Mississippi Today
Opinions on State’s hire of Lebby, on Kiffin, on USM keeping Hall, and the Conerly Trophy
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.
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Mississippi Today
On this day in 1875
Nov. 2, 1875
The first Mississippi Plan, which included violence against Black Americans to keep them from voting, resulted in huge victories for white Democrats across the state.
A year earlier, the Republican Party had carried a majority of the votes, and many Black Mississippians had been elected to office. In the wake of those victories, white leagues arose to challenge Republican rule and began to use widespread violence and fraud to recapture control of the state.
Over several days in September 1875, about 50 Black Mississippians were killed along with white supporters, including a school teacher who worked with the Black community in Clinton.
The governor asked President Ulysses Grant to intervene, but he decided against intervening, and the violence and fraud continued. Other Southern states soon copied the Mississippi plan.
John R. Lynch, the last Black congressman for Mississippi until the 1986 election of Mike Espy, wrote: “It was a well-known fact that in 1875 nearly every Democratic club in the State was converted into an armed military company.”
A federal grand jury concluded: “Fraud, intimidation, and violence perpetrated at the last election is without a parallel in the annals of history.”
This article first appeared on Mississippi Today and is republished here under a Creative Commons license.
Mississippi Today
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This article first appeared on Mississippi Today and is republished here under a Creative Commons license.
Mississippi Today
Hinds County loses fight over control of jail
The Hinds County sheriff and Board of Supervisors have lost an appeal to prevent control of its jail by a court-appointed receiver and an injunction that orders the county to address unconstitutional conditions in the facility.
Two members from a three-judge panel of the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals agreed with decisions by U.S. District Judge Carlton Reeves to appoint a receiver to oversee day-to-day jail operations and keep parts of a previous consent decree in place to fix constitutional violations, including a failure to protect detainees from harm.
However, the appeals court called the new injunction “overly broad” in one area and is asking Reeves to reevaluate the scope of the receivership.
The injunction retained provisions relating to sexual assault, but the appeals court found the provisions were tied to general risk of violence at the jail, rather than specific concerns about the Prison Rape Elimination Act. The court reversed those points of the injunction and remanded them to the district court so the provisions can be removed.
The court also found that the receiver should not have authority over budgeting and staff salaries for the Raymond Detention Center, which could be seen as “federal intrusion into RDC’s budget” – especially if the receivership has no end date.
Hinds County Board of Supervisors President Robert Graham was not immediately available for comment Friday. Sheriff Tyree Jones declined to comment because he has not yet read the entire court opinion.
In 2016, the Department of Justice sued Hinds County alleging a pattern or practice of unconstitutional conditions in four of its detention facilities. The county and DOJ entered a consent decree with stipulated changes to make for the jail system, which holds people facing trial.
“But the decree did not resolve the dispute; to the contrary, a yearslong battle ensued in the district court as to whether and to what extent the County was complying with the consent decree,” the appeals court wrote.
This prompted Reeves to hold the county in contempt of court twice in 2022.
The county argued it was doing its best to comply with the consent decree and spending millions to fix the jail. One of the solutions they offered was building a new jail, which is now under construction in Jackson.
The county had a chance to further prove itself during three weeks of hearings held in February 2022. Focuses included the death of seven detainees in 2021 from assaults and suicide and issues with staffing, contraband, old infrastructure and use of force.
Seeing partial compliance by the county, in April 2022 Reeves dismissed the consent decree and issued a new, shorter injunction focused on the jail and removed some provisions from the decree.
But Reeves didn’t see improvement from there. In July 2022, he ordered receivership and wrote that it was needed because of an ongoing risk of unconstitutional harm to jail detainees and staff.
The county pushed back against federal oversight and filed an appeal, arguing that there isn’t sufficient evidence to show that there are current and ongoing constitutional violations at the jail and that the county has acted with deliberate indifference.
Days before the appointed receiver was set to take control of the jail at the beginning of 2023, the 5th Circuit Court ordered a stay to halt that receiver’s work. The new injunction ordered by Reeves was also stayed, and a three-person jail monitoring team that had been in place for years also was ordered to stop work.
This article first appeared on Mississippi Today and is republished here under a Creative Commons license.
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