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Blog

As a golfer, Dr. Cary Middlecoff knew how to fill a cavity

Posted on: June 15,2016

They will play the United States Open Golf Championship for the 116th time later this week at storied Oakmont Country Club in Oakmont, Pa. No native Mississippian has ever won the event, and that will remain the case this week. No Mississippian made the field. Mississippi Sports Hall of Famer Johnny Pott, who grew up […]

Marchant Passes by Bill Blackwell

Posted on: June 10,2016

Up in Cleveland, MS this week they will bury Bill Marchant.  Bill of course is the former Head Baseball Coach of the Statesman and his story is legend in our state.   Bill Marchant was the son of a man in the oil business, he was born in California but raised mostly in Texas and […]

Casems remember Muhammad Ali's visits to Alcorn State

Posted on: June 10,2016

This was 1974. Betty Casem, wife of Hall of Fame football coach Marino Casem, was posing for a photo with Muhammad Ali in her living room at Alcorn State in Lorman. “We had a mirror over our fireplace,” Mrs. Casem says. “Muhammad saw his reflection in the mirror and leaned over for a better view. […]

First guy to knock down Muhammad Ali was a Mississippian

Posted on: June 07,2016

The black and white video, from Madison Square Garden in 1962, is beyond grainy, but you can easily make out that the graceful man in white trunks is future heavyweight champion Muhammad Ali. More accurately, the slender, svelte guy wearing white trunks is the man who would become Ali. On Feb. 10, 1962, the day […]

Memorial Day: A reminder of how young they were…

Posted on: June 01,2016

This is written on Memorial Day morning, the morning after it was announced that both Ole Miss and Mississippi State baseball teams will host NCAA Regionals at once for the first time ever. It is written on the day after Southern Miss’s stirring 3-2 victory over tradition-rich Rice for the Conference USA Baseball Championship. Has […]

Coach Wobble's golf tournament is today; stories will be told

Posted on: May 25,2016

Today, I will play in the Ole Miss M Club’s Wobble Davidson Scramble Golf Tournament at Lake Caroline. The tournament raises money for a scholarship in Coach Wobble’s name. Davidson, a Mississippi Sports Hall of Famer was an original. What follows is the column I wrote after his death 18 years ago… Wobble Davidson, who […]

Best Miss. baseball season gives us a most unlikely scenario

Posted on: May 25,2016

This college baseball season in Mississippi has given us so much to cheer: conference championships, nationally ranked teams, splendid players and so much more. But did you ever think you would see what we saw Saturday? Mississippi State fans openly cheered an Ole Miss victory. The SEC Network showed it perfectly on split screen TV: […]

Before John, Kris and Jake Mangum, there was Big John, Sr.

Posted on: May 24,2016

  I could never run as fast as Jake Mangum, nor could I hit a curve ball, but I have one thing on Mississippi State’s C Spire Ferriss Trophy winner. I knew his grandfather, “Big John” Mangum. That’s who I wanted to tell Jake about as we chatted prior to his winning the trophy as […]