(Today would have been the great Jack Cristil’s 90th birthday. This was the column I wrote on the 50th anniversary of his broadcasting Mississippi State sporting events. Jack died Sept. 14, 2014.) THE little boy was 6 years old when his mother and father, Jewish immigrants from Russia and Latvia, bought the family’s first radio. […]
When Alcorn State first offered its head football coaching job to Jay Hopson in April of 2012, he turned it down. What has happened since should be a book and then a movie. Problem is, even Hollywood might consider the story a bit inconceivable. The Alcorn football program was moribund. The previous year’s team had […]
So much is going on in Mississippi’s sports world. Ole Miss is back in the Sugar Bowl. Both Mississippi State and USM will play in nice bowls. Alcorn has won the SWAC Championship and will play in the first Celebration Bowl at Atlanta. The high school football championships have been decided. Basketball season is well […]
Without any adieu at all, the Cleveland Awards for the 2015 Mississippi college football season… Best debut: No competition here really. Got to be Ole Miss quarterback Chad Kelly, who made the adjustment from junior college to the SEC Western Division look easier than kindergarten math. He just kept making plays, and, as the season […]
(Millsaps’ Sean Brewer, selected for the Mississippi Sports Hall of Fame Class of 2016, Tuesday night goes into the College Football Hall of Fame at the Waldorf Astoria in New York City. This was my column when Brewer was elected to the College Football Hall of Fame last January. The so-called football factories contributed by […]
Few athletes are more closely associated with their jersey number than Mississippi’s most famous No. 4 — Mississippi Sports Hall of Famer Brett Favre. Favre threw for more yardage than any quarterback in NFL history. He was three-time league MVP. He is pro football’s all-time iron man and quarterbacked the Green Bay Packers to a […]
The late Tom Patterson left Mississippi long ago but he left a legacy in this state. Patterson dramatically improved Mississippi sports journalism. He also named the Egg Bowl. Tom hired me at The Clarion-Ledger in the summer of 1979. I am forever grateful. He brought me back home. By then, Patterson had built a sports […]
It’s Egg Bowl Week and time for the annual primer on the history of the game. I wrote this in 2003 on the 100th anniversary of the game. ••• THEY’VE clashed in snow, in a flood, in bitter cold and through fog so thick spectators could scarcely distinguish between maroon and white and red and […]
