So much to cover on this week’s podcast but Southern Miss’s surprising hire of Marshall coach Charles Huff tops the list, and USM athletic director Jeremy McClain joins the podcast to discuss. Also, a recap of the high school state championships, more college football and, in case no one has noticed, we have two Top 25 basketball teams in Mississippi.
Stream all episodes here.
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The decades-old, Jackson-based advertising agency GodwinGroup has closed its doors, and some of its principal team leaders are now part of a new firm.
Ridgeland-based Ad5 was formed when a group of Jackson-area advertising executives partnered with Princeton Partners, a 60-year-old national agency based in Princeton, New Jersey.
Philip Shirley, who was a senior partner, chairman and CEO of GodwinGroup, is a senior partner in the new marketing and advertising agency.
“Our goal was to combine the experience and expertise of a group of senior-level ad professionals primarily from the Jackson area and nearby states with the brand marketing and digital marketing expertise of Princeton Partners,” Shirley said in a news release announcing Ad5. “We have known and worked closely with the owners and management of Princeton Partners for over 25 years, so we knew it was smart to join forces.”
Tom Sullivan, president of Princeton Partners, is chairman and a senior partner of the new firm.
The new company will focus on offering marketing services in banking, healthcare, education, nonprofits, workforce development, tourism, government agencies and consumer marketing, according to the news release.
Ad5 local management includes Jeff Russell, who was a senior partner and president at Godwin, as president and partner, and Lauren Mozingo, digital marketing specialist at Godwin, as managing director and partner. They have local day-to-day management responsibilities for the new entity, according to the release, and will work with Kevin Kuchinski, managing partner of Ad5 and Princeton Partners. Ad5 serves clients operating from Texas to Florida and up to Kentucky, according to the release.
GodwinGroup was the state’s oldest advertising group. It shuttered its doors Friday.
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At the request of a top lawmaker, Attorney General Lynn Fitch opined that state Auditor Shad White lacked the authority to hire a consultant for $2 million to look for waste and fat in state government.
Fitch’s opinion said White has the authority to conduct “financial audits only,” but does not have authority to conduct “managerial studies” without a written request from the governor or the Legislature.
A spokesman for the auditor said on Wednesday that the office did have legal authority to commission the study — and added Fitch’s legal opinion is likely the result of the consultant finding that Fitch and Lt. Gov. Delbert Hosemann, who oversees the state Senate, took the state plane on a trip to an out-of-state college baseball game.
This trip was not mentioned in the consultant’s report White released to the media and public in October, although White recommended getting rid of the state airplane. White previously denied a records request from Mississippi Today for any documents other than the 59-page report he made public. The auditor’s spokesman did not specify on Wednesday what baseball game he was referencing.
In a statement, Hosemann said ““The state attorney general issued an opinion yesterday which clearly states the state auditor was unauthorized to spend $2 million of taxpayer funds. The state laws on expenditures of taxpayer funds apply equally to the state auditor, and the funds should be returned to the taxpayers.”
Fitch Chief of Staff Michelle Williams sent a statement in response to White’s office.
“Supporting Mississippi student-athletes representing Mississippi in the College World Series is what public officials representing Mississippians should do,” Williams said. “Spending $2 million on a report without lawful authority to spend is not.”
Lawmakers have been questioning whether White’s study on waste was, itself, wasteful spending. Some have noted the result was mostly a rehash, amalgam of long-discussed, never enacted ideas to cut government spending that could have been cobbled together after spending a day or two on Google, going through Mississippi press clippings and perusing old legislative watchdog reports and bills.
READ MORE: Cutting fat in state government: Everything old is new again
Lawmakers and Mississippi politicos have questioned whether White’s report, released with fanfare at a press conference and subsequent media circuit, was more a campaign effort for his stated 2027 gubernatorial aspirations.
White, who has compared his efficiency study to President-elect Donald Trump and billionaire Elon Musk’s DOGE efforts at cutting federal waste, has written off any questions of his consultant study as deep state pushback.
State Sen. John Polk, R-Hattiesburg, chair of the appropriations subcommittee that oversees the budget for White’s office, requested the attorney general opinion on White’s study. Polk noted the $2 million White spent never came up when setting his budget for the year, which is “quite unusual.” He said White has some autonomy on “escalating” his budget, but he questions whether this large increase met legal criteria.
“I’m concerned he has broken the law, and that is not a good thing for a state auditor,” Polk told Mississippi Today on Wednesday.
Polk noted the AG’s opinion doesn’t carry the weight of law, and the opinion itself notes such opinions “are prospective determinations on matters of state law only and can neither sanction nor invalidate past actions.”
“What I want to focus on is how going forward we control things like this, prevent them from happening,” Polk said. He said he wants lawmakers to look further into White’s consultant contract, how the auditor chose the Boston firm and other issues.
Polk said he and other lawmakers have noted the study produced “nothing new … the same old, same old” in suggestions for government efficiency.
“It’s things we’ve tried, or talked about, or in some cases are already doing,” Polk said. “… The (consultants’) contract says they would talk with agency heads as part of the study. I haven’t found an agency head yet that says they talked with them. That bothers me.”
Jacob Walters, a spokesman for White, said Hosemann “probably” had Polk request the attorney general’s opinion.
Walters speculated Hosemann was upset that White’s study “uncovered” that he and AG Fitch “took a taxpayer-funded trip” on the state airplane to travel to an out-of-state college baseball game.
“This is why Auditor White called to eliminate the state airplane in Project Momentum,” said Walters, alluding to the name White gave the Boston consulting group study.
He said many Mississippi politicians, like those in Washington, “dislike Auditor White’s willingness to upset the applecart on behalf of taxpayers.”
“Your days of wasting our money are over,” Walters said.
Whether or not White commissioned the study to raise his profile for a potential run for governor, the issue is firmly mired in 2027 politics. White and Fitch are considered likely candidates for the office, as is Hosemann, who oversees the Senate and for whom Polk is a top lieutenant. Any battle over White’s budget or spending the $2 million in the upcoming legislative session is likely to be politically charged.
White has been politically sparring with Hosemann and Fitch, and the internecine fight among Republicans with gubernatorial aspirations is heating up as the Jan. 7 start of the 2025 legislative session draws near.
Other politicians, including the current chairman of the Mississippi Republican Party, have accused White of grandstanding for political gain, and questioned his writing a book about the ongoing Mississippi welfare fraud scandal he helped investigate.
White’s scrutinized report said Mississippi could sell the state’s airplane, make officials use commercial or charter flights, and save more than $1 million a year. The existence of the state airplane and intense scrutiny of travel on it by governors and others have been debated off and on for decades. Former Gov. Phil Bryant, who appointed White to the auditor’s office, pitched selling one of the state’s planes when it had two a major political platform and vowed to take commercial flights for state-related travel.
White’s consultant report includes recommendations such as reducing government officials’ travel spending. This was a hot topic for several years after a 2013 investigation by the Clarion-Ledger showed that even during lean budget years, government officials still spent tens of millions of dollars on travel, domestic and abroad, and had a massive fleet of government vehicles with dubious need for them. The Legislature clamped down on travel and agencies enacted fleet rules and promoted mileage reimbursement for personal vehicles. But according to White’s report, travel spending has been growing and again needs a major haircut.
The report also found that, compared to other states, Mississippi government is spending too much on office space and insurance for state buildings and leased property, and on advertising and public relations for state agencies — again, issues that have been pointed out multiple times over the last couple of decades by lawmakers, journalists and government watchdog reports.
White’s report recommends the state consolidate and reform its purchasing and look for better deals when it buys goods and services. That should sound familiar: Two lawmakers in particular, Sen. Polk and Rep. Jerry Turner, led a serious crusade on purchasing reform for several years and managed to push through some meaningful changes. But many of those have been undone or are now ignored.
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In the final hours of Sheldon Timothy Herrington Jr.’s capital murder trial Wednesday, his defense attorney argued that too many open questions exist for a jury to convict him of killing a fellow University of Mississippi graduate who was prominent in the local LGBTQ+ community.
Kevin Horan’s closing arguments garnered objections from the prosecution, who earlier in the day argued that Herrington was the last person to see Jimmie “Jay” Lee alive before the avid social media user stopped responding to texts and calls from family and friends on July 8, 2022.
The case is now in the hands of the jury.
That Lee’s silence has continued ever since is proof enough, the prosecution argued, that he is dead. In October, a judge declared Lee legally dead at the request of his parents.
But Lee’s body has not been found and without that, the prosecution’s case rests almost entirely on circumstantial evidence, opening the door for Herrington’s defense to raise a host of doubts. During his closing arguments, Horan, who is also a state representative from Herrington’s hometown of Grenada, kept gesturing to a yellow legal notepad that he told the jury contained a list of questions the prosecution had yet to answer.
Most significantly, Horan told the jury the prosecution could not establish that Lee was dead when Herrington left his apartment in the early morning hours of July 8 to buy duct tape at Walmart.
“There’s no evidence whatsoever that Lee was not alive at that time,” Horan said. “Think about why that’s important.”
In a rebuttal, Gwen Agho, a special prosecutor from Hinds County who assisted Lafayette County District Attorney Ben Creekmore, told the jury that open questions are not the same as reasonable doubt. Anything can happen, she said, including elephants falling from the sky.
“Opposing counsel wants to talk about possibilities, but we are not here about possibilities,” Agho said. “We’re here about reasonable doubt.”
Agho tied Lee’s moment of death to that of his cellphone’s — 7:28 a.m., not long after the last time Lee’s phone ever pinged at a cell tower and right before Herrington allegedly parked Lee’s car at Molly Barr Trails, an apartment complex where neither Herrington nor Lee lived. Lee’s car was eventually towed from Molly Barr.
Lee “never let anyone borrow his car,” Agho said. “We also know when the car is found, all his things are in it, the things he would need to move on to live a life.”
Much of the prosecutions’ closing argument focused on Herrington’s alleged lies about his sexuality and relationship to Lee. Oxford Police Department detectives testified earlier in the trial that Herrington provided them conflicting information about the hours leading up to Lee’s disappearance, according to the Associated Press.
“Not only did he lie to his family and his friends about his sexuality, being on the down low … he lied to the church … then he lied to the police about everything,” Creekmore said.
Creekmore alleged that Herrington killed Lee to hide their secret relationship.
“Tim Herrington ended Jay Lee’s life to protect his own,” Creekmore said.
Herrington was arrested on July 22, 2022, two weeks after Lee went missing. Members of Herrington’s family, many of whom are involved in a prominent church in Grenada, have maintained his innocence.
Lee’s body has not been found since, and it’s unclear the extent of OPD’s efforts to find it.
After the prosecution wrapped its rebuttal, Judge Kelly Luther told the courtroom their guess is as good as his as to when, or if, the jury will reach a verdict.
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JACKSONVILLE, Fla. (AP) — Mississippi coach Lane Kiffin on Tuesday called college football’s current setup “a dumb system,” and he wasn’t referring to the playoff selection process for a change.
Kiffin, who has been outspoken about his team and others from the powerhouse Southeastern Conference getting left out of the College Football Playoff, ripped the college calendar that forces many coaches to juggle a transfer window while preparing for bowl games. It came on the heels of several coaches having to squeeze national signing day into a week of preparation for conference championship games.
“We just try to make the best of the situations,” Kiffin said during a Zoom call for coaches headed to the Gator Bowl. “It really is a dumb system.”
Kiffin’s comments came after first-year Duke coach Manny Diaz confirmed that starting quarterback Maalik Murphy had entered the transfer portal, leaving Henry Belin or Grayson Loftis to start the Jan. 2 bowl game in Jacksonville.
“Think about what we’re talking about or what (Diaz) just had to address: a quarterback going in the portal,” Kiffin said. “Just think about what we’re talking about. The season’s not over yet, and there’s a free-agency window open.
“Just think if the NFL was getting ready for the AFC, NFC playoffs, postseason, and players are in free agency already. It’s a really poor system, but we just try to manage the best we can through it, and hopefully someday it’ll get fixed.”
Kiffin also said his quarterback, senior Jaxson Dart, is planning to play in the Gator Bowl. The 16th-ranked Rebels (9-3), though, could have some other starters opt out.
The Blue Devils (9-3) closed the regular season with three consecutive wins to improve their bowl spot, all of them coming after Diaz told his players, “The more we win, the warmer the (postseason) destination.”
Now, they’ll make the trip without Murphy. The California native transferred to Duke after one year at Texas. He completed 60% of his passes for 2,933 yards, with 26 touchdowns and 12 interceptions while starting all 12 games in 2024. He led Duke to the program’s most regular-season wins since 2014.
“From our standpoint, we adjust,” Diaz said. “This is the new normal. What we’re not doing right now is we’re not on the road recruiting. We’re not on the road babysitting our commits who, up until last year, were signing on the third Wednesday of December.
“So the fact we’ve already had a signing day, that takes one of the distressers out of December and removes that. However the landscape changes, we adapt to it. That’s what football coaches are; we’re problem-solvers and we’re adjusters, and we adjust.”
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Mississippi’s Democratic U.S. Rep. Bennie Thompson said he will not be intimidated by threats from President-elect Donald Trump that he and other members of the special House committee he chaired “should go to jail.”
Thompson, who chaired the special House Jan. 6 Committee that looked at the efforts of Trump and others to overturn the results of the 2020 election, was cited by Trump in a weekend network news interview.
Referring to Thompson and former U.S. Rep. Liz Chaney, R-Wyoming, who also was on the special committee, Trump said, “Chaney was behind it and so was Bennie Thomson and everybody on that committee. For what they did, honestly they should go to jail.”
In a statement in response to Trump’s charges, Thompson said, “Our committee was fully authorized by the House, all rules were properly followed, and our work product stands on its own. In fact, in the two years since we have completed our work, no court or legal body has refuted it.
“Donald Trump and his minions can make all the assertions they want – but no election, no conspiracy theory, no pardon, and no threat of vengeful prosecution can rewrite history or wipe away his responsibility for the deadly violence on that horrific day. We stood up to him before, and we will continue to do so.”
It is not clear what criminal charges House members, who like Trump have constitutional protections for actions taken while in office, and former members could face.
In a social media post, George Washington University law professor Jonathan Turley, an avid Trump defender, criticized the threat of legal action against Thompson and other members of the Jan. 6 Committee.
“The fact is that there is no viable criminal case to be made against the J6 Committee members for their investigation or report,” Turley said on social media. “We need to move beyond the rage rhetoric if this country is going to come together to face the tough challenges ahead.”
In an essay Turley criticized the actions of the Jan. 6 Committee, but said members of Congress are protected by the U.S. Constitution from prosecution for action related to their official duties.
There have been multiple other instances where Trump and his supporters have threatened to jail people.
For instance, Kash Patel, who is Trump’s nominee to head the FBI, has spoken of jailing journalists despite the freedom of press protections afforded by the U.S. Constitution.
In a recent interview, Patel said, “We will go out and find the conspirators, not just in government, but in the media. Yes, we’re going to come after the people in the media who lied about American citizens, who helped Joe Biden rig presidential elections. We’re going to come after you. Whether it’s criminally or civilly, we’ll figure that out. But, yeah, we’re putting you all on notice.”
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Opponents of a 2023 state law creating a separate state-run court system within Jackson with an appointed judge and prosecutors have withdrawn their federal lawsuit.
Last week, the plaintiffs represented by the NAACP asked the court to voluntarily dismiss all of its claims and the lawsuit, which comes after months of deliberations. The defendants and Supreme Court Chief Justice Michael Randolph, a former defendant, did not oppose.
“Plaintiffs are heartened by reports that the CCID Court will be established with appropriate safeguards for Jackson’s residents, and have decided to drop their challenge to the manner of appointing officials to serve that court,” attorneys for the NAACP wrote in a Dec. 2 motion.
Judicial appointments have not been made to the court, which is not operational.
The lawsuit was dismissed without prejudice, which means it could be refiled if circumstances change.
A challenge to House Bill 1020 was filed in April 2023, months after it was signed into law.
What followed was over a year and a half in court, which included a temporary restraining order preventing judicial appointments that lasted several months and a failed attempt to secure a preliminary injunction to block appointments.
U.S. District Court Judge Henry Wingate said the plaintiffs have ignored the court’s directives and created “procedural chaos” through the filing of motions that don’t change his ruling on judicial immunity, which protects Randolph from civil liability.
“Any further attempt by the plaintiffs to ignore this court’s judicial immunity ruling shall be viewed as deliberate misconduct,” Wingate wrote in a Dec. 5 order dismissing the lawsuit.
Initially, Randolph and Gov. Tate Reeves were among defendants in the lawsuit, but they were removed not long after the lawsuit was filed.
Plaintiffs tried to keep Randolph, whose role will be to appoint a CCID judge, as a plaintiff, despite multiple written orders and verbal confirmations that he was no longer part of the lawsuit.
Before its passage and signing, HB 1020 received pushback, with opponents seeing the court as a takeover and supporters seeing it as a way to address crime in the capital city.
The law created the Capitol Complex Improvement District Court and expanded the Capitol Police’s presence in the existing district.
Lawmakers gave the court the same power as municipal courts that handle misdemeanors. They also directed people convicted for misdemeanors in the CCID to be held in the state prison in Rankin County, rather than a local jail.
HB 1020 directed the chief justice, Randolph, to appoint one judge to work in the court and the attorney general to appoint a prosecutor. In filing the lawsuit, some worried the state officials would appoint white judges to the majority Black city.
Another lawsuit challenging a different law passed in 2023, Senate Bill 2343, was consolidated with the HB 1020 suit. Wingate granted a preliminary injunction of the bill last year, which prevents DPS from enforcing regulations stemming from the law.
The bill calls for prior written approval for public demonstrations on a street or sidewalk at the Capitol or state-owned buildings or one where a state agency operates by the public safety commissioner or the chief of the Capitol Police, which falls under his agency.
Attorneys in that suit were not immediately available for comment about the status of their lawsuit, now that the HB 1020 suit has been dismissed.
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Jon Meacham, a Reed family friend, is a presidential biographer and the Rogers Chair in the American Presidency at Vanderbilt University.
Clarke T. Reed—businessman, Mississippi civic leader, and a key architect of post-World War II Southern politics—died on Sunday, December 8, 2024, at his home in Greenville, Mississippi. He was 96.
Longtime chairman of the Mississippi Republican Party and informal power broker whose reach extended to the highest levels, Reed was an important political force in the years of Richard Nixon, Gerald Ford, Ronald Reagan, George H.W. Bush, and George W. Bush. He hired college students who became governors and United States senators; he helped change the course of at least one presidential campaign, stopping Ronald Reagan’s momentum against President Ford at the 1976 GOP convention; and he watched the party’s post-2016 nationalist turn with skepticism, wariness, and concern.
Handsome, charming, peripatetic, Reed, who spoke in a Delta patois that was best described as a drawling mumble or a mumbled drawling, was a Cold War conservative, an admirer of Whittaker Chambers, a student of Edmund Burke, a reader of Russell Kirk, a pal of William F. Buckley, Jr., and of Robert Novak, and an ally of the liberal Mississippi editor Hodding Carter III, who saw Reed’s Republicanism as a weapon in the long war against the segregationist elements of the southern Democratic Party.
His was a big, consequential, fascinating life. Reed was not only present at the creation of a Republican South, he was one of its creators, and his politics seem quaint now. Never an extremist, he believed in an America that was engaged in the world. You could disagree with Clarke, but his motives were not petty but patriotic, not reflexively partisan but civic-minded.
“It’s hard to explain now, but when Clarke started out, there were almost no Republicans in Mississippi,” said Haley Barbour, a Reed alumnus who rose to become President Reagan’s White House political director, chairman of the Republican National Committee, and two-term governor of Mississippi. “The first political poll I ever saw was for Nixon in 1968. Six percent of Mississippians said they were Republicans. One-two-three-four-five-six. So we started out as close to nothing as you can get. And Clarke just kept at it. He wouldn’t give up. The secret to his success was persistence. Sheer persistence.”
“Starting in the 1950s and 60s, Clarke Reed was a Mississippi Republican when such creatures were rare and considered exotic,” said Karl Rove, President George W. Bush’s chief political strategist and deputy White House chief of staff. “By dint of personality, vision, and charm, this principled conservative not only led the GOP to dominance in Mississippi but also the South and hence America.”
“When Clarke got involved in Mississippi politics, it was a one-party state controlled by conservative Democrats,” recalled Curtis Wilkie, a Mississippian who covered national politics for the Boston Globe and became a professor of journalism at the University of Mississippi. “Clarke was good friends with Hodding Carter III, a young Greenville newspaperman and ardent Democrat. They worked quietly together to encourage a two-party system. It would help Clarke build his then-little party and might help Carter, a liberal, break the power of Democratic Senator Jim Eastland. The irony is that they succeeded, but Mississippi has now reverted to one-party state—and that party is the Republicans.”
Born in Alliance, Ohio, on August 4, 1928, Clarke Thomas Reed was the son of Lyman and Kathryn Reynolds Reed. Raised in Caruthersville, Missouri, from the age of six months, Reed was educated in local public schools before attending the Columbia Military Academy in Middle Tennessee, graduating in 1946. Fascinated by flight—one of his great regrets was being too young to fly combat missions in World War II—he joined the Air Force ROTC at the University of Missouri, where he earned a degree in economics in 1950.
Reed moved to Greenville, in the Mississippi Delta, where he became, in the words of The New York Times, “one of the ablest businessmen in the South.” With a boarding-school classmate, Barthell Joseph, he founded the firm of Reed-Joseph International, an innovative agricultural equipment business that also pioneered the American use of Belgian deterrence technology to keep predatory and dangerous birds away from farms and airports.
In 1957 he married Julia Brooks, known as Judy, a native of Nashville and the child of a prominent Belle Meade family. Judy had been “pinned,” or “pre-engaged,” in the manner of the time, to another man (a fellow student at Vanderbilt University) when she met Reed on a visit to Greenville. She was interested, as was he, but he did not move with dispatch until, during a phone call with Judy, he heard a dog barking in the background. When he learned that the Vanderbilt boyfriend had given Judy the puppy, he hung up. “A dog,” Reed thought, “is a serious thing.” And so Reed drove to Nashville and proposed.
The couple would have three children: the writer Julia Evans Reed (1960-2020); Reynolds Crews Reed (1968-2019); and Clarke Thomas Reed, Jr., who, with Mrs. Reed, survives him. Reed is also survived by granddaughters Brooks Henke (Bryan) and Evans Reed; nephew Brooks Corzine (Frannie); and two great grandchildren. The family wishes to acknowledge with deep gratitude Frank Liger, a faithful employee of forty years, and also Tara Stewart for the past four years.
Though he came from a Democratic family, Reed cast his first presidential vote, in 1952, for Dwight D. Eisenhower, and he fought for a politics that projected strength abroad and preserved individual initiative at home.
It was a decades-long campaign that was at once deeply serious and a lot of fun. The Reeds’ house on Bayou Road in Greenville became a kind of conservative salon, a stopping-off point for visiting politicians and journalists, many of whom were brought over to be feted with little to no notice; Judy Reed became expert at whipping up scalloped oysters made with Ritz crackers when her husband called from the airport to announce that, say, Bill Buckley or Dick Cheney was coming over in a few minutes. Explaining his own absences on political chores to his children—Reed long piloted his own small plane—he would say, “Off saving the Free World.”
Reed loved history, politics, the Presbyterian Church, Doe’s steaks, the telephone, lunches at Greenville’s Jim’s Café, good whiskey, National Review, Mississippi wildlife—he was an ardent conservationist—a well-cut suit, and the market philosophy of Adam Smith.
In many ways he willed the Mississippi GOP into being, helping to deliver a unified Southern vote for Richard Nixon over Nelson Rockefeller of New York in 1968—an achievement Nixon rewarded by reportedly directing aides to “clear it with Clarke” when matters of Southern politics and patronage came up.
In 1976, The New York Times wrote that Reed wanted the Republican Party “to be fiscally and socially conservative, but not racist. ‘It would be disastrous if the party split along lines of black and white,’ Reed said. ‘It’s important for us to go the extra mile and extend the long hand to blacks who are seriously interested in participating in the party.’” In a 2014 interview with Ellen B. Meacham of the University of Mississippi, Reed addressed the role of race in the rise of the Southern GOP. The white reaction to President Lyndon B. Johnson’s civil- and voting-rights legislation was, Reed said, “as bad, as you know, as bad as it gets.” Of newly enfranchised Black voters, Reed observed: “We would have liked to see them in the G.O.P., but they gravitated to the left because the left was on the right side of the race issue.”
Reed’s most notable hour upon the national stage came in 1976, the year Ronald Reagan challenged the incumbent President Gerald R. Ford for the Republican presidential nomination. It was a closely fought contest, and the Mississippi delegation, led by Reed, was in the balance as the GOP convention met in Kansas City. Heavily courted by the White House—the Reeds were among the guests at the Fords’ state dinner for Queen Elizabeth II in the bicentennial celebrations leading up to the convention—Reed chose to support the president rather than the more conservative Reagan, a move that was among the factors that enabled Ford to prevail. “By blocking Reagan’s momentum at that convention, Clarke earned the lasting hatred of the far-right leaders of his own party,” recalled Curtis Wilkie.
Yet Reed endured. Into his nineties he would be working the phones, weighing in with Republicans and journalists across the country on issues grand (the tsarism of Vladimir Putin) and granular (he endorsed his first Democrat, in a Mississippi Public Service Commission race). With brown bags of bourbon and wine, Reed hosted a flow of visitors at Doe’s Eat Place in Greenville, a legendary joint accessed through a kitchen that produces memorable steaks and tamales. He could hold forth—at some length—on subjects ranging from the agrarian thought of Andrew Lytle and Robert Penn Warren to the virtues of the large plastic clips that sealed opened but unfinished bags of potato chips to the details of the Alger Hiss perjury trial.
“President, senators, congressmen, and governors depended on this political pioneer for counsel and leadership,” Karl Rove said. “He had a broad smile, a twinkle in his eye and a talent for friendship. He made politics not only consequential but interesting and fun. The light that brightened many a political backroom and convention hall is gone.”
The family will gather for a private burial. Memorial services will be held on Monday, December 16, 2024, at First Presbyterian Church, 1 John Calvin Circle, Greenville, Mississippi, with visitation 10:30 to noon, and services immediately following.
Memorial gifts may be made to a charity of your choice.
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HATTIESBURG — Watch seven Mississippi high school state championship games in three days and here’s what you get: a football overdose. You also get so much drama, so much of what famed TV broadcaster Jim McKay used to call “the thrill of victory and the agony of defeat.”
We witnessed so much of both here on three perfect days for football at The Rock at Southern Miss. We also got a reminder of why Mississippi high school football has produced so many of the greatest football players in history of the sport. We saw a lot of amazing, young talent here in nearly 21 hours of football. But what we also saw was so much passion, so much spirit and so many tears shed of both joy and despair.
Several of the most storied Mississippi high school programs added chapters to their stories. West Point won a 13th state championship, the most of any school in the state. Louisville lost in its bid for a 13th title, losing a state championship game for the first time after 12 previous state championship victories.
Class 7A Tupelo staked a strong claim to being the No. 1 team in the state, winning by two touchdowns over Brandon to finish the season with a perfect 15-0 record. So it was that the Golden Wave added a golden football to its trophy case.
Among the small schools, Class 2A Heidelberg won its first-ever championship, cramming in at least 2,500 fans into its cheering section. Saturday would have been a good day to be a house thief in Heidelberg. Nobody was home. Baldwyn, known far and wide as a basketball town, claimed a first-ever 1A championship in football. Class 3A Choctaw County also won its first championship since Ackerman and Weir consolidated in 2013.
In Class 5A, Grenada, coached by former Mississippi State standout Michael Fair, also won its first state championship, easily defeating previously undefeated Hattiesburg 43-14 and spoiling the night for an estimated 10,000 Hub City fans who packed the east side of stadium.
Each game had its own story, its own heroes. Those stories follow in the order they were played.
Thursday’s first game showcased two of the closest things to high school superstars you’ll see. The victorious Choctaw Chargers from Ackerman featured five-star wide receiver Caleb Cunningham, who signed with Ole Miss after earlier committing to Alabama. The Noxubee Tigers were led by strong-armed four-star quarterback Kamario Taylor, who committed early to Mississippi State, signed with the Bulldogs and could well be the future of the program.
Both are tall, streamlined athletes, who would not look out of place on an NFL sideline. Taylor stands 6-feet 4 inches tall, seems taller and flicks the ball 50 yards down the field seemingly with little effort at all. Cunningham has a Jerry Rice-like body, huge hands and sprinter’s speed.
So who do you think was the MVP of this exciting, down-to-the-last-possession championship game? Why, 5-foot-9, 170-pound junior Choctaw quarterback KJ Cork who would look eye-to-chest with Taylor if the two were face-to-face.
“I’ve always been doubted because of my height,” Cork said shortly after receiving the award for being the game’s most outstanding player. “But I don’t doubt myself and I am surrounded by a lot of guys who can make plays.”
Cork can make plays, too – and did. He ran for 78 yards on just 12 carries and completed 17 of 25 passes for 172 yards and two touchdowns. He spread the ball around. Cunningham caught four passes for 52 yards and a touchdown, and four other receivers combined for 14 catches.
Taylor, pressured hard all night, completed 10 of 23 throws for 151 yards and touchdown, despite several drops and being harassed by relentless Choctaw pass rush.
Choctaw led 20-13 at halftime and increased that lead to 34-19 early in the fourth quarter before Noxubee’s rally fell short.
“We made some history here tonight,” Cork said. “This is the first time we’ve been to a state championship since we consolidated.”
Ackerman and Weir, two schools with rich football histories, combined in 2013. Weir, a 1A powerhouse, had won six state championships. Ackerman won two. Now, Choctaw County has won its first. There might be many more.
Tupelo entered the Thursday night championship game with a perfect, 14-0 record and a tried and true plan. That plan: Dance with the one that brung you. Tupelo’s “one” is a stocky, square-jawed, 220-pound junior running back who wears a zero on his jersey and goes by either Jaeden or J.J. Hill. By game’s end, Brandon might as well have called him Mister as in Mr. Hill.
Hill, already committed to Mississippi State, packs bruising power combined with a lightning quick burst of speed. He shredded the Bulldogs for 224 rushing yards on 34 carries. That was three more yards than Brandon’s normally high-powered offense managed against Tupelo’s sturdy defense. Hill also caught a 37-yard touchdown pass.
Asked about Tupelo’s game plan, Golden Wave offensive coordinator Trey Ward smiled and said, “Feed Zero and throw it just enough to keep the defense honest.”
Hill scored three of Tupelo’s four touchdowns. On the other, clever Tupelo quarterback Noah Gillon, an Appalachian State signee, faked a handoff to Hill, and when the Brandon defense swarmed Hill, Gillon danced into the end zone from 15 yards out.
Despite dominating the line of scrimmage for most of the game, Tupelo led only 21-16 with about a minute to play and faced third down and two yards to go at the Brandon 32. The Golden Wave called a timeout. Asked about it in a postgame interview, Mr. Hill said, “I told them to give me the ball and I’ll end this thing.”
Why wouldn’t they? Hill barreled right up the gut for the game-clinching score. Said Tupelo coach Ty Hardin of Hill, “He’s the best I’ve ever coached, and the best I ever will coach.”
Doesn’t matter if it’s the NFL or Class 1A high school ball, there’s one constant in football: Turnovers kill.
The Baldwyn Bearcats, down 12-0 at halftime and with only 12 yards of total offense, rallied to defeat previously undefeated Simmons 21-20. And, as you might have guessed, the difference was turnovers or, from Baldwyn’s perspective, take-aways.
“We came into this game plus-32 in take-aways,” Baldwyn coach Michael Gray said in a postgame interview.
“Wait, did you say plus-32?” an astounded sports writer asked.
“Yeah,” Gray said. “That’s why we’re here.”
Let the record show Baldwyn finished a 14-1, state championship season a remarkable plus-35 in turnovers. That’s why the Bearcats are state champs. Both teams recovered two opponents’ fumbles, but Baldwyn also intercepted three passes. Baldwyn created all five of its turnovers in the second half, and that truly was the difference in the game.
Senior linebacker/tight end Aiden Stewart led the defensive charge for Baldwyn with 11 tackles, a sack, another tackle for a loss, one fumble recovery and one pass interception, which he returned 24 yards. From his tight end position, he also caught one pass for 25 yards, which was a good chunk of the Bearcats’ 125 yards of total offense. Little wonder he was chosen the game’s most outstanding player.
Gray was asked what adjustments his team made at halftime to rescue what seemed a sinking ship.
“We were just more physical,” Gray said. “I told them they had just 24 minutes left before some of them will start playing basketball and others will start working at their jobs. I told them it was up to them to determine how they would be remembered, and they came out and did what it took. I could not be more proud.”
So it is that Baldwyn, a Hill Country school widely known for its rich basketball history, adds a different shaped ball to its trophy case.
Make that 13 state championships – a baker’s dozen – for the West Point Green Wave. West Point spotted Gautier a 7-0 lead and then took control as West Point teams almost always do.
Some things do change: Long-time assistant Brett Morgan has replaced the highly successful Chris Chambless as head coach of the Green Wave. But most things about West Point football never change. The Green Wave still lines up in a power set and runs right at you. They still block and tackle with textbook precision. Thick West Point offensive linemen still have tree-trunk legs that look as if they live under a squat rack.
“The bar is set high here and we expect to win,” Morgan said. “I am just so thankful to be a part of it. Our guys work. We’ll probably take Monday off and then go back to work on Tuesday, get back in that weight room. It’s just what we do, and we believe in it.”
Senior running back Shamane Clark ran hard for 168 yards and three touchdowns on 26 carries to win Most Outstanding Player honors. But Clark would tell you – and did – that his offensive line often cleared nice paths for him.
“He’s just a West Point football player,” Morgan said of Clark. “He’s waited his turn until his senior year behind some really good backs. I couldn’t be prouder of him. He’s the epitome of what this program is about.”
West Point’s defense, the team’s backbone, faced a huge challenge in Gautier’s shifty quarterback Trey Irving, the Class 5A Player of the Year, who ran for 89 yards and completed 16 of 20 passes for 229 yards and a touchdown.
“He’s a great player,” Morgan said of Irving. “Hats off to him. Hats off to Gautier. But hats off to our defense. They did a great job, just like they’ve done all year.”
A reporter asked Morgan: “Just how much time do your offensive linemen spend under a squat rack?”
“A lot,” he answered. “And they’re going to stay under it from now until next fall. We got tough kids who want to work. We’re tough.”
That part, too, never changes at West Point.
Chase Craft, a 167-pound 10th grader is listed on the Heidelberg roster as a QB/WR/CB/ATH. If you are not into football acronyms, that means quarterback/wide receiver/cornerback/athlete. He is all that, mostly athlete. Saturday in the State 2A championship game, he played safety and returned kicks, too.
He was the game’s MVP two times over (most versatile player and most valuable player), and was voted the game’s most outstanding player. Here’s why: On a perfect-for-football, cool, blue-sky afternoon, he completed 14 of 21 passes for 257 yards and four touchdowns. He also ran 17 times for 66 yards and a touchdown. That’s 323 yards total and five touchdowns if you’re keeping score, and in football we always do.
“I play everything, any position,” Craft said afterward amid the wild celebration on the Heidelberg sideline. “I do whatever my team needs me to do.”
As Craft spoke in front of the east side of The Rock, thousands of Heidelberg fans, nearly all dressed in white, cheered.
“Look at that,” Craft said, gazing. “We have so much support. We had to do it for these fans. This means everything to us because of them.”
The Jasper County town of Heidelberg had a population of 637 in the 2020 Census, but there were easily four or five times that many fans cheering the Oilers.
They had plenty to cheer. After Charleston led 6-0 early, the Oilers scored the game’s final 38 points, limiting Charleston to just 156 yards of total offense, only seven yards in the second half. This was the fifth championship game of the weekend and the first that was one-sided. And even this one was tied 6-6 at halftime before the Craft-led Oilers out-scored the Tigers 32-0 in the second half.
Asked what he told his players at halftime Heidelberg coach Darryl Carter said he couldn’t repeat his halftime message. “I just got on their butt real hard at halftime to be honest,” Carter said. “I told them that you don’t get to do this again, (at least) not with this group.”
It was the first state football championship in Heidelberg history. And since Craft has two years remaining, it might not be the last.
Fourteen-year-old ninth grader Zaiden Jernigan ran 194 yards and two touchdowns on just 14 carries – and lost. That tells you just how exciting and how well-played the 4A championship game was. By contrast, Poplarville sophomore Tylan Keys, an old man at 16, ran for 130 yards and touchdown and returned a kickoff 83 yards for a touchdown – and he won.
We’ll get to those two ridiculously talented young fellows shortly, but first the most pertinent news: This was the first time since the MHSAA when to a playoff system that Louisville has lost a championship game. The Wildcats, one of the premier high school programs, have won 12 state championships and were bidding to tie 5A champion West Point, which won its state record 13th straight championship Friday night. Poplarville had never won one before Saturday.
“Nobody else has been able to do what we did today,” an excited Keys told reporters afterward. “We worked all summer for this. It feels great. Look at us now!”
Keys missed eight entire games and much of several other games with a shoulder injury this season. Nevertheless, Poplarville brought an 11-2 record into the championship game.
Said Poplarville coach Jay Beech: “Other guys stepped up for us when Tylan was out, but he gives us something extra, that break-away ability you saw tonight. You need to a guy like him to win a state championship.”
Keys deflected credit to his line. “With an O-line like we have, my job was easy,” he said.
And Keys said he received inspiration from an unusual source, the star running back on the other team. Jernigan sprinted 96 yards for a first quarter touchdown before Keys broke his 87-yard kickoff return a few minutes later.
“He’s something,” Keys said of Jernigan. “I fed off him the whole game. He made me run harder. I was trying to match him.”
One observation: Probably the reason Louisville, which finished 13-2, loses so rarely is because the Wildcats hate to lose so much. At game’s end when a last-ditch Louisville pass fell incomplete and the final second ticked off, Wildcats players were strewn all over the field, most sobbing, some inconsolably. There were several touching scenes with Poplarville players trying to console the Wildcats.
The guess here is that we might see these two teams – and those two running backs – play for another championship in the near future.
That Grenada knocked off previously perfect Hattiesburg in its hometown wasn’t shocking, but the final score was. Grenada, which finished 14-1, spotted the Tigers a 6-0 lead and then proceeded to dominate.
This was the Chargers’ second trip to the Pine Belt this year and there’s a story there. Way back in August, in only its second game, Grenada came down to the Hattiesburg suburb of Oak Grove. Final score: Oak Grove 38, Grenada 24.
“I thought that trip to Oak Grove made our team,” Grenada coach Michael Fair said. “We kind of did that on purpose. We knew the state championship was going to be down this way. We knew Oak Grove was going to be really good and they were. The score wasn’t what we wanted but we got better from it and we never looked back.”
A couple weeks after Oak Grove defeated Grenada, Hattiesburg beat Oak Grove 27-21. Just goes to show, what happens in August and September doesn’t always translate to what will happen in the first week of December. Against Hattiesburg, Grenada controlled the line of scrimmage, got the game’s only turnover and clearly won the kicking game. That’s a good recipe for victory.
Grenada’s Mccaleb Taylor carried 29 times for 211 yards and four touchdowns. He ran through some big holes, but he also ran over and around many Hattiesburg defenders. He was helped immensely by offensive linemen who blocked as their head coach once did.
“I know every coach in the state who has good back thinks his is the best in the state, but I really believe Mccaleb is the best back in the state,” Fair said. “This kid sees heavy boxes every Friday night and he just makes plays. I just thought he took over tonight.”
The defeat ended a storybook season for Hattiesburg with at least 10,000 purple- and gold-clad fans jammed into the lower concourse on the east side The Rock.
“We’ve had unbelievable support this year,” Hattiesburg coach Tony Vance said. “Our fans packed it tonight; we just couldn’t uphold our end of the bargain.”
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