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Ruggedly handsome Bill Smith weighed 230 pounds and bench pressed 440 when he punted for Ole Miss in the mid-1980s. Punters aren’t often known for muscle, but Smith, a two-time All American, was one of the strongest Rebels.

Indeed, he was a college punter with the physique of an NFL linebacker. “Bill Smith was built like a Greek god. He might have been the strongest player on the team,” says Tim Bell, a student manager at the time.

In 1985, Smith, strictly a punter, was voted Ole Miss football MVP. How many times does that happen? A punter? MVP? And yet Smith, who came to Ole Miss from Little Rock, Ark, never kicked a single punt in the NFL.

When author Neil White and I were researching “The Mississippi Football Book,” Smith’s numbers jumped off the pages at us. He still holds the Southeastern Conference record for longest punt at 92 yards. He holds the NCAA record for most consecutive games with a punt of more than 50 yards at 32. In pregame warmups, he once booted a punt from the goal line at one end of Vaught-Hemingway Stadium that hit an Arkansas State player in the helmet at the other end of the field, 98 yards away. How in the world, White and I asked one another, did a punter of such astonishing ability not make a living in pro football? Has to be a story there, we surmised.

We surmised correctly. Pour yourself another cup of coffee. You will not believe where this story is headed.

Smith suffered a foot injury in training camp with the Green Bay Packers in 1987. The Pack cut him, and he signed on with the Tampa Bay Bucs. They cut him, too. His agent, a young Jimmy Sexton, just getting started in the business, lined up another tryout with the New England Patriots.

Smith declined. “I was tired of football,” he says all these years later. “I was ready to get on with the real world.” 

As it turns out, Smith’s real world was about to turn surreal.

Smith, you see, had taken a job with Union Pacific Railroad in Dallas. Smith was running several miles a day at the time and working out in the gym. He lost 30 pounds, down to 200. His face became more lean and chiseled. His high cheekbones became more defined. And, as Smith put it, “My abs had abs.”

He was walking through the St. Louis airport when a man, who turned out to be a Los Angeles fashion photographer, stopped him and asked if he had ever thought about modeling. “You’ve got the look,” the guy said. “You ought to think about it.”

Another guy approached him in his Dallas gym asking if he had ever modeled. That guy knew a modeling agent and urged Smith to give the agent a call. 

“What the heck,” Smith thought, and he called and set up a meeting. Long story short: The agent signed him on the spot.

That led to a trip to New York where Wilhelmina, one of the world’s most prominent modeling agencies, wanted to hire him full-time. Smith wasn’t so sure about that. He had a good job with the railroad. He was comfortable. But he did bring it up to his railroad boss, who told him, “You’ll always have a job here, but this opportunity seems to good to pass up. You’ve got give it a shot.”

Smith did. And the work – and the money – began to pour in.

“I spent my time shuttling back and forth between New York and Milan, and from Milan, I got work all over Europe,” Smith said. “I was doing runway modeling in New York and across Europe.”

He modeled men’s clothing. He posed for magazine covers for Men’s Health and Men’s Journal. He did photo shoots for cologne, for men’s suits, blue jeans, and lots of other apparel for men.

“I remember the first time I was walking down the street and saw myself in a big advertisement on the side of a bus. That stopped me dead in my tracks. Man, that was wild,” Smith said.

But that’s not the wildest.

At one point, his agency hooked him up with Harlequin, the publishing company that specializes in romance novels written primarily for women. Smith became the de factor cover boy for Harlequin.

“I posed for over 400 Harlequin book covers,” Smith said. “Would have been more but all those were done in New York and I was spending so much time in Europe.”

An illustrator would come up with an idea for the cover. Smith, usually bare-chested, and a female model would then pose for photos, and, finally, an artist would do a cover illustration from the photos.

In 2001, tired of living out of suitcases and constantly jetting across oceans and continents, Smith retired from modeling and planned on moving back to Dallas. But then he visited his sister in Denver, fell in love with the Rocky Mountains and moved there. He found a good job in mortgage lending, met his future wife and they have raised a son. 

At 58, Smith, an Ole Miss M Club Hall of Famer, remains a diehard Rebel fan, watches all the Rebels games on TV and returns to Oxford for football weekends at least once.a season. He remains a workout junkie, often biking 50 miles at a time. He said he feels like he is 58 going on 30.

“I would say I have lived an interesting life,” Smith said, making it clear he can’t wait to live the rest of it.

Which did he enjoy most: football or modeling?

“Hard to choose one over the other,” he answered. “I just feel so blessed to have done both.”

The post What became of Ole Miss All American punter Bill Smith? So glad you asked. appeared first on Mississippi Today.

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Sept. 28, 1868

A massacre took place in Opelousas, Louisiana, one of the worst outbreaks of violence during Reconstruction. When some Black Americans attempted to join the Democratic Party, the Knights of the White Camelia (a white supremacist organization) rushed in to drive them out. 

School teacher Emerson Bentley was one of the few white Republicans in the region. He had come to Louisiana to help Black Americans vote and find jobs. The 18-year-old was also an editor for the Republican newspaper, The St. Landry Progress. 

Displeased by their depiction, a mob severely beat Bentley. A group of Black Americans moved to rescue him, not knowing that he had already escaped. Of the 29 black men captured by the mob, 27 of them were killed, and the bloodshed continued for weeks. The death toll reached 250, the vast majority of them Black Americans. 

Through the Opelousas Massacre and similar acts of violence, “lynching became routinized in Louisiana, a systematic way by which whites sought to assert white supremacy in response to African-American resistance,” historian Michael Pfeifer told Smithsonian magazine. The years following Reconstruction led to a vicious wave of lynchings, not only in the South, but across the U.S.

The post On this day in 1868 appeared first on Mississippi Today.

While Mississippians ride down the highway or stream their favorite TV show, they might spot a jarring digital ad with Republican Gov. Tate Reeves’s face connected to an obviously fake body sporting a set of chiseled six-pack abs.

“Show us your six-pack, Tate,” the TV ad’s narrator said. “Our tax dollars paid for it.” 

The message is a reference to Reeves’ friend and former fitness trainer, Paul Lacoste, who received over $1 million in federal welfare funds to promote a fitness program that state investigators believe he should have never received.

READ MORE: Gov. Tate Reeves inspired welfare payment targeted in civil suit, texts show

The first-term governor denies having any role in steering the welfare dollars toward Lacoste, who is also a defendant in an ongoing civil lawsuit filed by the state to claw back the misspent welfare dollars.

The clearly altered image may leave a comical and indelible impression on viewers, but the underlying tone and strategy are larger than the photoshopped image and message. 

The group responsible for the advertisement — the first apparent independent ad campaign of the 2023 governor’s race — is the New Southern Majority Independent Expenditure PAC, an affiliate of the Southern Poverty Law Center Action Fund. The group has invested more than $112,000 in the statewide election this year, making it one of the first outside groups to run ads in the Mississippi governor’s race. 

Brandon Jones, a former Democratic Mississippi lawmaker and the director of political campaigns for the SPLC, told Mississippi Today that the legal nonprofit recently decided to launch a PAC in the Deep South to further the organization’s goals of promoting policies that help marginalized communities. 

“We’ve just increasingly come to realize that it didn’t matter how good we were at filing lawsuits or how good we were at lobbying … if the elected officials on the other side of that were immovable, we were committing political malpractice by not engaging with that part of the equation,” Jones said. 

Former Democratic U.S. Sen. Doug Jones of Alabama, no relation to Brandon Jones, also serves on the board for the PAC to guide the leaders on how it can support progressive candidates in Southern states. 

Since its inception last year, the group has largely focused on local races such as school boards and state prosecutors, but it opted to focus on Mississippi’s gubernatorial race this year, according to Brandon Jones, because it believes the crucial election signals a crossroad for the Magnolia State. 

“From our perspective, Gov. Reeves is the perfect example of why groups like ours exist,” Jones said. “He’s done nothing to improve the lives of people who desperately need their government to perform.” 

The action fund and its affiliate PAC cannot coordinate their strategies with a particular candidate, but they can run ads to oppose a particular candidate or issue, such as Reeves and the state’s welfare scandal.

The PAC launched a website, tanftate.com, to serve as a central hub for its ads and a source of information on how it believes the first-term governor is connected to the scandal, the group’s central focus so far.

Jones said the organization is creating new ads and plans to use them to interact with voters through the date of the statewide election. Reeves will compete against Democratic nominee Brandon Presley in the general election on Nov. 7. 

The post Who’s behind the ‘TANF Tate’ TV and billboard ads? appeared first on Mississippi Today.

For the first time in Mississippi’s history, a runoff election could determine the outcome of the governor’s race.

For more than a century, the state’s 1890 constitution required candidates for statewide office to accomplish two things to be seated: receive a majority of the votes cast in the election and win a majority of the state’s individual House districts.

If no candidate cleared both hurdles, the race was thrown to the state House of Representatives, where House members were under no obligation to vote according to the wishes of their constituents.

The authors of the 133-year-old constitution wrote the provision during the Jim Crow era with the intention of making it harder for Black candidates to win elected office.

But in 2020, after a federal judge strongly suggested the state change the constitutional provision, a majority of state lawmakers and the state’s voters decided to remove it for good.

READ MORE: For the first time in state history, voters remove Jim Crow provision from Mississippi Constitution

When Mississippians voted to scrap the provision in 2020, they also replaced it with the requirement that a candidate must earn only a majority of the votes cast to be elected. And now, if no candidate gets 50% of the vote on Election Day, the top two vote-getters move to a runoff election decided by voters.

This year, the first major statewide election cycle since the 2020 constitutional change, a runoff is possible for the current governor’s race.

Republican incumbent Gov. Tate Reeves is running for reelection, and he faces a strong challenge from Democrat Brandon Presley. But Gwendolyn Gray, an independent candidate, will also appear as a third option on the ballot alongside the two major party candidates. 

Gray, a resident of the north Mississippi town of Sturgis, is a political newcomer. In her first interview of 2023, she told Mississippi Today this week that she realizes it will be next to impossible for her to win the governor’s race, and she’s concerned about the prospect of a runoff election. 

Instead, the 58-year-old candidate said she’s planning to meet with her supporters next month and tell them which type of candidate they should vote, though she remained cryptic about the details of the future meeting.

“I want to tell them how important it is for them to vote and vote their conscience,” Gray said of her supporters. “I will definitely tell them, at this point, it is very difficult for me to win. I do not want to stop anyone else from winning.” 

Election candidates, including third-party challengers, typically try to convince voters to elect them to public office. But Gray, instead, appears to be taking a different approach to campaigning.

Making matters even more curious, Gray said in the interview that she recently tried reaching out to one of the two candidates running for governor to share some of her concerns, but she received no response. 

She declined to say which of the two candidates she tried to contact or what she specifically planned to discuss with them.

“I want some of my issues to be a concern of theirs,” Gray said.

If Gray’s presence on the Nov. 7 ballot triggers a runoff, it would be a major shakeup in the race for who occupies the Governor’s Mansion for the next four years.

Four years ago, Reeves won a first term as governor with just 52.2% of the popular vote — a few thousands votes more than the 50% threshold he’d need to overcome in 2023. And this year, several public polls show that Reeves, who has battled popularity problems during his first term as governor, is hovering around the 50% mark.

An August Mississippi Today/Siena College poll showed Reeves leading Presley by 52% to 41%, but no other public poll released this year has shown Reeves hitting 50%.

Presley, as the underdog, would undoubtedly attempt to capitalize on the extra three weeks of campaigning and use it as an opportunity to showcase a wounded incumbent to build a case that donors should contribute more money to his race. 

And if Reeves, a Republican in a conservative Deep South state, cannot garner an outright majority of the votes cast on the first ballot, it could stand to weaken his political power and force him to burn through more money in his lofty campaign account.

Marvin King, an associate professor of political science at the University of Mississippi, told Mississippi Today that if the race does head to a runoff, it would still likely benefit Reeves instead of Presley.

“A runoff tends to skew toward older voters and more reliable voters, and those voters in this state tend to be Republican,” King said. 

And while King believes a runoff would be a good opportunity for Presley to draw down even more fundraising dollars, he believes conservative organizations such as the Republican Governors Association would be willing spend more money to protect a Republican governor in Mississippi than progressive organizations would. 

“Brandon Presley needs a knockout because because Gov. Reeves has a money advantage,” King said. 

Absentee voting is currently underway for the election between the three candidates, and the general election will take place on Nov. 7. If no candidate receives a majority of the votes cast, a runoff election will happen on Nov. 28 — the Tuesday after Thanksgiving.

READ MORE: Mississippi Today’s 2023 Voter Guide

The post Could the 2023 governor’s race be decided by a runoff? For the first time in state history, it’s possible. appeared first on Mississippi Today.

Mississippi’s suicide rate in 2021 reached its highest level in 20 years, based on the most recent data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention Web-based Injury Statistics Query and Reporting System.

Mississippi’s age-adjusted suicide death rate for 2021 – the rate that controls for differences in population age distribution – was 16.18 deaths per 100,000 people compared to the national rate of 14.04. 

“These are someone’s loved ones. Someone’s child. Someone’s sibling. Someone’s spouse or partner,” Meghan Goldbeck, executive director of the Louisiana and Mississippi Chapters of the American Foundation for Suicide Prevention, told Mississippi Today. “Suicide just devastates families, and it’s really horrible.” 

The state’s rates remained below 15 deaths from 2016 to 2020. The lowest rate for the state was in 2016 at 12.68, slightly below the national rate of 13.46.

Based on the CDC data, 480 Mississippians took their own lives in 2021 an increase from 410 in 2020. Deaths by suicide increased nationwide, as well, with over 48,000 people taking their lives in 2021 compared to nearly 46,000 the previous year. 

Suicide deaths in the state totaled 10,007 years of potential life lost in 2021, according to the CDC. 

“In our state, we know we are not immune to the challenges faced by people who wrestle with thoughts of suicide. Yet, we also know we are a community that honors the values of compassion, resilience and the unshakeable belief in brighter tomorrows,” Wendy Bailey, executive director of the Mississippi Department of Mental Health, told Mississippi Today. 

Bailey said the department has a suicide prevention training initiative called “Shatter the Silence.” Training is offered to youth, older adults, military, law enforcement and first responders, postpartum mothers, faith-based youth, faith-based adults, correction officers and general adults.

Trainings vary from topics about stigma related to mental illness, resources to help someone with a mental illness, warning signs for suicide, and what to and not to do when someone has suicidal thoughts. 

Over 10,000 people were trained in Shatter the Silence during fiscal year 2023, with two-thirds of participants involved in the youth training. 

Bailey said the department wants to bring suicide discussions and resources to the forefront to provide hope for those impacted, for “hope is the lifeline that can save lives.”

Based on separate data from 2020, more than half of Mississippians who died by suicide used firearms, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention Fatal Injury and Violence Data. 

Firearms accounted for more than 70% of all suicide deaths across various age groups in the state. The next most common methods were suffocation (including hanging) at about 23% and poisoning (including drug overdose) at nearly 5%.

Mississippians aged 30-34 had the highest numbers of suicides at 47 in 2020. Forty-six people aged 25-29 died by suicide.   

According to the CDC’s top 10 Leading Causes of Death for 2020, deaths by suicide in Mississippi were the: 

• Third leading cause of death for people ages 15-24 with nearly 75% of deaths by firearms. 

• Third leading cause of death for people ages 25-34 with almost three-fifths of deaths resulting in fatalities by firearms.

• Sixth leading cause of death for people ages 35-44 with almost 70% of deaths due to firearms. 

• Eighth leading cause of death for people ages 45-54 with over half of suicide deaths resulting in firearms. 

Goldbeck said the American Foundation for Suicide Prevention and its chapter in Mississippi aim to spread suicide prevention education on risk factors and warning signs across the state.  

She said it is necessary to reach people in all demographics because “suicide affects every single on of us.”

In the state, Black individuals’ suicide numbers slightly increased from 70 in 2019 to 73 in 2020. White people experienced a drop from 360 to 333 deaths in 2020.

For American Indians/Alaskan Natives and Asains, the data was recognized as “unstable values,” meaning the number of deaths was less than 20.

“I think we are moving toward a society that is expanding their knowledge about mental health, but it’s really going to take the community coming together for each other,” Goldbeck said.

From the Mississippi Department of Mental Health: If you or someone you love is having thoughts of suicide or mental distress, call or text 988, or chat online at 988lifeline.org. Communications are confidential, and a trained counselor can connect you to resources.

The post State’s suicide rate climbed to 20-year high – ‘these are someone’s loved ones’ appeared first on Mississippi Today.

It was a dark Saturday for Mississippi’s Big School football teams. Ole Miss, State and Southern Miss all lost, but Todd Cooley’s Delta State Statesmen won again to move to 4-0, headed into the meat of their Gulf South Conference schedule. Patrick Shegog leads the way for the high scoring Statesmen.

Stream all episodes here.

The post Podcast: Delta State is 4-0, and Coach Todd Cooley joins the podcast. appeared first on Mississippi Today.

A federal judge ruled late last week that Southaven, Horn Lake and some unincorporated parts of DeSoto County have eight years to redirect their wastewater after relying on Memphis for nearly 50 years.

The sections of DeSoto County, represented by the Horn Lake Creek Basin Interceptor Sewer District, have argued with Memphis officials for years over when Memphis could stop treating the north Mississippi suburbs’ wastewater. Memphis has treated the Mississippi towns’ sewage since 1975.

Memphis notified the sewer district in 2018 that it wanted to end the relationship so it could focus resources on its own residents. Since then, the two sides have battled in court over how much longer the sewer district could send sewage to Memphis before building its own new infrastructure, which the district estimates costing $230 million.

The district’s consulting engineer, Tim Verner, said it would take a minimum of eight to 10 years for it to build its own sewer treatment facility, but could take up to 13 years if the district runs into permitting issues, according to court filings.

U.S. District Judge Mark Norris, in his ruling last Friday, explained that he was giving the sewer district only eight years because it’s been five years since Memphis first said that it would not renew the contract.

Keith Turner, an attorney for the sewer district, told Mississippi Today that there are still some obstacles that need addressing.

“As we’ve told the court, there are a lot of variables that are out of our control,” Turner said.

He listed funding as the primary concern. In June, Southaven Mayor Darren Musselwhite told Mississippi Today that the district plans to get about half of the $230 million from state and federal funding, and then procure the rest of the funds from bonds and low-interest loans. Turner also said that acquiring property and easements to run new sewer lines through could also be a challenge.

The new sewer system, which would be operated under the DeSoto County Regional Utility Authority, would require significant expansions to the already-existing Johnson Creek Wastewater Treatment Facility.

Norris’ ruling also requires the sewer district to increase its rates. Under the previous agreement, the district only pays Memphis 96 cents per 1,000 gallons. Norris sided with Memphis officials, who argued that the DeSoto County towns should pay the wholesale $3.32 per 1,000 gallon rate that other suburbs — such as Collierville, Lakeland, and Millington — pay. The judge’s order gradually increases the rates for the DeSoto County customers until the sewer district disconnects from Memphis’s infrastructure.

The post Judge gives DeSoto County areas eight years to move off Memphis’ sewer system appeared first on Mississippi Today.

Democratic gubernatorial candidate Brandon Presley called for fully funding public schools and increasing teacher pay as he laid out his education policy priorities in a Monday town hall.

Presley, who is challenging Republican incumbent Gov. Tate Reeves in the November election, laid out his proposals in a Jackson town hall hosted Monday evening by the Mississippi Association of Educators. 

Presley, who was endorsed by the association in June, and MAE President Erica Jones spoke to an audience of about 25 people, answering questions about teacher retention, equity in school funding and their goals for education in Mississippi. 

“The most important thing we can do as a state is educate our children,” Presley said. “Not only for their wellbeing, but for economic development, for our workforce and for moving our state forward.”

Here are some of the major issues Presley covered:

• Fully funding public schools: Presley’s top proposal of the night was fully funding public schools, as he said it would help address many of the other issues schools face. The public school funding formula, known as the Mississippi Adequate Education Program, was established by the Legislature in 1997 and has been consistently underfunded every year since 2008. There was a push to fully fund the formula during the legislative session this spring, but it did not prevail. 
• Community schools: Presley repeatedly discussed his desire to see more districts in the state adopt wraparound services offered at schools in a model known as “community schools.” The services can include health care, a school-based food pantry, or after-school programs depending on the needs of the community. Presley said this model prioritizes a local community solving its own problems, but added he would be open to state funding to help implement these new programs. 
• Teacher pay and retention: Presley floated multiple policy proposals regarding teachers including incentivizing experienced teachers to stay in the classroom longer to mentor new teachers, giving bonuses to teachers who work in areas with teacher shortages, and increasing teacher pay across the board. Presley said teachers have not been able to feel the impact of the historic teacher pay raise in 2022 because of health insurance costs. Other reports have also linked the diminishing of the pay raise to record inflation. 
• School infrastructure: Presley decried the state of school buildings in Mississippi, saying the state needs to assemble a list of the oldest school buildings and appropriate a grant fund each year that goes towards renovating or replacing all of them. The Legislature created a program with a similar aim in 2022, but made the program a loan instead of a grant and did not include any provisions that required prioritizing the state’s oldest buildings first. 
• Appointments to the State Board of Education: Presley said all of his appointments to the State Board of Education, the governing body that oversees actions taken by the Mississippi Department of Education, would either be public school teachers or the parents of public school students. 

The post Brandon Presley to teachers: educating Mississippi children is ‘the most important thing’ appeared first on Mississippi Today.

The Leflore County Board of Supervisors, almost two weeks after rejecting Greenwood Leflore Hospital’s request to draw $1 million from its $10 million line of credit, approved giving the hospital $3 million on Monday night.

The vote was unanimous, according to The Greenwood Commonwealth.

The money should be enough to keep the hospital, which has long financially struggled, open until next year, by which time it expects to hear a decision on its application to become a critical access hospital. The federal designation would allow the hospital to be reimbursed at a higher rate from Medicare.

Interim CEO Gary Marchand said the $10 million line of credit was established earlier this year in order to pay one of the hospital’s two monthly payrolls until it hears a final decision about its application. It costs about $2 million to pay the hospital’s nearly 600 employees every month.

The hospital is currently losing about $1 million a month, Marchand said. 

The board approved the hospital’s first two requests earlier this year, which totaled $4.3 million, but denied its request on Sept. 13. Their decision came after the hospital’s application to become a critical access hospital was denied by the regional Centers for Medicaid and Medicare Services office in Atlanta, citing the hospital’s proximity to other hospitals. 

The hospital has long hinged its survival on achieving critical access designation. Critical access hospitals must be located at least 35 miles from another hospital — Greenwood’s nearest is just 28 miles away in Indianola. 

However, Marchand maintains that decision was expected, and that the hospital still expects approval on the federal level. 

After the board’s last vote, hospital leadership said it was unclear how they were going to make payroll. Marchand, in a recent interview with Mississippi Today, walked the comment back and said the hospital would prioritize paying its employees, even if it meant forgoing other needs. 

According to the newspaper’s report, board president Reginald Moore, who voted to deny the hospital’s previous request, changed his vote to ensure the hospital’s employees were paid. 

Moore previously told Mississippi Today he’d like to see a more comprehensive plan that ensures the hospital’s survival, regardless of its critical access status. 

“We’re up against the clock right now,” he said. “Come January 2024, if we’re turned down again, then what’s the alternative?”

The post County supervisors reverse course, give $3 million to Greenwood Leflore Hospital appeared first on Mississippi Today.