The phone call came from area code 503, Oregon, so I wasn’t sure what to expect. What a pleasant surprise: The caller was Hall of Famer Art Davis, the great Mississippi State football star from the 1950s. “You’ve got one of the greatest college football players in history who has lived in Mississippi for decades, […]
FOREST — The stands were packed and so was the stage at one end of Scott Central’s well-kept, Hoosiers-like gymnasium Friday night. Everyone was there to see history made. Victoria Vivians, a tall, doe-eyed, unassuming 18-year-old, delivered on the history-making. It did not take her long. Vivians needed 23-points to break the Mississippi’s high […]
You know about Super Bowl quarterback Peyton Manning’s Mississippi background – dad Archie born in Drew and mother Olivia from Philadelphia. But did you know the other Super Bowl quarterback, Russell Wilson, has Mississippi roots as well? He most certainly does. Russell Wilson’s late father, Harry,was born and spent his formative years in Jackson. His […]
Today we celebrate Martin Luther King Jr.’s birthday, which was actually Jan. 15, 1929. It seems an appropriate time to consider what sports and some pioneer athletes did for integration in the Deep South, Mississippi in particular. Having been a product of those times I well remember. Indeed, I remember when Sam “Bam” Cunningham ran […]
Little known fact: Hall of Fame tennis coach Billy Chadwick led the city of Jackson in scoring in peewee football as a sixth grader at Wilkins Elementary. He was an 11-year-old Bronco Nagurski. “It’s funny, I was one of the biggest kids in the sixth grade and loved football,” Chadwick says. “It was easy.” Then […]
John Francis “Johnny” Pott, the Mississippi Sports Hall of Fame golfer, turned 78 last November. “Makes it a little easier for me to shoot my age,” said Pott Thursday morning, just before he tried to do just that at his home course in Lake County, Cal., in wine country. “That’s the one good thing about […]
I was there at the Louisiana Superdome that night when Jamie Collins leaped so high to block a field goal that I wanted to see a replay right then and there. I mean, had I really seen what I thought I saw? Ryan Moore’s photo in the next day’s newspaper confirmed it. Collins — known […]
Leo Durocher once said, “Nice guys finish last.” Wrong. Billy Chadwick, who today announced his retirement as tennis coach at Ole Miss, is positive proof that Leo the Lip was dead wrong. Ole Miss did finish last in the SEC in tennis, but that was the year before Chadwick took the job. Since then, Chadwick, […]
