Sports Blog

Rick Cleveland and Five Others Enter Mississippi Hall of Fame

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Six more Mississippi sports legends will be immortalized in the Mississippi Sports Hall of Fame and Museum on Aug. 5. The 2017 Hall of Fame class includes sportswriter Rick Cleveland, former Jackson State University baseball coach Bob Braddy Sr.,

the late University of Mississippi women’s basketball great Eugenia Conner, former Alcorn State University football player Leslie Frazier, former Mississippi State University baseball player Jay Powell, and Marcus Dupree, who is one of the greatest high-school football players in Mississippi history. Cleveland is one of best sportswriters to come from the state. There are few Mississippians of a certain age that didn’t grow up reading his sports columns. Continue Reading

Freeze

Fake Video Résumé for UM Job Is a Must-See

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Still reeling from the sudden resignation of head coach Hugh Freeze, the University of Mississippi chose Matt Luke as the interim head coach. Luke might end up with the job next season, but there will be plenty of people gunning for the head coaching position at an SEC school. Even with potential NCAA sanctions looming, an opening in one of the top conferences will attract a lot of attention. Not all the candidates for the UM job will turn out to be winners, though—especially the one that you’re about to see. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5NvCSzeZbdw

 

This week’s “Friday Funny” might not be super funny right now to University of Mississippi fans. Continue Reading

Sports Blog

New CTE Study Alarming But Still Leaves Unanswered Questions

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The Journal of the American Medicine Association recently published an alarming study on chronic traumatic encephalopathy that found the disease in 90 percent of the football players’ brains that were studied. CTE can only be found after death, and 202 former football players were part of this new study. The findings were scary if taken at face value, with 177 of the 202 former players found to have the disease. Researchers found it in 110 out of 111 NFL players, 48 of 53 college players, nine out of 14 semi-professional players, seven out of eight CFL players and three out of 14 high-school players. This study included several well-known former NFL players such as Ken Stabler, Bubba Smith, Kevin Turner and Dave Duerson. Continue Reading

NFL

O.J.’s Pension Could Have Paid Nearly $500 Thousand in Prison

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At this point, everyone has an opinion on O.J. Simpson. There is no need to rehash the murders of his ex-wife and her friend or the robbery in Nevada. No one is going to change their mind about how they feel about him. He will forever be a controversial figure in the eyes of the public. A parole board recently granted Simpson parole after he spent the minimum nine years in jail for his 33-year sentence for armed robbery. Continue Reading

College Football

Kiffin is a Bad Idea for the Rebels

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It was stunning to see how quickly University of Mississippi head football coach Hugh

Freeze ended up out the door. The team will go with interim head coach Matt Luke, who spent the last five seasons as co-offensive coordinator. Unless Luke is able to go undefeated this season, it seems highly unlikely that he will get the head coaching job. The university will probably want to go in a direction that is as far as possible from anything Freeze related. The fact that Luke has been a part of the university since his playing days as a walk-on offensive lineman is in his favor, however. Continue Reading

Sports Blog

OSU Punter Zach Sinor’s Heisman Website is the Best Thing You Will See Today

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Let’s try something new since it is Friday. At the end of each week, I will try to find

something you might have missed that brings a laugh to your day before the weekend starts. This week’s honor comes from the Big 12 and reminds us that “punters are people, too.”

While there has been some bad news in college football over the last 24 hours, one thing can brighten just about everyone’s day: Oklahoma State University punter Zach Sinor’s Heisman Trophy campaign. The campaign’s website, sinor4rheisman.com, looks like it dropped straight out of the 1990s. It even includes a dancing baby that fans of the show “Ally McBeal” will remember. Continue Reading

Sports Blog
H

Phone Records Force Freeze to Resign

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University of Mississippi head football coach Hugh Freeze looked like he was going to survive an NCAA investigation and a lawsuit from his predecessor. What he couldn’t

survive was “a pattern of personal conduct inconsistent with the standard of expectations for the leader of our football team,” according to athletic director Ross Bjork. That pattern was first brought to the university’s attention because of the lawsuit that former head coach Houston Nutt filed recently. A one-minute phone call that Freeze made to a number associated with a female escort service led the university to look deeper into his phone records. What Bjork found in those phone records then led to a meeting with Freeze on Wednesday night and then again on Thursday morning. Continue Reading

Sports Blog

SWAC Basketball Trophy Honors Alcorn Coaching Legend

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The college-basketball season is still months away, but that doesn’t mean important news

will wait on the bench. The Southwestern Athletic Conference recently announced that its men’s basketball tournament championship trophy will now bear the name of former Alcorn State University head coach Davey L. Whitney. Whitney, who died in 2015, wasn’t just one of the greatest coaches in Alcorn State history but one of the greatest in the history of the SWAC and our state. During his two stints as the Braves’ head coach, he posted a 508-292 overall record and a 259-115 conference record. He has the most coaching wins in school history, with 318 more wins, than second-place coach Dwight Fisher, who had 190 wins. Continue Reading

Sports Blog

Conference USA Media Days and Media Predictions

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The college-football media days keep rolling on, as different conferences host members of the media to hype the new season. Conference USA will head to Dallas, Texas, from

Wednesday, July 19, to Thursday, July 20. The conference will stream coaches’ and players’ meetings with the media on Facebook Live. Schools from the West Division will begin media days on Wednesday at 2 p.m., with Louisiana Tech University kicking off the event. The University of North Texas will take the stage at 2:15 p.m., Rice University will follow at 2:30 p.m., and the University of Southern Mississippi will face the conference media at 2:45 p.m. USM head coach Jay Hopson, running back Ito Smith and defensive back Cornell Armstrong will be at the event. Continue Reading