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The post Marshall Ramsey: Valentine appeared first on Mississippi Today.

Mississippi’s two largest universities announced modified mask mandates late Friday afternoon.

Masks are now optional at University of Mississippi and Mississippi State University except in healthcare and instructional settings, such as classrooms, labs and studios. UM cited updated guidance from the Mississippi Department of Health, as well as declining metrics such as case numbers and positivity rates, as factors in the adjusted protocol.

Public relations officers for the state’s six other universities told Mississippi Today that their schools are continuing to require masks indoors.

UM and MSU announced the modified requirements about a week after MSDH updated its guidance for colleges and universities on Feb. 7 to new recommendations from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The CDC’s updated guidance “recommends indoor masking in public for everyone in areas of substantial or high transmission” for colleges and universities.

Though cases are declining, Lafayette and Oktibbeha counties — where UM and MSU are located — continue to see a high level of community transmission, as does the entire state of Mississippi, according to the CDC.

Previously, MSDH required the universities to mandate that masks in indoor campus settings when community transmission in a county is substantial or high. That guidance was adopted during the delta wave, said Liz Sharlot, MSDH’s communications director.

MSDH briefed the Institutions of Higher Learning on the new guidance last week, Sharlot said. So far, UM and MSU are the only public universities to loosen their mask mandates. Delta State University’s administration is meeting this week to review its COVID protocol, said Brittany Davis-Green, the university’s communications director.

At UM, faculty and staff can “require face coverings for visits to their private offices,” Chancellor Glenn Boyce wrote in an email to students, faculty and staff. Boyce wrote that masks will not be required in the following on-campus spaces: residence halls, libraries, dining facilities, the student union, recreation facilities, retail spaces, offices, or conference rooms.

In its press release, MSU said its COVID-19 task force will re-evaluate those metrics on a weekly basis.

“The university’s goal is to return to normal campus operations as soon as possible,” wrote Sid Salter, MSU’s director of public affairs.

The post University of Mississippi, Mississippi State drop mask mandates appeared first on Mississippi Today.

Mississippi’s Republican national committeemen and committeewoman were divided on Friday’s RNC vote to formally censure Republican U.S. Reps. Liz Cheney of Wyoming and Adam Kinzinger of Illinois for serving on a House committee investigating the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol by a pro-Trump mob.

Mississippi RNC Committeeman Henry Barbour and Committeewoman Jeanne Luckey were among a minority of RNC members voting against the resolution, which accused the two House Republicans of participating in a “Democrat-led persecution of ordinary citizens who engaged in legitimate political discourse.”

State GOP Chairman Frank Bordeaux voted for the censure. Luckey was unable to attend the meeting in Salt Lake City last week, and her vote was cast by proxy by Barbour, who said he consulted with her before the vote. The resolution was passed Friday by a voice vote.

Barbour over the weekend told the Washington Post he voted no, and voiced frustration that “resolutions shooting at other Republicans are never going to be helpful.”

Back home on Monday, Barbour told Mississippi Today: “I see the whole thing as a great distraction to 2022 and winning elections, and it’s not the RNC’s job to be going after Republicans. The original resolution was to purge them — not a great way to grow a political party.”

But Bordeaux said he voted in favor of the resolution out of frustration that the Democrat-led House committee is turning the investigation “into a political fiasco rather than an investigation.”

“There were parts of the resolution I did not like,” Bordeaux said. “But I felt like there needed to be a message sent. January 6 is a serious issue, and should not be turned into a partisan issue.”

READ MORE: Rep. Bennie Thompson tapped to lead committee investigating Jan. 6 riot

Both Bordeaux and Barbour criticized the House committee — led by Mississippi U.S. Rep. Bennie Thompson — for “subpoenaing people who weren’t even involved” in the Jan. 6 attack.

While the issue appears to be causing a rift among Republicans in Washington, Bordeaux and Barbour said there are no ill feelings among the state’s RNC delegation over the vote.

“I do understand why there is some anger in the party at Kinzinger and Chaney and over some of the tactics of the House committee,” Barbour said.

READ MORE: Will Rep. Bennie Thompson’s Jan. 6 committee subpoena Trump? “Nobody’s off limits.”

The post Mississippi RNC delegation splits on vote to censure Cheney, Kinzinger for serving on Jan. 6 committee appeared first on Mississippi Today.

Note: This analysis first published in Mississippi Today’s weekly legislative newsletter. Subscribe to our free newsletter for exclusive early access to weekly analyses.

Sometimes Mississippi Republicans introduce a bill so questionable that the most far-right fringes of their own party agree with the staunchest liberal Democrats in the state.

That rarity occurred last week regarding a Senate bill that would allow the state’s two major parties to set their own filing fees for statewide and legislative candidates who want to run for office. For decades, lawmakers have written those appropriately modest fees into state law, largely taking the politics out of the process.

But 30 Republican senators voted on Feb. 9 to make Mississippi just the fourth state in the nation to allow the major political parties to set those fees themselves.

If the bill passes and the Mississippi parties mirror their counterparts in those other three states, incumbents would be more protected from primary challengers, the bank accounts of both major parties would be a lot more flush, and many Mississippians who want to run for office would be unable to afford it.

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Why would lawmakers pass a bill that could make it difficult for Mississippians to run for office? That was the first question asked last week of Sen. Joey Fillingane, the Republican who defended it on the Senate floor.

“When there’s little or no cost to running for office and putting your name on the ballot, it creates the opportunity for lots of mischief,” Fillingane said on the Senate floor, among the most public forums in the state. “… A lot of people just want to make fun of the system and just sort of, you know, not be serious about running for office. It would cause problems for those who are serious about running for office.”

Apparently feeling like he hadn’t admitted enough flaws with the bill, Fillingane — unprompted — continued his telling defense of the bill.

“You had a situation not too long ago where a truck driver put his name on the ballot, didn’t campaign, didn’t really run. He was running his 18-wheeler truck. He ended up winning a major party primary for a major office in Mississippi. I think you could argue that was a direct result of having extremely low filing fees in that particular race.”

Fillingane, of course, was referencing Robert Gray, who in 2015 won the Democratic nomination for governor. His summary of Gray’s unlikely primary victory was pretty accurate: Gray knew little about the political process, hadn’t run any real public campaign at all, and even his own mother didn’t know he was running.

But despite all that, Gray had what the vast majority of Mississippians have: An intense disdain for how elected officials have operated in Jackson for many years, and a desire to try to make their home state better. So the truck driver paid what was then a $300 filing fee to the state Democratic Party to put his name on the ballot. A few weeks later, he won the primary, and for the next several weeks, he had a massive platform to share his ideas for Mississippi. For better or worse, that’s American democracy.

In 2016, lawmakers increased the Mississippi filing fees for statewide and legislative races. Today, Mississippi Republicans or Democrats who want to run for office are between $250 and $1,000. State senators and state representatives must pay their parties $250 (up from the $15 filing fee before the 2016 change was passed).

The only three U.S. states that have given the power to set filing fees to their state parties are Alabama, Arkansas and Delaware. Here are the filing fees in those states:

• Alabama state senator: $925.14 for both major parties
• Alabama state representative: $925.14 for both major parties
• Arkansas state senator: $7,500 for Republicans, $4,500 for Democrats
• Arkansas state representative: $3,000 for Republicans, $3,000 for Democrats
• Delaware state senator: $945 for both major parties
• Delaware state representative: $945 for both major parties

All of these costs are much higher than Mississippi’s $250 across-the-board filing fees for state lawmakers. And running for statewide offices in Mississippi and those other states costs even more than the totals listed above.

When pressed last week on the Senate floor whether there were ulterior motives behind the Mississippi bill, Fillingane deflected. But by the end of the debate, ultra-conservative Republicans and Democrats were in agreement: The bill seemed sketchy, and it was a bad piece of legislation.

“To me, I think anybody who wants to run for office ought to be able to run for office,” said Sen. Angela Hill, the conservative Republican firebrand who is regularly chastised by establishment Republicans. “It shouldn’t be cost prohibitive for them to do it, and I don’t care what their reason is for running.”

To that point, Fillingane invoked the names of Vladimir Putin and Communist Russia, decrying governments that try to control every layer of a political process. Senate Republicans and Democrats alike jeered and booed Fillingane on the floor for making that comparison.

“Do you think the people back home should be worried we’re passing a law to help raise the fee to protect incumbency?” asked Sen. Rod Hickman, a freshman Democrat from Macon who was elected mid-term in November 2021. “From the small research I’ve done, states that have gone to this model go very high (with filing fees)… I think this is a bad bill.”

To that point, Fillingane replied: “People can go to the other party to run if they want to be upset about that.”

The bill, if passed by the House in coming weeks, would certainly raise money for both major parties. During floor debate, Sen. David Blount, a Jackson Democrat, said he spoke with Republican Party Chairman Frank Bordeaux, Gov. Tate Reeves’ hand-picked party chairman who said he pushed the bill because it would help the party raise money.

Political fundraising aside, the high fees could only stand to discourage most Mississippians from running for office, from sharing ideas about how they could better serve the state and help it grow — taking advantage of true American democracy.

Meanwhile, this bill can be added to the growing list of reasons most Mississippians feel that their elected officials aren’t really focused on problems that need to be solved.

The post Want to run for office in Mississippi? Get your checkbook out. appeared first on Mississippi Today.

When she found out she was pregnant in late 2020, Erin Zanza of Hattiesburg thought she’d wait until after she gave birth to be vaccinated against COVID-19. The vaccines weren’t widely available yet, and the clinical trials that resulted in their emergency use authorization had not included pregnant women. 

Waiting until her son was born would prevent any risks to him in utero, and she could still pass on antibodies through her breast milk after she was vaccinated, she thought.

Zanza’s attitude changed as the delta variant swept across Mississippi last summer. Hospitals and their intensive care units were overflowing with patients, some of whom were pregnant and died, lost their babies or both. One of those mothers was a close friend of Zanza’s.

“It was just really eye opening that this perfectly healthy mom and baby were gone because of it,” Zanza said. 

So Zanza went to her doctor, who walked her through the science of how the vaccine works. She explained that only the antibodies Zanza was producing would reach her baby through the placenta, not any vaccine material. She also consulted her brother, a doctor and father of small children, who wholeheartedly encouraged Zanzsa to get vaccinated. 

So, 37 weeks into her pregnancy, she received her first dose. For the first 24 hours after getting the shot, Zanza’s hand stayed glued to her stomach.

“I was so scared that maybe I’d made the wrong decision and something was going to happen,” Zanza said.

Ultimately, Zanza’s baby boy, Drew, was born happy and healthy, just a few weeks later. Recently, Zanza and Drew, now five months old, were infected with the omicron variant. Thankfully, they both had mild cases and recovered quickly.

“I truly believe it’s because I had the vaccine and had given him some immunity,” Zanza said.

Zanza also recalled how things went differently for a close friend of hers who is against vaccines. It’s one of those areas of disagreement they avoided discussing, and Zanza didn’t tell her that she’d been vaccinated until a few weeks after Drew was born. That friend also recently caught COVID-19 and was bedridden for weeks. 

Zanza’s position is one thousands of Mississippi women have found themselves in over the past year. On top of the normal stressors of pregnancy, they had to decide whether to risk contracting the coronavirus and potentially becoming seriously ill while pregnant or taking a new vaccine that they knew nothing about. 

While no demographic was exempt from the spread of vaccine misinformation, perhaps no group was targeted as ferociously as pregnant women. “The vaccine causes infertility.” “The vaccine will make you miscarry.” “The vaccine will give your child autism.”

These false claims spread like wildfire online and among friend groups as the vaccine was rolled out across the United States. 

Lauren Rhoades of Jackson, who was vaccinated in March 2021 and gave birth in July, credits getting off Facebook before the pandemic began with helping her avoid most of the misinformation being circulated about the vaccine.

While home on maternity leave, Rhoades watched in horror as the delta variant swept across Mississippi and the subsequent surge in pregnant women and infants being hospitalized. Since the virus reached Mississippi in March 2020, it has caused at least 73 fetal deaths, or miscarriages before 20 weeks, and killed 13 pregnant women. 

“I imagined that they just wanted to do what was best for them and their child, and they had just received so much misinformation that made them fearful of getting vaccinated,” Rhoades said. “It just made me feel so sad to see such preventable loss.”

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention didn’t recommend vaccination for pregnant women specifically until late April, and that message then had to compete with the doubt and mistrust that had built up and calcified over those early months that the vaccine was available. 

“I think over the time that they delayed, that just gave a lot of fodder for people to be worried about it,” Katie Poor, who gave birth to her second child in December 2021, said.

Poor struggled to navigate unclear guidance and the uncertainty that came with it.

“There’s so many things that you are supposed to be cautious about because of the impacts that it could have on your unborn child,” Poor, who lives in Jackson, said. “If I’m limiting things like caffeine, then I obviously want to be really sure about what medications I’m putting in my body as well.”

After consulting with her doctor and seeing that the vaccine wasn’t causing complications for pregnant women, Poor was vaccinated in the spring. Now, she’s thankful to be in a position to pass on her antibodies to her two-month-old daughter, offering what protection she can until she can be vaccinated herself.

“Breastfeeding my newborn is one of the things that gives me a feeling like I’m doing something to protect her when there’s a lot of ways that I feel like I can’t protect her as well as I should have,” Poor said. 

Following a year of widespread sickness, death and research, the risks COVID-19 poses to pregnant women and infants are clearer than ever.

One recent study, co-authored by Dr. Charlotte Hobbs, a pediatrician and professor at the University of Mississippi Medical Center, found that babies make up a disproportionate amount of the minors hospitalized due to COVID-19.

The study identified 630 patients aged 0 to 18 with severe COVID-19 across 50 of their hospital sites, including Children’s of Mississippi, between March to December 2020. Of those, 128 were under a year old, and half of those were under two months old. 

Another area of concern is that two-thirds of these infants had no serious health conditions prior to their COVID-19 diagnosis, but still struggled to overcome their infections.  Seventy-seven percent had respiratory complications, and 13 percent needed a ventilator during their treatment.

“It’s been well established that vaccination of mom protects baby, and as infant COVID-19 can be severe, this underscores the importance of maternal immunization,” Hobbs said. 

Even with the vast amount of data proving the vaccine’s efficacy and safety, Hobbs says misinformation is still rampant, even in the medical community.

“Millions of people at this point had been vaccinated, and I still hear providers say that there’s not enough data,” Hobbs said. “And I think that we need to educate our providers, so we can educate our population. I think people trust their doctors, but if the doctors don’t have the right information, then the patients won’t either.”

Dr. Anita Henderson, President of the Mississippi Chapter of the American Academy of Pediatrics and a pediatrician at The Pediatric Clinic in Hattiesburg, has seen more infants hospitalized during the omicron wave than during any other stage of the pandemic. One theory is that omicron affects the upper airways more so than other variants.

“When you have a baby that has a very small airway, it makes for a more significant illness,” Henderson said. 

She has also seen other disturbing trends like one and two-month-olds suffering from COVID-induced sleep apnea and an increase in babies being born with intrauterine growth retardation, or IUGR. The condition, in which a baby doesn’t grow to normal weight during pregnancy, can be caused by a mother’s blood vessels being damaged as the result of a COVID-19 infection. This can cause clotting in the placenta, restricting the fetus’ access to nutrition and stunting its growth. 

Having the vaccine conversation with patients can be difficult, Henderson said, but it’s also gotten a lot easier over time as mothers have seen the protection vaccination has given to others in their lives, and come to understand the danger that its absence poses to them and their children.

“They’re just conversations we have to keep having every time we have the opportunity to educate moms and explain why vaccination is the best thing for them and for their babies,” Henderson said.

Editor’s note: The final quote in this story from Dr. Anita Henderson was updated for clarity.

The post ‘Such preventable loss’: As more babies are hospitalized with COVID-19, these moms are grateful for the vaccine appeared first on Mississippi Today.

Mississippi Today’s political team breaks down the House proposal to reinstate a ballot initiative. Mississippi has been without an initiative since May 2021, when the state Supreme Court struck down the process by which voters can place policy changes on a statewide ballot for approval.

Listen to more episodes of The Other Side here.

The post Podcast: Breaking down the proposal to reinstate a Mississippi ballot initiative appeared first on Mississippi Today.

House Clerk Andrew Ketchings has etched himself an entry in Mississippi’s history. His admission that he moved the controversial statue of white supremacist Mississippi politician Theodore Bilbo from public display in the state Capitol has earned the normally inconspicuous house clerk a mention in the history books.

Unless House Speaker Philip Gunn is the best actor this side of Sir Lawrence Olivier, he did not play a role in removal from public view of the Bilbo statue.

“I don’t have any idea,” Gunn, sounding earnest, told reporters two weeks ago when asked about the missing statue. “I heard about it at lunch.”

Almost a week later, Ketchings finally confirmed he was the culprit and acted alone — with the aid of movers who received between $4,000 and $5,000 for moving the bronze statue that is reportedly life-size at 5 feet 2 inches tall on an enormous base.

READ MORE: House clerk Andrew Ketchings takes credit for moving Bilbo statue out of public view

The statue is currently tucked away in a storage room on the first floor of the Capitol, and restoring it to public display could prove troublesome.

To restore it legislators will have to argue that Bilbo should be the only governor memorialized with a statue in the Mississippi Capitol. No other governor has such an honor.

Bilbo, who served two terms as governor and was elected twice to the U.S. Senate, advocated for moving Black Americans to Africa and for opposing anti-lynching laws.

Representing the state that perhaps led the nation in lynchings, Bilbo said in filibustering an anti-lynching bill in the U.S. Senate, “If you succeed in the passage of this bill, you will open the floodgates of hell in the South. Raping, mobbing, lynching, race riots, and crime will be increased a thousandfold; and upon your garments and the garments of those who are responsible for the passage of the measure will be the blood of the raped and outraged daughters of Dixie, as well as the blood of the perpetrators of these crimes that the red-blooded Anglo-Saxon White Southern men will not tolerate.”

Who would be the state legislator to step up and argue that person should be memorialized in Mississippi’s Capitol? Perhaps a legislator could argue about the way the removal was done — with one House staff member doing it on his own.

It is important to remember the clerk is elected by the 122 House members — normally upon a recommendation of the speaker. The clerk is responsible for the day-to-day operation of the House staff and the portion of the Capitol building controlled by the House. Ketchings has acted independently in the past to redo or to update House committee rooms.

It was a quirk of history that resulted in the Bilbo statue being located in House committee room 113 since Bilbo never served in the Mississippi House.

READ MORE: Where’s Bilbo? Statue of racist former governor missing from Capitol

But in 1948 soon after his death, the Mississippi House and Senate passed a resolution calling for a commission to develop a Bilbo monument to be displayed “in a prominent place on the first floor of the new Capitol building.”

For decades that monument rested in the Capitol rotunda, making it one of the first — if not the first — items visitors saw when entering the building. In the early 1980s, while the building was closed for renovations, then-Gov. William Winter, who was old enough to have heard Bilbo’s vile rhetoric in person, moved the statue to room 113 where it remained until recently. It could be argued that Winter made the statue House property.

The Winter move was brave and bold for the time, just as the Ketchings move is now.

“Because of everything he stood for, I think this should have been done years ago,” said Ketchings, who in the past served as a Republican House member from Adams County and later on the staff of Gov. Haley Barbour. In other words, Ketchings has a long history in Mississippi Republican politics.

READ MORE: The Bilbo statue was first moved by Gov. William Winter in the 1980s

In a state ripe with a history of racist politicians, Bilbo, along with his contemporary and sometimes alley James K. Vardaman, would belong on Mississippi’s Mount Rushmore of racist politicians.

Ironically, Vardaman, known to many officials as “the great white chief,” was the first Mississippian elected to the Senate through popular election. Before then, the state Legislature selected Mississippi’s U.S. senators.

When running for another term, Vardaman was defeated by Hubert Stephens, a U.S. House member from Union County in northeast Mississippi.

Then six years later, Stephens was defeated by no other than Bilbo.

Nearing death, Stephens, according to an article by Martha Swain in Mississippi History Now, told his family: “Bilbo and Vardaman would both be in the history books and, if they were, he would just as soon be left out.”

Stephens reportedly ordered all his papers burned to try to keep himself out of the history books between Vardaman and Bilbo.

The post Reversing the historic move of Bilbo statue could prove difficult appeared first on Mississippi Today.

What is critical race theory?

According to the NAACP Legal Defense and Education Fund, critical race theory is an academic framework used to analyze racism’s systemic impact on society. Critical race theory focuses on the social, political and economic intersections with race and the institutions that continue to oppress marginalized people.

Initially constructed for legal analysis, at its core, CRT has roots back to the late 1900s, spearheaded by notable Black legal scholars.

Why is it so controversial?

CRT was founded on generations of Black scholarship and activism, but Republican politicians have denounced the theory and continue to mischaracterize it as a way to divide students or introduce racism into the classroom.

At last year’s Neshoba County Fair, Reeves gave a speech, which included this:

“Some of these Ivy League liberals are the dumbest smart people in the world,” Reeves said. “In what world is it OK to teach children that they are born racist? In what world is it OK to tell children they will be judged by the color of their skin and not the content of their character … In Mississippi, our kids should be learning STEM education, not Dem education.” 

Fellow critics of CRT cite similar claims of divisiveness, but people well-versed in critical race theory repeatedly emphasize the systemic analysis that it operates on. That is, CRT focuses on the entirety of the system, not the individual — instead, the individual’s place in that system.

But the message is getting lost in translation if it’s being boiled down to supposedly teaching white children that they’re born racists with a personal and active hand in oppressing their peers of color.     

READ MORE: Anti-CRT bill passed out of Senate committee likely unconstitutional, opponents say

Is it being taught in Mississippi schools?

Currently, Mississippi has only one class explicitly about CRT called Critical Race Theory: Law 743, taught at the University of Mississippi. Education reporter Molly Minta wrote about the class in an article titled “Inside Mississippi’s only class on critical race theory” to tell the story of a young Republican woman who wrote to her lawmakers criticizing their decision to move anti-CRT legislation forward after taking the class. 

The Mississippi Department of Education confirmed that CRT is not being taught in any K-12 public institution in the state.

If SB 2113 is passed into law, Mississippi will join at least 14 other states in banning or otherwise limiting critical race theory in public schools.

READ MORE: Inside Mississippi's only class on critical race theory

What's happening with critical race theory in the Legislature?

Republican lawmakers filed 11 bills addressing critical race theory this session, according to EducationWeek. Only one remains alive. The Senate passed Senate Bill 2113, which only references CRT in its title (versus the bill itself). The legislation as currently written is vague, but would prohibit “distinction or classification of students based on account of race.” 

When the bill was taken up for a vote on the Senate floor, “every Black Mississippi senator walked out in protest. The fate of this legislation now rests with the House, which has until March 1 to assign and pass it out of committee.

READ MORE: 

• Philip Gunn’s biggest legacy is on the line with critical race theory
• How Black senators controlled the narrative on a historic day at the Capitol

Still have further questions about critical race theory? Click here to take this brief survey and let us know what’s on your mind!

FULL COVERAGE: Read all of our coverage on critical race theory

The post Critical race theory in Mississippi, explained appeared first on Mississippi Today.

Today’s task: Choose an all-time Mississippi Super Bowl team. As you might suspect, the Magnolia State, which leads all 49 others in producing NFL players and Pro Football Hall of Famers per capita, has produced many of the Super Bowl’s greatest heroes.

For today’s purposes, both Mississippi natives and Mississippi college players are eligible. So we’ll start where every great football team starts – at quarterback.

Our starter: Eli Manning gets the nod over Brett Favre. It’s not as hard a choice as you might think. Manning played in two Super Bowls, won two Super Bowls, won two Super Bowl MVPs and beat Tom Brady both times. Beat that! Favre threw for slightly more yards in his two Super Bowls, but won one, lost one and was not the MVP in his Super Bowl victory.

On this all-star team, we are going with one running back and three wide receivers. Our running back is only my favorite football player ever: Walter Payton, who played most of his career for terrible teams but finally got his Super Bowl opportunity in SB XX. Payton, the NFL’s all-time leading rusher when he retired, ran for 61 yards in the Chicago Bears’ 46-10 trouncing of New England but famously was denied the opportunity to score a touchdown when Mike Ditka opted to let defensive lineman William Perry score from the one-yard line. Someday, perhaps, I will forgive Ditka. Not today.

Jerry Rice leads our wide receivers corps, and, without question, remains the most productive receiver in Super Bowl history. I would make the case that he is the most outstanding Super Bowl player ever at his position. Indeed, three of the top four receiving performances in history belong the former Mississippi Valley State star. Get a load of this: three games, three victories, 28 catches, 512 yards, seven touchdowns, one MVP (could have been three)!

Most older fans remember Lance “Bambi” Alworth of Brookhaven as the greatest receiver in American Football League history, playing most of his incredible career with the San Diego Chargers before there was such thing a Super Bowl. But in Super Bowl VI, playing for the Dallas Cowboys at age 31, he scored the game’s first touchdown in a 24-3 victory over the Miami Dolphins. That was the same week his teammate, running back Duane Thomas, opined, “How can they call the Super Bowl football’s ultimate game if they play it every year?”

It remains a valid question. But back to receivers: My third receiver is Deion Branch, who played two seasons at Jones Junior College in Ellisville. On Feb. 6, 2005, Branch caught 11 of Brady’s passes passes for 133 yards to help the the New England Patriots defeat the Philadelphia Eagles 24-21. Branch was the game’s MVP.

Our tight end? He’s got to be Wesley Walls, the Pontotoc and Ole Miss great who would catch 450 NFL passes and 54 touchdowns for four NFL teams. But in 1990, a young Walls was the backup on the 49ers depth chart when he caught a nine-yard pass from MVP Joe Montana in the Niners’ 55-10 victory over Denver.

Jackson native and ex-Jackson State great Jackie Slater, one of the greatest offensive linemen in pro football history, is our left tackle. Slater, a Pro Football Hall of Famer, played for some fabulous Los Angeles Rams teams in his 20-year career but amazingly played in just one Super Bowl, a 31-19 loss to the Pittsburgh Steelers. Just shows how hard it is to get to the Super Bowl, much less make this team. Michael Oher, whose life inspired a movie (“The Blind Side”), is our other tackle. The Ole Miss great played in two Super Bowls, first for the Baltimore Ravens and then the Carolina Panthers.

Guards? Floyd “Pork Chop” Womack is one. How could you leave a guy named Pork Chop off the team? He was good, too. The Cleveland native and Mississippi State great played for the Seattle Seahawks in a losing effort in a 21-10 loss to Pittsburgh in 2006. I am taking literary license on the other guard choice. I am going with Gene Hickerson, the ex-Ole Miss great and Pro Football Hall of Famer. No, he never played in a Super Bowl, but he played in three NFL championship games before there was such thing as a Super Bowl. He helped block three Cleveland Browns running backs into the Pro Football Hall of Fame, including the incomparable Jimmy Brown. Leroy Kelly, who replaced Brown, was once asked what he had learned from Brown. “I learned,” Kelly said, “to follow Gene Hickerson’s butt wherever it went.”

Kent Hull, of course, is our center. The Greenwood native and Mississippi State great started for the Buffalo Bills in four straight Super Bowls. No, he never won one but he got to four and is one of the most accomplished centers in the history of the sport.

Defensively, we’ll play a three-man front because we’ve got many more great linebackers than defensive lineman. Our front three has defensive ends Verlon “Dirty” Biggs of Moss Point and Jackson State and L.C. Greenwood of Canton flanking tackle Fletcher Cox of Yazoo City and Mississippi State. Greenwood, who somehow – and criminally – has never been selected to the Pro Football Hall of Fame, died in 2013, leaving behind four Super Bowl rings earned with the Pittsburgh Steelers. Roger Staubach was known as Roger the Dodger but he couldn’t dodge Greenwood, who sacked him three times in Super Bowl X. Dirty Biggs played in Super Bowls for both the New York Jets and Washington Redskins. Cox, still active, is a six-time Pro Bowler and a Super Bowl champion with the Philadelphia Eagles in the 2018 Super Bowl.

We can throw some linebackers at you. Start with D.D. Lewis, the former Mississippi State standout who still holds the Dallas Cowboys record for playing in 27 post-season games, including five Super Bowls. (He is one of only eight NFL players to have played in that many Super Bowls.) Not sure how you choose from among Larry Grantham (Crystal Springs, Ole Miss), Johnie Cooks (Leland, Mississippi State), Patrick Willis (Ole Miss), Jamie Collins (McCall Creek, Southern Miss) and K.J. Wright (Olive Branch, Mississippi State) for the other three spots. Better to just play them all. All are superb and all had their Super Bowl moments. For the record, Grantham easily have been MVP in Super Bowl III and honor won by Joe Namath in a defense-dominated game.

In the secondary, Willie Brown, the Raiders cornerback from Yazoo City, leads the way. His pass interception for a 75-yard touchdown in Super Bowl VI remains one of the sport’s most iconic (and most replayed) plays. Malcolm Butler of Vicksburg holds another of the Super Bowl’s most memorable moments with his game-saving interception in New England’s 35-31 victory over Seattle. Brady thought so much of Butler’s play, he gave Butler the truck he received for winning MVP honors. No way I am leaving Leslie Frazier off this team. One of the game’s greatest-ever corners, he suffered a career-ending injury in the Bears’ romp over New England in Super Bowl XX. He was injured returning a punt late in the game (thanks again, Mike Ditka). There are so many candidates for the fourth defensive back, but this old-school nod goes to Jim Marsalis (Pascagoula), who helped the Kansas City Chiefs win 23-7 over Minnesota in Super Bowl IV. 

Punter? Ray Guy gets the nod over fellow Southern Miss great Jerrel Wilson, who set a Super Bowl record for his punting in KC’s Super Bowl IV victory. Oakland Raiders Hall of Famer owner Al Davis famously used a first-round draft choice to pick Guy, saying Guy would help them win a Super Bowl. Guy’s punting helped the Raiders win three.

Placekicker? Got to be Madison Central’s Stephen “Beaver” Gostkowski, who kicked in six Super Bowls, including three victories, with the New England Patriots.

You can feel free to argue with any of the selections, but don’t argue this: This team of Mississippi Super Bowlers could play with any state’s and would beat most, if not all.

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