Sports Blog

College Football Games to Watch

By |

Every year it is fun to look at the schedule for each four-year college and university, and see which are the best home games. This is also a great time to check out when each school hosts its homecoming. If money and time were no object, these are the games I would take time to go see. All of them have to be home games, so no trips to Knoxville, Tenn., to watch the University of Southern Mississippi take on the University of Tennessee. The only other rule is that every team has to land on the list at some point. Continue Reading

Sports Blog

2017 College Football Predictions

By |

Being locked away, scribbling on walls and imaging every single scenario in my head for teams to finish their season makes me a little crazy. I start to have wild ideas, and sometimes those ideas stick, and I start to think that I just might be onto something. More than likely it is too much coffee and not enough sleep, but don’t discount me yet. Then again, look back at previous crazy predictions and see just how wrong I normally am. 1. Continue Reading

Sports Blog

Rick Cleveland and Five Others Enter Mississippi Hall of Fame

By |

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

By |

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

College Football

Kiffin is a Bad Idea for the Rebels

By |

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
H

Phone Records Force Freeze to Resign

By |

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

Bulldogs and Rebels to Finish Last in SEC West?

By |

There wasn’t much love from the media for the Mississippi State University and

University of Mississippi football teams at the SEC Media Days. Media members picked both to finish at the bottom of the SEC West Division. Voters selected MSU (633 points) to finish sixth in the seven-team division, with the Rebels (379 points) receiving the fewest points of any team, coming in dead last. The University of Alabama (1,683 points) was the media’s pick to win the West and the SEC Championship. The media picked Auburn University (,1329 points) to finish second in the West, with Louisiana State University (1,262 points) in third, the University of Arkansas (796 points) in fourth place, and Texas A&M University (722 points) in fifth place. Continue Reading

Sports Blog

2017 SEC Media Day Participants

By |

SEC Media Days, which mark the unofficial start to the college-football season, are upon

us once again. The 14-member conference with the media will head to the Hyatt Regency Birmingham-Wynfrey Hotel in Hoover, Ala., from July 10-13. After an offseason discussing nearly every topic that comes up since the season ended, the media and coaches sometimes go off-script. A few major examples are Florida Gators quarterback and Heisman Trophy winner Tim Tebow being asked if he was a virgin and former Vanderbilt University coach Robbie Caldwell discussing turkey insemination. Mostly the questions are safe, and the coach’s answers are even safer. Continue Reading

Sports Blog
H

Louisville Punishment a Look into Rebels’ Future?

By |

 

If you missed the penalties that the NCAA handed to the University of Louisville, they’re worth checking out. The story itself is sensational, involving strippers, sex and star basketball recruits, but that’s not why it should be important to fans of the University of Mississippi. The significance becomes clear once you look at the last three decisions that the NCAA Committee on Infractions has made. Louisville head coach Rick Pitino joins Southern Methodist University head coach Larry Brown and Syracuse University Jim Boeheim in receiving a suspension. In all three cases, the NCAA used bylaw 11.1.2.1, which places the responsibility to monitor a program squarely on the shoulders of the head coach. Continue Reading

2017 MLB Draft

Mississippi in the 2017 MLB Draft

By |

No sports draft gets the hype and hoopla of the NFL Draft. It is a major event with both ESPN and the NFL Network broadcasting all seven rounds. The NBA Draft, which takes place Thursday, June 22, this year, has plenty of hype but not at the level of the NFL Draft. It also has coverage two networks, with NBA TV and ESPN showing the event. Last week, MLB held its draft of high school and college players, but didn’t receive the wall-to-wall coverage of its counterparts in other sports. Continue Reading