Mississippi Today
Will Rogers looks to turn adversity into happy ending at Washington

“The worst thing that happens to you might be the best thing for you if you don’t let it get the best of you.”
Will Rogers, the famous American writer and humorist, wrote those words of wisdom back in the early 20th century. Will Rogers, the record-setting college football quarterback and Brandon native, would do well to take the message to heart a century or so later.

Rogers, the quarterback, is overdue for something good to happen. These last 13 months have been trying times, to put it mildly. It’s been more or less like a prolonged quarterback sack.
Put yourself in young Rogers’ shoes back in early December 2022. He had thrown for more yards and touchdowns than any Mississippi quarterback ever at the highest level of college football. No quarterback in Southeastern Conference history had completed more passes.
Then, on Dec. 12, 2022, Mike Leach, Rogers’ head coach at Mississippi State, died.
“It’s been tough,” Rogers said not even three weeks later, after helping State defeat Illinois in the ReliaQuest Bowl at Tampa. “Coach and I were so close and to lose a coach like that, a friend like that it hurt … it will continue to hurt.”
Wyatt Rogers, Will’s father and a Brandon high school football coach, says Zach Arnett, Leach’s successor, promised his son the plan was to keep Leach’s Air Raid offense.
“(Arnett) flat-out lied to us, sitting in our den,” Wyatt Rogers said. “He said they would be crazy to change offenses after all the success we had had…”
But change the offense was exactly what Arnett did, scrapping the Air Raid for a pro-style offense that rarely clicked. And then, in the sixth game of the season, against Western Michigan, Rogers suffered a shoulder injury that would sideline him for the next four games.
“Nobody is ever promised a life without scars, but that was tough,” Wyatt Rogers said.
State finished 5-7, losing to Ole Miss 17-7 in Will Rogers’ last game game as a Bulldog. Immediately, he entered the NCAA transfer portal.
Will’s adventure was only beginning. After being courted by several schools, Rogers settled on Washington, where Huskies head coach Kalen DeBoer recruited him to be the successor to Michael Penix Jr. Penix had led Washington to the national championship game. Rogers really liked DeBoer, enjoyed his visit to Seattle and looked forward to quarterbacking the Huskies in their first season in the Big Ten. “They throw the ball around a lot like we did my first three years at State,” Rogers said.
But then DeBoer took the Alabama job, and Rogers was back at square one. Not knowing who would take DeBoer’s place and whether the new coach would bring in his own quarterback, Rogers re-entered the portal on Jan. 12. Alabama, Miami, South Carolina, Western Kentucky and even national champion Michigan all became possibilities. And there were others, Iowa and Northwestern among them.
“The clock was ticking fast,” Wyatt Rogers said. “If Will was going to go through spring training at his new school, he had to make a move.”
The father and son met with Jedd Fisch, the coach Washington hired from Arizona, and with Brennan Carroll, Pete Carroll’s son, who will be the Huskies’ offensive coordinator. The Rogerses liked what they heard. Fisch very much wanted for Will to remain at Washington.
And so he will. Rogers made the announcement Tuesday night on X, the social media platform formerly known as Twitter. Fisch’s offense is not exactly the Air Raid, but it uses many of the same concepts. At Arizona, his teams threw the ball on nearly three-quarters of their plays and averaged more than 300 yards passing per game. And Fisch has 13 years of NFL coaching experience, something that factored heavily in Will Rogers’ decision.
In an interview with ESPN’s Pete Thamel, Rogers said, “Coach Fisch told me, ‘I want to treat you like a professional football player.’ I told him that’s what I want, and that’s what I am looking to do.”
Wyatt Rogers is pleased, even if his son will live and play all the way across the continent.
“It’s time to put all that other stuff behind him,” Wyatt Rogers said. “I think he’s learned some valuable lessons, not just about football but about life. I just want him to enjoy this last year of college football, see another part of the country, meet new people, play in new stadiums, enjoy the experience.”
Will already has his degree from Mississippi State. He is taking graduate classes at Washington and already going through winter workouts with his new teammates and coaches.
Said Wyatt Rogers, “Will’s had the rug jerked out from under him more than once in the last year or so. I told him it’s time to put blinders on and go to work. I believe that’s just what he will do.”
This article first appeared on Mississippi Today and is republished here under a Creative Commons license.
Mississippi Today
House gives Senate 5 p.m. deadline to come to table, or legislative session ends with no state budget
The House on Wednesday attempted one final time to revive negotiations between it and the Senate over passing a state budget.
Otherwise, the two Republican-led chambers will likely end their session without funding government services for the next fiscal year and potentially jeopardize state agencies.
The House on Wednesday unanimously passed a measure to extend the legislative session and revive budget bills that had died on legislative deadlines last weekend.
House Speaker Jason White said he did not have any prior commitment that the Senate would agree to the proposal, but he wanted to extend one last offer to pass the budget. White, a Republican from West, said if he did not hear from the Senate by 5 p.m. on Wednesday, his chamber would end its regular session.
“The ball is in their court,” White said of the Senate. “Every indication has been that they would not agree to extend the deadlines for purposes of doing the budget. I don’t know why that is. We did it last year, and we’ve done it most years.”
But it did not appear likely Wednesday afternoon that the Senate would comply.
The Mississippi Legislature has not left Jackson without setting at least most of the state budget since 2009, when then Gov. Haley Barbour had to force them back to set one to avoid a government shutdown.
The House measure to extend the session is now before the Senate for consideration. To pass, it would require a two-thirds majority vote of senators. But that might prove impossible. Numerous senators on both sides of the aisle vowed to vote against extending the current session, and Lt. Gov. Delbert Hosemann who oversees the chamber said such an extension likely couldn’t pass.
Senate leadership seemed surprised at the news that the House passed the resolution to negotiate a budget, and several senators earlier on Wednesday made passing references to ending the session without passing a budget.
“We’ll look at it after it passes the full House,” Senate President Pro Tempore Dean Kirby said.
The House and Senate, each having a Republican supermajority, have fought over many issues since the legislative session began early January.
But the battle over a tax overhaul plan, including elimination of the state individual income tax, appeared to cause a major rift. Lawmakers did pass a tax overhaul, which the governor has signed into law, but Senate leaders cried foul over how it passed, with the House seizing on typos in the Senate’s proposal that accidentally resembled the House’s more aggressive elimination plan.
The Senate had urged caution in eliminating the income tax, and had economic growth triggers that would have likely phased in the elimination over many years. But the typos essentially negated the triggers, and the House and governor ran with it.
The two chambers have also recently fought over the budget. White said he communicated directly with Senate leaders that the House would stand firm on not passing a budget late in the session.
But Senate leaders said they had trouble getting the House to meet with them to haggle out the final budget.
On the normally scheduled “conference weekend” with a deadline to agree to a budget last Saturday, the House did not show, taking the weekend off. This angered Hosemann and the Senate. All the budget bills died, requiring a vote to extend the session, or the governor forcing them into a special session.
If the Legislature ends its regular session without adopting a budget, the only option to fund state agencies before their budgets expire on June 30 is for Gov. Tate Reeves to call lawmakers back into a special session later.
“There really isn’t any other option (than the governor calling a special session),” Lt. Gov. Delbert Hosemann previously said.
If Reeves calls a special session, he gets to set the Legislature’s agenda. A special session call gives an otherwise constitutionally weak Mississippi governor more power over the Legislature.
This article first appeared on Mississippi Today and is republished here under a Creative Commons license.
Mississippi Today
Candice Wilder joins Mississippi Today as new higher education reporter
Mississippi Today is pleased to announce that Candice Wilder has joined the newsroom as our newest higher education reporter.
Wilder takes over higher ed coverage from Mississippi Today reporter Molly Minta, who built the beat starting in early 2021 but has since moved to the newsroom’s team covering the city of Jackson.
“I’m thrilled to join a talented and ambitious team of journalists who provide critical news and information to Mississippians,” Wilder said. “Reporting on the state’s colleges and universities at this moment is more important now than ever. My goal is to develop thoughtful coverage and tell crucial stories that will continue to serve and reflect these communities.
Wilder, an Ohio native, was one of 19 founding staff members of Signal Cleveland, an inaugural nonprofit newsroom part of Signal Ohio. There, she developed a beat that provided accessible health news and information to residents of Cleveland. Her work has led to recognitions from the Cleveland Press Club and the Association of Healthcare Journalists.
“We couldn’t be more excited to welcome Candice to our newsroom,” said Adam Ganucheau, Mississippi Today’s editor-in-chief. “So many aspects of the higher education system are under intense scrutiny and attack across the country — from free speech to funding to accountability — and Mississippi is certainly no exception. Our colleges and universities are at the heart of critical conversations about equity, access, and the future of our state as a whole. Candice brings a sharp eye, strong reporting skills, and genuine curiosity to our team, and I’m confident that her work will help Mississippians navigate the often complicated and evolving nature of higher ed here.”
“We’re so happy to have someone with Candice Wilder’s passion and experience to pick up the mantle of higher education reporting at Mississippi Today,” said Debbie Skipper, who will serve as her editor. “Molly Minta set a high standard in our reporting in this area, and I know Candice will maintain that while offering her own professional perspective.”
This article first appeared on Mississippi Today and is republished here under a Creative Commons license.
Mississippi Today
PSC revives solar programs a year after suspending them
The Mississippi Public Service Commission voted unanimously on Tuesday to lift a stay on programs offering incentives for solar power. The same commission voted to suspend the programs last April.
The PSC initially voted in 2024 to suspend three programs: “Solar for Schools,” which allows school districts to essentially build solar panels for free in exchange for tax credits, as well as incentives for battery storage and low-income participants in the state’s “distributed generation” rule. Mississippi’s “distributed generation” rule is similar to net metering in other places, but reimburses customers for less than what most states offer.
Net metering is a program where power companies — in this case Entergy Mississippi and Mississippi Power — reimburse customers who generate their own solar power, often with rooftop panels, and sell any extra power back to the grid.
The PSC suspended the programs in 2024 because, at the time, the federal government was also offering funds through its “Solar for All” initiative. The commission reasoned that the state didn’t need to add incentives, which the previous commission approved in 2022 on top of the new funding. After learning that the state government didn’t receive any “Solar for All” funding, the PSC decided on Tuesday to reverse course.
While the State of Mississippi didn’t receive any of the funding, Hope Enterprise Corp. did get $94 million last year through the program to bring solar power to low-income and disadvantaged homes in the state.
The previous PSC created the “Solar for Schools” program as a way to save school districts money on their power bills to help with other expenses. While no districts were able to make use of the program before the PSC suspended it last year, other districts have seen savings after installing solar panels. Any of the 95 school districts within the Entergy and Mississippi Power grids are eligible for the PSC incentives.
Solar advocates disagreed with the PSC’s assertion that federal “Solar for All” funding would have replaced the PSC programs, which went into effect in January 2023, arguing that the commission’s ruling would scare off potential new business. Those advocates applauded Tuesday’s reversal, saying the incentives will support professions within the solar supply chain such as electricians, roofers, manufacturers and installers.
“Yesterday’s actions by the MPSC sends a strong signal that Mississippi is open for business,” Monika Gerhart, executive director of the Gulf States Renewable Energy Industries Association, said via email. “For schools and homeowners that want to save money on their light bill, yesterday’s vote creates additional savings to install solar.”
This article first appeared on Mississippi Today and is republished here under a Creative Commons license.
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