled that the prosecution should have brought the charges against Herrington sooner. In court last week, the prosecution argued that it could not have brought those charges to a grand jury without Lee’s remains, which provided the evidence that evidence tampering occurred.

The dismissal came after Herrington’s new counsel, Jackson-area criminal defense attorney Aafram Sellers, filed a motion to throw out the count. Sellers did not respond to a request for commend by press time.

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