OurTupelo

CHARLOTTE, N.C. — Wake Forest’s Robby Ashford couldn’t have imagined a better way to close out his roller-coaster college career.

The six-year redshirt senior quarterback threw for 303 yards and three touchdowns and ran for 50 yards and two scores to take MVP honors, Koredell Bartley scored on a 100-yard kickoff return and Wake Forest beat Mississippi State 43-29 in the Duke’s Mayo Bowl on Friday night.

Ashford, who arrived at Wake Forest this season eager for a chance to start, threw TD passes of 14 yards to Kamrean Johnson, 64 yards to Jack Foley and 62 yards to Ty Clark III and had scoring runs of 2 and 1 yards for the Demon Deacons (9-4).

Wake Forest finished the season winning seven of its final nine games, this one sending coach Jake Dickert to a celebratory mayonnaise bath.

“When I got to Wake Forest, I was in a rough spot mentally and physically,” said Ashford, who transferred from South Carolina after also spending time at Oregon and Auburn. “I was kind of down on myself, almost at a point where I didn’t know if I wanted to keep playing. Man, these guys just instilled just so much in me, and, just helped me in so many ways and instilled that confidence back in me.”

The end result was a nine-victory season for Dickert, the most wins by a first-year coach in Wake Forest history.

The victory also meant having 42 1/2 pounds of mayonnaise dumped over his head. But he had some support, as his three children joined him in the celebration and got doused as well.

“I couldn’t get my wife to do it. She was like, ‘Absolutely not!’” laughed Dickert. “But to share that with my kids is something that is going to be a special memory for us for the rest of our lives.”

Clark finished with 153 yards from scrimmage after taking over the starting role after second-team All-ACC selection Demond Claiborne opted out of the game after declaring for the NFL draft.

Freshman quarterback Kamario Taylor, making his second college start, had a big second half for Mississippi State (5-8) and finished 13 of 22 for 241 yards and a touchdown. He ran for 60 yards and another score before suffering what appeared to be a significant leg injury with 1:46 left in the game. He was carted off the field.

Mississippi State coach Jeff Lebby wouldn’t go into detail after the game about the extent of Taylor’s injury, but sounded relieved, saying: “I feel good about the initial reports.”

After the Bulldogs took an 3-0 lead on the game’s first possession, Bartley fielded the ensuing kickoff at the goal line and weaved his way up the field before turning up the speed and outracing five defenders to the end zone for the longest touchdown in bowl history.

Ashford, a sixth-year QB playing for his fourth college, put Wake Forest ahead 30-12 in the third quarter on a 2-yard run to make it a three-possession game and the Demon Deacons seemed in cruise control.

But the Bulldogs came storming back.

Mississippi State finally found the end zone on the last play of the third quarter when Taylor took a shotgun snap, got a running start and leaped over the line and extended the ball over the goal line on his descent.

He added a 2-point conversion toss to cut it to 10 and then found Sanfrisco Magee over the middle for a 42-yard catch-and-run touchdown pass to make it 30-27 with 10:17 left.

Wake Forest appeared to put it away when Ashford ran for his second touchdown with 4:07 remaining, but Navaeh Sanders blocked the extra point and Kelly Jones scooped it up and scored for 2 points for the Bulldogs to make it 36-29.

On the ensuing possession, Mississippi couldn’t manage a first down and Lebby made the curious decision to punt on fourth-and-11 from the Bulldogs 25 with 2:35 left in the game, putting trust in his defense that it would force a three and out and get the offense the ball back.

That backfired, as Ashford dumped a pass off to Clark on a third-and-7 and he raced 62 yards untouched to the end zone to seal the win.

Taylor’s mother, LaQuandra Conner, took to Facebook after the game posting a picture of her and her son, saying “thanks everyone for the prayers it was his ankle but NOTHING is torn or broken GOD had MY BABY covered and for that I say THANK YOU LORD.”

Taylor was making his second career start for the Bulldogs (5-8) after a promising initial appearance in a loss to No. 6 Ole Miss.

He finished 13 of 22 for 241 yards and a touchdown against Wake Forest. He also ran for 63 yards and another score in when he took a shotgun snap, ran forward and dove over a pile of players and extended the ball over the goal line.

“A ton of toughness and there’s a ton of things to be excited about,” Lebby said about Taylor. “… For what he was able to get out of this bowl experience with 15 extra practices, the ability to go play in another game against a really good opponent, to me that is huge for us as we’re continuing to build this thing.”

WIGGINS — What began as a woodturning studio has grown into a coffee shop and gift store that is helping revitalize downtown Wiggins. Southern Turnings, founded by Scott and Jane Ann Maddox, has become a staple for residents and a tourist destination for visitors. 

The business now hosts community events, weekly classes and has expanded to additional locations, playing a significant role in efforts to bring activity back to Pine Avenue.

Starting with a single lathe 

When Southern Turnings opened more than eight years ago, Scott Maddox said downtown Wiggins had “one other struggling business.”  

“When I moved here (in 1997), this was a vibrant community,” he said. “All the buildings were open, there were shops, there were things to do. It was wonderful. Over time, that kind of dissipated, and basically there was nothing here.” 

Originally, the space was intended to be Maddox’s studio — just an air-conditioned space to turn wood. The idea to add a coffee shop and retail area came from Jane Ann Maddox. Still, the first few years showed little promise. 

Maddox remembers asking his wife to buy a soda just to log a transaction for the day.

“I just thought we’d lost our minds. I mean, there was just no business,” he said.  

They stuck with it through the COVID-19 pandemic, and eventually, the tide turned. 

“Pretty soon we were sitting here going, ‘This is crazy!’” Maddox said. “I give credit to our community for making that (growth) happen, because obviously, if they wouldn’t come through that door, we wouldn’t be growing.” 

He said there’s no secret to success — much of the credit goes to their employees and patrons. 

“I don’t think I’ve done anything different than anybody else could have done, but I am told that people hope we never leave,” he said. 

Teaching the next generation

As Southern Turning continues to grow, it offers new opportunities to connect with the community — including weekly hands-on woodworking classes.  

Maddox first learned about woodturning — using a lathe to shape wood into symmetrical items like bowls and cups — during a trip to Silver Dollar City in Stone County, Missouri. He was fascinated by the craft, watching a young ex-Marine with PTSD turn wood for three hours.  

A retired high school teacher, Maddox said he envisioned his studio as an extension of the classroom. Over the years, he has taught students who have gone on to sell their pieces to help pay for college. Today, his students range from age 11 to 92. 

While Maddox may be one of the only practicing woodturners in the area, he’s part of a broader community that stretches across Mississippi and into Memphis.

“There’s something about making something,” he said. “I would hope that kids would get more involved because that’s something that will last forever, but once people like me pass away and are no longer turning, it’s a craft that’s going away.” 

A vision for what comes next

Southern Turnings’ success has grown alongside renewed efforts to revitalize downtown. Maddox said local business owners formed the Pine Avenue Business Association, which now hosts events on the first Saturday of each month to bring more people to the area.

That momentum has inspired the Maddoxes to expand. Two and a half years ago, they opened a drive-thru coffee hut, which has thrived like the original location. A third location — a coffee shop at Mississippi Gulf Coast Community College — is expected to open Jan. 5. 

The Maddoxes have also begun thinking about the future. With retirement on the horizon, they’ve considered eventually selling the business — but for now, they say they’re focused on staying connected to the community. 

When she is not caring for her 6-year-old daughter and 1-year-old son, Amaya Jones is working full time at Kroger. Jones wants to go back to school in January to study social work, so she can help young women like herself navigate complicated programs designed to help – but which often trap – poor people. 

“I know what it’s like to be homeless, to apply for (food stamps) and be denied even though you need it, to be looked at as just a number – I know how it all feels,” Jones said. “I want to help mothers and kids and young women.”

Returning to school will only be possible if Jones regains vouchers she lost in June that made child care affordable, she said. 

Jones’ family is one of more than 19,000 Mississippi families who lost access to child care vouchers and is now on a growing waitlist after pandemic-era funding that boosted the program dried up, according to the Mississippi Department of Human Services. 

The extra funding didn’t expand eligibility. The voucher program has historically only received enough funding to cover 1 in 7 eligible children. The additional pandemic funds allowed the program to reach more eligible families – who are now on the hook for hundreds of dollars each month. While thousands of families sit on a waitlist for the voucher, some child care providers are eating the cost and risk closure. 

Mississippi receives nearly $90 million a year from a federal block grant called Temporary Assistance for Needy Families. States are allowed to transfer up to 30% of those funds to a separate federal grant, the Child Care and Development Fund, that supports Mississippi’s child care voucher program. In recent years, Mississippi has elected to make this maximum transfer. But states are not prohibited from using the remaining TANF funds on other child care expenses.

This has been the rub between state leaders and child care advocates lately: Advocates want the state to spend more – including some of its $156 million in stockpiled TANF funds – on the child care voucher. But the agency says that’s not doable.

Mark Jones, director of communications at the Mississippi Department of Human Services, said the agency is pursuing other solutions for child care that will become clearer in 2026. 

“Plugging long-term holes with non-recurring funds is not feasible nor responsible,” Mark Jones said about feeding unspent TANF funds into the voucher program. 

Meanwhile, advocates have argued it’s not responsible to be sitting on millions of unspent TANF dollars. 

“Mississippi gets a new TANF grant, $86 million, every year,” said Carol Burnett, director of the Mississippi Low-Income Child Care Initiative, which has been advocating on behalf of child care access for decades. “We rarely spend it all, which is how we ended up with a huge unspent balance in TANF. So, TANF is not one-time money because we get the grant every year and we don’t ever spend it all.”

Mississippi Today spoke to four national TANF experts who weighed in on the situation. They agreed  Mississippi can use more TANF dollars than it is already using toward child care subsidies. The issue can be complicated, but not as much as Mississippi is making it, said Elizabeth Lower-Basch, deputy director for policy for the Center for Law and Social Policy and a national TANF expert. 

“Mississippi is making this harder than it needs to be, I think, is the bottom line,” Lower-Basch said. 

While TANF funds are flexible and can be used on a wide range of services, the system is inherently labyrinthine. Part of that, experts say, is to safeguard against misuse – something Mississippi is well known for. 

“I’m guessing since Mississippi has gotten so much blowback for some of the ways it used TANF in the past, it’s gotten a little gun-shy,” said Lower-Basch.

While Mississippi may not be able to push more than 30% of its TANF funds through a transfer to the Child Care and Development Fund, experts say there are other ways to use TANF to supply more child care vouchers.

Other states have successfully conjoined funding streams so that extra TANF funds can be used on child care vouchers without technically being considered “transferred funds,” explained Stephanie Schmit, director of Child Care and Early Education at the Center for Law and Social Policy. It can sometimes be complicated. 

“States do ‘marry them’ in ways that work well in their state, but states use different mechanisms to make that happen. There’s often memorandums of understanding or contacts,” Schmit said. “… It’s not as straightforward as ‘direct dollars can be spent through the existing system – done.’ It’s layers, and it’s very much dependent on the state.”

The department is going a different route, Mark Jones said. The agency opened a request for proposals for work supports, or programs that help people in low-income jobs to remain employed. Proposals may include child care, along with 11 other areas – such as transportation and job search assistance – according to the department’s application. 

There’s no guarantee the state will select proposals that include child care – or that the eligibility would resolve the current waitlist. But if the winning proposals include child care, the subgrantee would supply child care for the program participants by paying the child care provider directly, Mark Jones explained. 

“In early 2026, once we announce the TANF subgrantees, we will have a clear picture of the future,” he said. 

The child care crisis

Experts have long-considered the state of U.S. child care a crisis. But that’s indicative of a deeper problem: the devaluing of caregiving and early education nationwide. The system doesn’t work for anyone involved, experts say. Parents can’t afford to buy into it, and child care employees can’t afford to work in it. 

The only solution would be to provide public dollars “in a very significant way,” explained Ruth Friedman, who previously directed the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services’ Office of Child Care during the Biden administration. Except for New Mexico, which recently made child care free for everyone, state and federal governments have been unwilling to make that type of investment, she said.

“Child care is expensive because it’s inherently labor-intensive,” Friedman explained. “Children need adult attention and interactions to be safe and to support their healthy development in child care. But child care programs know parents can’t afford the true cost of care, so the only way they can actually make any profit is to underpay their staff … which just exacerbates the supply problem.”

Friedman worries that H.R.1, the so-called One Big Beautiful Bill Act that U.S. Congress passed in law in July, will worsen the crisis since it shifts hundreds of millions of dollars in health care and food aid costs to states, leaving less room in state budgets for child care. 

Mississippi is already seeing that play out. After the Legislature appropriated a historic $15 million toward child care last year to make a dent in the voucher waitlist, advocates hoped the welfare agency would request the same this year. 

Instead, the Mississippi Department of Human Services Director Bob Anderson asked the Legislature to put $15 million toward SNAP and made no mention of child care. Agency spokesperson Jones said the agency had to make “tough decisions” since about $140 million in food aid costs previously covered by the federal government are now shifting to Mississippi. 

Later, during a December meeting of the Senate Study Group on Women, Children and Families, Anderson said the department would need $60 million to address the child care voucher waitlist – but clarified that he was not asking the Legislature for that money. 

The federal changes to Medicaid and SNAP will also affect how low-income families and child care workers balance their budgets. In Mississippi, more than a third of child care workers rely on Medicaid or food aid to make ends meet. 

“Since the child care workforce relies heavily on Medicaid and SNAP because their jobs pay so little, OBBBA’s massive cuts to the Medicaid and SNAP programs is likely to cause child care workers to leave the profession,” Friedman said. “Of course families’ child care bills will get harder to pay as their own health insurance and food costs rise as a result of the new law.”

Meanwhile, the thousands of eligible families without vouchers are piecing together haphazard child care with family, or going into debt with their child care providers. 

Jones says she’s lucky her mother can care for her children most days, but she worries about the toll it’s taking on their grandmother, who has heart failure. 

“She’s in and out of the hospital, as well,” Jones said. “One day she can be doing fine, the next day she’s not feeling well. If my baby gets sick, I don’t want him to get her sick. It’s extremely scary trying to live this day by day.”

NEW ORLEANS — Notes, quotes and an opinion or two from a Crescent City still buzzing Friday morning from Thursday night’s instant college football classic in the Sugar Bowl:

• Las Vegas oddsmakers have made Miami a three-point favorite over Ole Miss for next Thursday’s Fiesta Bowl in Tempe, Arizona. Oddsmakers set the over-under point total at 51.5. Undefeated and top-seeded Indiana is a four-point pick over Oregon in the Peach Bowl.

• Coaches and commentators are always talking and sports writers are forever writing about how crazy college football has become with pay-for-play and the transfer portal. Perhaps the most crazy example might be this: LSU now owes Lane Kiffin half a million dollars because the Ole Miss Rebels have advanced to the semifinals of the College Football Playoffs. Should Ole Miss beat Miami, that total rises to $750,000. If Ole Miss wins it all, Kiffin will make a million. Crazy, no?

• Ole Miss improved to 7-4 all-time in Sugar Bowl appearances, with wins this year and in 2016, 1970, 1963, 1961, 1960 and 1958. Only Alabama, with 10 victories, has won more Sugar Bowls.

• The win over Georgia puts the Rebels’ record at 4-1 against this season’s 12-team College Football Playoffs field. That’s most victories of any team in the tournament.

• All the unusual off-field circumstances (Kiffin leaving, etc.) during this Ole Miss post-season run continue to be regurgitated in the national media. An emotional Ole Miss Chancellor Glenn Boyce, speaking to Yahoo’s Ross Dellenger on the field amid the post-game Ole Miss celebration, tried to put the focus where it belongs.  “It’s incredibly hard to put it in words,”  Boyce said. “The way you hold something like this together is, sure, leadership and leadership matters, but here’s the other way: these players.”

• Biggest football win in Ole Miss history? Old-timers might opt for the 21-0 victory over LSU in the 1960 Sugar Bowl – and it was huge – but given the stakes, surely this Sugar Bowl victory 66 years later becomes the biggest ever.

• Trinidad Chambliss, asked post-game about his pending appeal to the NCAA, said he expects an answer soon. “The NCAA has been closed now, but I’m pretty sure it opens tomorrow, so maybe we’ll get an answer soon,” he said. “I’ve got people working on it. I’m not the one that’s working on it. My job right now is to focus on football and to focus on this team and to focus on being 1-0 in the next game, so that’s my main focus right now.”

• Pete Golding’s signature victory as a head coach came less than an hour’s drive from his hometown of Hammond, Louisiana. “Yeah, it’s definitely special, being 35 miles away,” Golding said. “My brother lives in New Orleans, a bunch of family. A bunch of Hammond High boys here tonight.”

• The Sugar Bowl ended about one hour before college football’s transfer portal opened. Golding, with that in mind, said he has courted junior placekicker Lucas Carneiro in recent days. Carneiro, a transfer from Western Kentucky, is one of the nation’s best placekickers, as he showed in the Sugar Bowl with three long and clutch field goals. “I think a lot of people think Lucas is the best kicker in the country, so a lot of people want Lucas,” Golding said. “So I’ve been meeting with Lucas a lot lately. We’ve had a lot of good meetings here, and especially this week. I got to spend a lot of time with him one-on-one and just getting to know him a little more and figuring out what he wants in the future. … We felt like he was the best kicker in the country coming out of Western Kentucky last year. He’s done an unbelievable job this year.”

• Georgia coach Kirby Smart was gracious in defeat, praising Golding, the Rebels players and even the Ole Miss crowd. Smart said Ole Miss deserved the victory, but added: “I enjoyed that game and that atmosphere. I am proud of our team. I’m sick that we lost, and there’s things I would love to go back and do differently. But I’m just so proud of the way our guys competed when down 10, and just didn’t finish it.”

Editor’s note: This essay is part of Mississippi Today Ideas, a platform for thoughtful Mississippians to share fact-based ideas about our state’s past, present and future. You can read more about the section here.

Whether you call it “school choice” or vouchers, privatization of education socializes all the costs of education, but privatizes all the benefits.

So under “school choice,” all Mississippi taxpayers will pay for wealthy kids to go to private schools, even though those private schools won’t accept all Mississippi taxpayers’ children as students.

If “school choice” keeps being pushed on Mississippi taxpayers, we will continue to be saddled with an even greater financial burden that doesn’t benefit the majority of Mississippi families nor Mississippi communities. In fact, it actively harms most families, businesses and communities because it starves the public schools, which are the only schools responsible for educating every child who walks through their doors.

We will all end up paying even more for education and getting far less in return because private schools are private for a reason – because they don’t want the responsibility nor the accountability of educating all children. Most private schools are set up to educate a select few and the select few does not include poor children, children with special needs and children who don’t speak English.

Educating all children well and equitably comes with a cost. With public schools, taxpayers not only share the costs, they also reap all the benefits that come with a well-educated citizenry.

I don’t know of any private school that wants to accept the responsibility and accountability of educating all children in their community, but they would gladly accept the generous gift of Mississippi taxpayer money to continue educating a select handful of already-enrolled private school students.

Folks already using private schools would benefit above all others in Mississippi. Where “school choice”/vouchers have passed in other states, we’ve seen private schools increase their tuition once vouchers are available because they know which families can still afford it and it keeps out students that most private schools would rather not serve.

Mississippi legislators have rarely kept their promise to Mississippi taxpayers, families and communities to be responsible stewards of our public schools. Every time the state Legislature breaks its promise to the people who elected them, they increase the financial burden of their own local communities. The Mississippi Legislature ties the hands of the local community by telling them how much they can tax at the local level and what that money can and can’t be used for.

Plus, many of our communities are at or near the maximum percentage they can tax at the local level. And whether they are at or near that maximum local tax percentage allowed by the Legislature, the vast majority of Mississippi communities don’t have the economic capacity to make up for – at the local level – the amount of financial support they’re supposed to be getting from the State. 

“School choice” is a lie built on a false promise. Mississippi has tried vouchers or “school choice” before, and the only people who could receive them were people who had the same skin color as me. Mississippi, like some other Southern states, used vouchers to prop up segregation. Vouchers weren’t intended to be available for all children then, and they won’t be this time either.

“School choice” doesn’t just hurt individual children or families or communities. “School choice” will hurt our cost of living, our overall quality of life, our state’s economic capacity to succeed and, ultimately, the cornerstone of our representative democracy. 

Public education is an American value. Investing in public schools is not only investing in Mississippi’s people, it’s also the most common sense approach to strengthening our economy not only at the state level, but also at the levels of our local communities, families and individuals.

Mississippi would be wise to elect legislators and congressional representatives who are committed to strengthening the single most important factor to improving every community’s capacity to succeed economically – America’s public schools.

Bio: Becky Glover is a retired policy analyst and community organizer for Parents for Public Schools Inc. She is a proud product of the Tupelo Public School District and lives in Meridian. She can be reached at: becky.glover4ms@gmail.com

NEW ORLEANS — Trinidad Chambliss continues to write one of the most fascinating stories in college football history. If this wasn’t football, you’d call it a fairy tale. All that’s missing are magic beans and silver slippers.

Here Thursday night at the jam-packed Superdome, one of the world’s most famous sports venues, Chambliss willed the Ole Miss Rebels to a scintillating 39-34 Sugar Bowl victory over the proud Georgia Bulldogs. He did it with his strong right arm. He did it with his legs. He did it with courage and with uncommon flair.

Last season Chambliss was doing it at Division II Ferris State in Michigan, where he won a national championship. This year, he’s doing it on the biggest stage in college football, where he is now two steps from winning another much, much bigger trophy.

Chambliss threw for 362 yards and two touchdowns, often darting away from some of the biggest, strongest, red-shirted human beings you will ever see. At one point he completed a Sugar Bowl-record 13 passes in a row. He made plays when there didn’t seem a play to be made. Sometimes, it seemed like magic. And after all that he might have led the loudest Hotty Toddy in history. “Are you ready?” he hollered into the microphone after being awarded the MVP trophy. About 40,000 Ole Miss fans, most dressed in powder blue, thundered the rest. 

Said Georgia coach Kirby Smart, accurately, “Their quarterback is just incredible. I mean, he does an unbelievable job of not giving up sacks and making plays with his legs. They made more plays than we did; and I’ve got to be honest, that’s part of football. They out-executed us, out-coached us, out-played us.”

“I’m speechless,” Chambliss would later say in the post-game press conference. “We were down 9 points at one point, and they were down 9 points when we played them before, so it was kind of like roles reversed. I didn’t play my best football in the fourth quarter when we played them before, so I wanted to redeem myself.”

Mission accomplished – and then some.

Georgia, winner of two national championships this decade, had won 53 straight games when leading at halftime. The Bulldogs led Ole Miss 21-12 at intermission, only to be outscored 27-13 over the last 30 minutes. Every time Ole Miss needed a big play – and those times were many – Chambliss stepped up and made it. Georgia had won an amazing 75 straight games when leading going into the fourth quarter. Not this time.

Make no mistake: Rebel heroes were many this night:

• Mississippians Will Echoles (the defensive MVP) of Houston, Suntarine Perkins of Raleigh and Zxavian Harris of Canton keyed a defensive effort that made just enough stops to seal the victory. 
• Running back Kewan Lacy, as good as any back in the country, ran for 98 bruising yards and two touchdowns.
• Wide receiver Harrison Wallace III snagged nine passes for 156 yards and a touchdown, while teammate Deshaun Stribling caught seven more throws for 122 yards. There may be a college team that has as many high-quality wide receivers as Ole Miss, but these eyes haven’t seen it.
• And, heavens, let us not forget placekicker Lucas Carneiro, the transfer from Western Kentucky, who launched Sugar Bowl record-breaking field goals of 55 and 56 yards in the first quarter and then hit the game-winning field goal of 47 yards with six seconds remaining. All three kicks would have been good from 60 yards or more. Ole Miss would not have won without him.

This observer had thought Ole Miss would have to win the turnover battle and/or make a big play in the kicking game in order to slay Georgia. That wasn’t the case. Georgia got the game’s only turnover, a 47-yard scoop-and-score fumble return by Dylan Everette in the second quarter. The Bulldogs also made a huge kicking game play in the third quarter, faking a punt to extend a drive that led to a third quarter field goal and a 24-19 Georgia lead. It was pretty much all Rebels after that.

Ole Miss dominated statistically, out-gaining the Bulldogs 473-343. Take away that scoop-and-score and the Rebels would have won more comfortably. 

“Pete! Pete! Pete!” Rebel fans thundered when the Rebels’ new head coach Pete Golding was called to the podium in the post-game awards ceremony. Later, Golding credited the crowd.

“The fans, you know, it felt like a home game to me, looking up and hearing them,” Golding said. “And then for these guys to play the way and to be able to come back the way they did versus a team like that. … They (the Rebels) are never scared and they don’t panic, and that’s what I love about this group.”

Said Smart: “It felt like we were on the road.”

So now, Ole Miss moves on to play Miami at Tempe, Arizona, in the Fiesta Bowl and the national semifinals on Jan. 8. Indiana plays Oregon in the Peach Bowl, the other semifinal, the next night. Winners of those two games will play for the national championship Jan. 19 in Miami Gardens, Florida.

Could the Ole Miss Rebels win it all? 

I’d answer that with this: Would that be any more unbelievable than a transfer from Ferris State beating the Georgia Bulldogs with one of the greatest performances in Sugar Bowl history?

Could the outcome have been different? 

A statewide group tasked with reviewing domestic violence homicides and other related deaths will begin this year to look at missed opportunities to offer resources and intervention to change future outcomes. 

With a better picture of what help victims and perpetrators had access to before a death, Mississippi’s Domestic Violence Fatality Review Team puts the state in a position to make systemic changes around its response to domestic violence, said team member Stacey Riley. 

“This will help us as a state and give the movement to find what the changes are and how to make them happen,” said Riley, CEO of the Gulf Coast Center for Nonviolence. “It’s not just about ‘We have to make it better.’”

She is among those appointed to the committee established during the legislative session under the Department of Public Safety. Its 13 members include domestic violence service providers, advocates, law enforcement and prosecutors. 

Oxford Police Chief Jeff McCutchen, another committee member, said the group can help learn how to prevent domestic violence deaths and other related crimes. 

“How do we keep this from being a problem that repeats?” he asked. 

Choosing what cases to review will be up to the committee, and the group has a number of domestic violence deaths to choose from. 

Between 2020 and 2024, Mississippi Today reviewed local news stories, police reports, court records and other public information and found that at least 300 people died in domestic violence incidents. This number includes victims, abusers, children, law enforcement and others. 

At least 70 domestic violence incidents occurred across the state in 2025, resulting in at least 44 deaths and 48 injured, according to the Gun Violence Archive. That number is likely higher when other forms of domestic violence, such as beatings, strangulation and stabbings, are factored in and law enforcement investigations indicate that a case is domestic violence related. 

The work of the Domestic Violence Fatality Review Team is years in the making. 

In 2024, the Mississippi Coalition Against Domestic Violence supported a bill to establish the committee, but it did not make it out of committee. 

The next year, the coalition, along with advocates and some who lost family members to domestic violence, spoke in support of a pair of bills to establish the review committee. One version, Senate Bill 2886, became law in July. 

Tara Gandy, who lost her daughter Joslin Napier in 2022, held a framed photo of her as Gov. Tate Reeves signed the bill into law. 

“(The review team) will allow for my daughter and those who have already lost their lives to domestic violence … to no longer be just a number,” Gandy said after the bill signing. “They will be a number with a purpose.” 

Public Safety Commissioner Sean Tindell selected four initial members before the law went into effect in July, said Bailey Martin Holloway, a spokesperson for the department. From there, the members elected a chair and vice chair and additional team members. 

The committee is expected to meet quarterly, Holloway said. The group’s first tasks will be to set up administrative procedures and processes, which can include how the committee will receive cases and how to obtain court, medical and other records to review. 

Riley hopes the National Domestic Violence Fatality Review Initiative can train the committee about methods, procedures and policies to review domestic violence cases. 

Members of the review team are:

• Allen McDaniel, Tindell’s chief of staff, committee chair. 
• Luis Montgomery, public policy and justice strategist for the Mississippi Coalition Against Domestic Violence, committee vice chair. He lobbied for the bill that established the committee.
• Anna Brumfield, special assistant attorney general. She trains law enforcement officers about domestic abuse protection orders and how to use the AG’s Domestic Violence Reporting System and Protection Order Registry.
• Kassie Coleman, district attorney for Clarke, Kemper, Lauderdale and Wayne counties. She has prosecuted crimes against women and children and was appointed as a member of the Commission for the Study of Domestic Abuse Proceedings.
• Debra Mitchell, a medical social worker.
• Stacey Riley, CEO of the Gulf Coast Center for Nonviolence. 
• Tiffany Crawford, sexual assault prevention and response program manager for the Mississippi National Guard.
• Lanisha Bell, project director for the Tribal Financial Management Center with the Justice Department’s Office for Victims of Crime. 
• Michael Harper, Leake County deputy coroner. 
• Shella Cage-Head, community advocate.
• Jeff McCutchen, Oxford police chief. His department established a victim’s service unit in 2021 to focus on crimes against people, including domestic violence, sexual assault, stalking and harassment.
• Sholatta Sharp, special projects coordinator for the Mississippi Coalition Against Sexual Assault. She is a certified sexual assault nurse examiner and trains others to work as examiners.
• Trey Spillman, county prosecutor for Rankin County.

NEW ORLEANS — For much of Thursday night’s Sugar Bowl showdown with Georgia, it looked as if Ole Miss’ dream football season was careening toward a rude wake-up call.

Luckily for Rebel fans, Trinidad Chambliss found the snooze button.

The Ole Miss quarterback put together a performance for the ages, passing for 362 yards and two touchdowns to rally his team to a stunning 39-34 win over the SEC Champion Bulldogs.

With the win, the Rebels (13-1) punched their ticket to the semifinal round of the College Football Playoff, where they’ll face Miami in the Fiesta Bowl next Thursday in Tempe, Arizona.

And if that round goes anything like the second one did, the Magnolia State may have to invest in more respirators.

Down 9 points at the half, the Rebels scored back-to-back touchdowns to open the fourth quarter and held off a fierce Georgia rally.

Chambliss was the star — the senior passed for 362 yards and two touchdowns — but there were no shortages of heroic performances.

Despite coming in as a six-point underdog Ole Miss out-gained Georgia 473 yards to 343, and won despite several bad breaks.

The Rebels settled for field goals on two of their first three possessions in the first quarter, taking an early 6-0 lead.

Georgia’s splendid quarterback Gunner Stockton responded with scoring runs to cap back-to-back 75-yard touchdown drives and put Georgia ahead 14-12.

Ole Miss was driving to take the lead back before the halftime break, but Georgia defender Daylen Everette scooped up a rare fumble from Ole Miss tailback Kewan Lacy and raced 47 yards to extend the Georgia lead to 21-12.

“We definitely didn’t play our cleanest football in the first half on either side of the ball,” Ole Miss coach Pete Golding said. “I kind of challenged them at halftime and said, you know, look, we were up nine on these guys going into the fourth quarter last time. Let’s play 30 minutes of football and out-physical them and execute. They just responded like they have all year.”

The Rebels traded a touchdown — a fumble-redeeming seven-yard bruising run for Lacy — for a Georgia field goal in the third quarter to trim the Bulldogs’ lead to 24-19.

That’s when the real fun started.

Lacy’s second touchdown came on a five-yard run and put Ole Miss ahead 27-24 with 11:29 to go.

Georgia coach Kirby Smart rolled the dice on the Bulldogs’ ensuing possession, opting to try to convert a 4th-and-2 situation at the Georgia 33-yard line.

Stockton rolled to his right looking for a receiver downfield, but didn’t see Ole Miss defender Suntarine Perkins coming from his blind side. Perkins drilled Stockton for a sack, forcing a fumble which he recovered at the Bulldogs’ 23-yard line.

“We knew that was going to be a big play in the game,” Ole Miss defensive MVP Will Echoles said. “I’m not going to say I was surprised, but Perkins made a great play.”

The turnover set Ole Miss up with a short field, and Chambliss cashed it in two plays later with a 13-yard touchdown pass to Harrison Wallace to put Ole Miss ahead 34-24 with nine minutes left.

But the Bulldogs had a response of their own: a seven-play, 75-yard touchdown drive that trimmed the Ole Miss lead down to three, at 34-31 with 7:03 to go. They tied the game with 56 seconds left on a 24-yard Peyton Woodring field goal.

Luckily, Chambliss had a little magic left in his back pocket. 

Facing a third-and-five at his own 30, the senior found receiver De’Zhaun Stribling streaking down the home sideline for a 40-yard completion that gave the Rebels a new set of downs at the Georgia 30.

Two plays later, Ole Miss’ splendid kicker Lucas Carniero drilled a 47-yard field goal to regain the lead, 37-34, with just six seconds left.

Georgia tried a trick play on the ensuing kickoff and lateraled the ball out of bounds on their own goal-line, giving Ole Miss two points for a safety and extending the lead to 39-34.

Georgia got the ball back on an onside kick, but a final play that featured 11 laterals ended with a 12-yard loss and Ole Miss storming the field.

It was a strange, almost surreal ending to a marvelously competitive game.

“It was an incredible college football game,” Smart said. “It’s what the college football playoff was built for, to have battles like that.”

When the Mississippi Legislature reconvenes in the Capitol’s marbled halls in January, one voice will scarcely be heard: constituents’. 

Citizens and advocates are occasionally invited by lawmakers to speak at the Capitol. But unlike some other statehouses in the U.S., there are no formal opportunities for constituents in Mississippi to provide public comment or testimony in committee hearings, remotely or in writing. 

“Constituents should have a voice when it comes to policy making,” said Sarah Moreland-Russell, an associate professor in the School of Public Health at Washington University in St. Louis who has studied testimony’s impact on the lawmaking process. 

Moreland-Russell said she was “very surprised” to learn that there are no opportunities for Mississippi’s citizens to regularly provide testimony at the statehouse. 

“If you’re not hearing from the people that are actually being affected by a policy, then how do you know it’s truly going to be effective?” she asked.

In Louisiana, House and Senate rules mandate proponents and opponents of bills have the opportunity to speak on a piece of legislation. In Alaska, a network of 22 offices across the state provide opportunities to participate in legislative meetings and submit written public comment, as well as provide legislative information to constituents in remote parts of the state. Every bill in Colorado receives a hearing with public comment. And in Arizona, an online system allows residents to register opinions and request to testify on bills from their homes. 

Moreland-Russell’s research showed that most legislators, regardless of political party, find testimony from constituents and experts influential. Testimony increased lawmakers’ awareness of issues, encouraged them to conduct additional research and sometimes even changed their votes. 

“Stories can be extremely influential,” Moreland-Russell said. She said legislators found personal anecdotes paired with data to back it up most impactful. 

In Mississippi, bills frequently fly through the committee process, oftentimes with little discussion by lawmakers and no input from the public. The Senate’s typo-riddled bill to phase out the income tax — one of the most notable bills to come out of the 2025 legislative session — quickly passed through committee with little debate. 

Senate Public Health Committee Chairman Hob Bryan, a Democrat from Amory who has served in the Legislature since 1984, said committee hearings used to involve frequent debate, amendments and discussion among subcommittees.

“Everything now is just perfunctory,” he said, meaning it is routine or superficial. 

During the COVID-19 pandemic, many state legislatures implemented new ways for the public  to participate remotely, including options to present remote testimony or gather constituent feedback online.

But Mississippians who do not live in Jackson or can not attend the Legislature still do not have the opportunity to watch many of the state’s committee proceedings. The Mississippi House of Representatives does not livestream or record its committee meetings, though it does livestream proceedings in the House chamber.

Meanwhile, the Mississippi Senate livestreams most of its committee meetings and all of its full chamber proceedings. This is a marker of Lt. Gov Delbert Hosemann’s commitment to transparency, spokesperson Hannah Milliet said in an email. 

House Speaker Jason White, a Republican from West, told Mississippi Today in 2024 that he has no objection to livestreaming committee hearings and said the Rules Committee would look into the policy. 

House Rules Chairman Fred Shanks, a Republican from Brandon, said in November there has not been any talk of livestreaming the meetings. White did not respond to a request for comment. 

Simple changes, such as requiring committees to provide notice of hearings and publish agendas ahead of time, would give constituents more opportunities to participate in the legislative process, said Safia Malin, interim policy director for Jackson-based civic engagement nonprofit, One Voice.

The Senate has a page on the Legislature’s website to publish agendas, though they are not always shared. The House does not post agendas online. And committee hearings in both chambers occasionally occur at the last minute. 

Rep. Jeramey Anderson, a Democrat from Escatawpa, has proposed a rule to require House committees to post agendas 24 hours before meeting for the past seven years. None have ever made it out of committee. 

“Mississippians deserve to know what bills are being taken up before they walk into a committee room — not five minutes before, and not after the decisions are already made,” Anderson said in a written statement to Mississippi Today. 

“The refusal to provide even basic notice isn’t an accident,” he said. “It’s a deliberate choice that keeps the public from testifying, keeps advocates from participating, and keeps voters from holding their elected officials accountable.” 

The state Legislature is allowed to meet behind closed doors. The Mississippi Ethics Commission has repeatedly ruled that the Legislature is not covered by the state’s open meetings law. Hinds County Chancellor Dewayne Thomas affirmed the ruling in February. 

The House Republican Caucus — which holds a strong majority — frequently meets behind closed doors before committee meetings, effectively shielding discussion on legislation from the public.  

Shanks said he has never had a constituent ask him about speaking at the Capitol. He said he makes his phone number available for constituents to call him at any time.  

“As far as somebody making a public comment at a committee meeting, a lot of our committee meetings are pretty quick, and some of them are last minute. They may have one right after (floor) session,” Shanks said. 

“It would be pretty hard to do.”

For the fifth straight year, lawmakers will debate restoring Mississippi’s ballot initiative when they convene at the Capitol in January. 

House Constitution Chairman Price Wallace, a Republican from Mendenhall, and Senate Elections Chairman Jeremy England, a Republican from Vancleave, told Mississippi Today that they will likely file bills to give Mississippians a way to circumvent the Legislature and place issues on a statewide ballot. 

“It’s important,” England said. “It’s important for the people to feel like ‘If our Legislature is not reacting to things we want, then we want to have this process available to us.’”

Mississippians had the constitutional right to a ballot initiative starting in 1914, but the state Supreme Court threw it out in 1922. The initiative went dormant until the Legislature and voters restored the right by passing a measure in 1992, allowing voters to amend the state constitution. But the Supreme Court again nullified it on technical grounds in 2021 in a ruling on a lawsuit over voters passing a medical marijuana initiative.

Ever since the Mississippi Supreme Court invalidated the ballot initiative then, legislators have been unable to reach a consensus on how to restore the right to voters. 

Since the court’s ruling, some lawmakers have questioned whether Mississippi needs an initiative and raised concerns that uber-wealthy out-of-state special interests can manipulate voters through ballot initiatives. 

To assuage these concerns, Senate leaders have proposed a new initiative process that requires petitioners to collect a larger number of voters’ signatures to have something placed on a ballot than in the previous process. 

“The process should be difficult because it goes around and goes outside our constitutional republic system of government,” England said. 

House leaders, on the other hand, have pushed for an initiative process similar to the previous one. Last year,  Rep. Wallace advocated for a process that required petitioners to gather around 140,000 signatures before it could be considered on the ballot. 

But the Simpson County Republican said he hopes lawmakers could work constructively this year to find some common ground on how to restore the process. 

“We’re all going to work on something,” Wallace said. 

Both House and Senate leaders agree that a new initiative process should only allow voters to make changes to state law, not the Constitution, and not allow voters to propose initiatives related to abortion and the public pension system. 

During the 30 years that the state had an initiative, only seven proposals made it to a statewide ballot: two initiatives for term limits, eminent domain reform, voter ID, a personhood amendment, medical marijuana, and a measure requiring lawmakers to fully fund public education.

Of those seven, only eminent domain, voter ID and medical marijuana were approved by voters. The rest were rejected.