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The Ole Miss Rebels had just won the Super Regional at Hattiesburg and were on the bus back to Oxford when Mike Bianco received text messages of congratulations from both Mississippi State head coach Chris Lemonis and hitting coach Jake Gautreau.

The texts, Bianco said, also wished him good luck in Omaha.

Said Bianco, “And my response to both of them was: ‘Thanks so much, I really appreciate it, and we’ll try to keep the trophy in Mississippi.’”

Mission accomplished. The Rebels defeated Oklahoma in two straight games to clinch Mississippi’s second straight college baseball national championship. Mississippi State won it in 2021. What’s more, the fan bases of State and Ole Miss essentially took over Omaha both years.

SEC Commissioner Greg Sankey talked about it on the field during the Ole Miss celebration Sunday. “It’s amazing,” Sankey said while surveying the postgame scene of thousands of Ole Miss fans still standing and cheering. “This was the same scene as last year. Only the colors have changed.”

Mississippians, by the thousands, have contributed much to the Omaha economy these past few years.

Bianco continued, in his postgame press conference about the texts from State coaches, “That was as we were leaving Hattiesburg and Southern Miss, a team that was a national seed and hosted a Super Regional. The rivalry is great, but it is a rivalry of all three of us because all three of us have great baseball programs.”

READ MORE: NATIONAL CHAMPS: Ole Miss completes rags to riches story

That Mississippi State and Ole Miss have won national championships in back-to-back seasons should be a source of great pride for Mississippi college baseball fans, who are the most loyal of any in the nation. 

The texts exchange with Bianco and the Mississippi State coaches came after Scott Berry, the Southern Miss head coach, congratulated Bianco and his Rebels in in post-Super Regional press conference and said, “I hope they go to Omaha and win the whole thing.”

The coaches get it. Mississippi’s college sports rivalries are intense and often bitter, but seems to me sometimes fans should step back and take a look at the big picture. Mississippi ranks at the bottom of so much: education, health care, household income, and so much more. In college baseball the state ranks at the top, period. We play baseball well. We support it well. We win big.

Pearl River, in Poplarville, won the national junior college championship recently. Delta State has been a national Division II power going back to the Boo Ferriss days. William Carey, in NAIA, is another national power. Mississippi junior college baseball is the strongest in the country. The jucos feed talent to the college programs. High school baseball in Mississippi has improved exponentially over the last half century, feeding all the above.

Last year, Hunter Elliott was pitching for Tupelo High. This year, he was the starting pitcher in the deciding game of the College World Series. Last year, Mason Nichols was pitching for Jackson Prep. This season, he played a vital role out of the bullpen for the National Champion Rebels.

Berry watched Ole Miss win the natty at home in south Mississippi Sunday night. He was genuinely happy for Bianco and his team.

“If you are a baseball fan, you have to be proud of Mississippi,” Berry said. “It’s not just the back-to-back national championships but it’s the consistency of Mississippi’s college baseball teams at every level. We feed off each other. The competition makes us all better.

“I couldn’t be happier for Mike and his staff. I’m so happy for Mike because I know how tough a year it was for him. Man, they showed some unbelievable resiliency and that’s a credit to all of them – Mike, his assistants and the players. They are a credit to Mississippi baseball. They made us all proud.”

They did. No matter your allegiances.

Chris Lemonis was watching a summer league baseball game when reached Monday afternoon. “Our rivalry with Ole Miss is about as intense as you’ll find,” Lemonis said. “But we understand what each program goes through. Baseball is different. There’s so many ups and downs and we all understand that. I have a lot of respect for Mike, his staff and how they do it. They deserve this. What they did this year was truly amazing. It was all earned.”

The post Ole Miss’ natty is just more proof: Mississippi is No. 1 in baseball appeared first on Mississippi Today.

Mississippi voters return to the polls on Tuesday to decide three Republican primaries in the 2nd, 3rd and 4th congressional districts.

Polls will be open from 7 a.m. to 7 p.m. on Tuesday. Any voter who voted in the June 7 Republican primary or who was registered but did not vote can cast a ballot on Tuesday. Only those who voted in a Democratic primary on June 7, or were not registered to vote before the deadline for the primary, are prohibited from voting.

In the 3rd and 4th districts, incumbent Republican congressmen face challengers who forced them into runoffs, and the races are hotly contested for seats expected to remain in GOP control. In the 2nd District, a crowded field of Republican primary candidates brought a runoff, although the seat is not expected to flip from Democratic in November.

In the 3rd central Mississippi district, Rep. Michael Guest faces challenger Navy veteran Michael Cassidy. Any voter registered before the June 7 primary deadline can vote in this runoff Tuesday, since there was no Democratic primary then.

READ MORE: Guest, Cassidy sharpen attacks ahead of 3rd District GOP runoff

In the 4th southern Mississippi district, 12-year incumbent Rep. Steven Palazzo faces challenger Jackson County Sheriff Mike Ezell.

READ MORE: Videos: Where do Ezell, Palazzo stand on the issues?

In the 2nd District, Republicans Ronald Eller and Brian Flowers face off, with the winner challenging longtime incumbent Democratic Rep. Bennie Thompson in November.

The general election for Mississippi’s midterm congressional races will be Nov. 8.

The post Vote Tuesday: Hotly contested Republican runoffs in Mississippi appeared first on Mississippi Today.

Mississippi Attorney General Lynn Fitch on Monday certified the state’s 2007 trigger law banning abortion except in cases where the mother’s life is in danger or a rape has been reported to law enforcement.

The law will not officially take effect until 10 days from Monday. Officials at Jackson Women’s Health Organization, the state’s sole abortion clinic, have promised to continue providing services as long as the law allows.

“Mississippi’s laws to promote life are solid and thanks to the Court’s clear and strong opinion in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, they can now go into effect,” said Fitch. “As we have said throughout this case, Roe v. Wade presented a false choice between a woman’s future and her child’s life. As we proceed in this post-Roe world, the people of Mississippi and of all the states will be able to fully engage in the work of both empowering women and promoting life. I am grateful that the Court has given us this opportunity.”

Abortion has been banned or mostly banned in 10 states following the Court’s ruling last week. Mississippi is one of 5 states that will be added to that list in the coming days through legislation yet to go into effect.

Mississippi law required Fitch to first publish her determination that Roe is overturned and second that it is “reasonably probable” the law would be upheld by the Court as constitutional.

The move came after the U.S. Supreme Court on Friday overturned the 1973 landmark abortion rights case Roe v. Wade. The ruling stemmed from a case that originated in Mississippi, Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization.

The post Fitch certifies Mississippi’s trigger law banning abortion in nearly all cases appeared first on Mississippi Today.

Molina Healthcare of Mississippi partnered with the Mississippi Food Network on Thursday to host a mobile food pantry drive-thru event in Pickens.

Hundreds of cars stretched down North 2nd Street next to the town’s municipal building as they waited for their first-come, first-serve boxes of food that included fresh produce, fruit and protein. The Mississippi Food Network prepared the boxes for nearly 250 households. The organization helps with about three mobile pantries a month in the state’s most food-insecure areas. 

Pickens, located in Holmes County, is considered a food desert with the nearest grocery store located almost 20 miles away in Canton.

The county had one of the highest projected rates of food insecurity in the state following Jefferson County due to the impact of COVID-19, according to a study by Feeding America in 2020. Holmes County ranked third nationally in projections of the highest overall food insecurity rates at 34.5%, the study found.

“Hopefully, it will help them get to the end of the month,” said Cassandra Mobley, Mississippi Food Network director of agency relationships and programs. “We have food pantries and senior programs that distribute food on a regular basis here in Holmes County. This just an extra effort.”

The food network’s partner in this mobile pantry was Molina Healthcare, which contracts with Mississippi to offer a Medicaid-sponsored health insurance program for low-income children and adults.

“Food is our biggest disparity, especially with rising prices of everything. That’s why we chose to come to Pickens,” said Marques Slaughter, Molina Healthcare member engagement and growth specialist. “We like to get out into the community to bring awareness to health, help bring healthy options to the area and identify community resources and disparities.”

The Mississippi Food Network will have its next food pantry drive-thru event on July 21 at Mississippi Valley State in Leflore County.

The post Mobile food pantry held in Holmes County, one of the most food insecure places in the U.S. appeared first on Mississippi Today.

Mississippi Hospital Association President Tim Moore says the state’s health care providers are teetering financially and that once pandemic stimulus funds run dry “It’s going to be time to pay the band.” MHA has pushed for Mississippi, the poorest state in the nation, to adopt Medicaid expansion and accept about $1 billion a year in federal dollars to provide health coverage to Mississippi’s working poor and help hospitals stay afloat.

The post Podcast: Hospital Association head talks Medicaid expansion, state of Mississippi’s health care appeared first on Mississippi Today.

OMAHA — Baseball hadn’t been invented back in early 18th century when Alexander Pope, an English poet and essayist, wrote the words: “Hope springs eternal in the human breast.” 

But 300 years ago, Pope could have been writing about this 2022 Ole Miss Rebels team, given up for dead seven weeks ago and now national champions. For these Rebels, it wasn’t just hope. It was belief.

Mike Bianco’s Rebels, once 7-14 in their own league, defeated the Oklahoma Sooners 4-2 to sweep the best-of-three championship and win the College World Series on Sunday. One year after Mississippi State won the national championship here, the trophy stays in the Magnolia State.

These Rebels never quit hoping or believing – or working. Their hope sprang eternal.

“Life is tough and there’s bad things that happen to everybody,” Bianco said postgame. “… These guys have worked really hard and I think they’ve shown a lot of people that you can fall down, you can stumble and you can fail, but that doesn’t mean you’re a failure. If you continue to push and you continue to believe, as Tim (Elko) said, you can accomplish anything.”

The Rebels have realized college baseball’s ultimate goal. They are national champions. They have worked their way back from 22-17 on May 1 to a final record of 42-23, including a remarkable 10-1 run through the NCAA Tournament. The team that lost at home to Southeast Missouri 13-3 on April 19 claimed the national championship on June 26, beating the mighty Oklahoma Sooners, undefeated in the College World Series before they ran into Ole Miss. This was no easy road. Ole Miss, the last team to receive an at-large bid to the NCAA Tournament, had to run the gauntlet as a low seed through Miami, then Hattiesburg, then here.

“These guys have lived that this season,” Bianco continued. “They really have. They’ve fallen down, where not a lot of people believed that they were any good anymore, and a lot of people may have been disappointed in them. And I get that. It’s sports, and that’s part of it. But they didn’t let that affect them. They continued to believe in one another. They continued to push.”

Here in Omaha, the Rebels have not lacked for support and encouragement. Probably 20,000 Ole Miss fans were present at Charles Schwab Field, often standing, screaming and waving towels at all the right moments. The crowd fed off the Rebels; the Rebels fed off the crowd. Afterward, players circled the field, high-fiving joyous fans. There were Ole Miss fans reaching over one another to reach over the fence in every section of the stadium. Nearly an hour after the game had ended, Ole Miss fans still stood and cheered.

“This group of young men, I think people have fallen in love with them, their story and where they came from,” Bianco continued. “I’m just very fortunate to have been a part of it and that these guys allowed me to be on the ride with them.”

Heroes were many for Ole Miss, including shortstop Jacob Gonzalez, who was responsible for three of his team’s six hits. He hit a solo home run for the game’s first run in the sixth and then knocked in a crucial, tying run with sharp single in the eighth.

There were so many others, mostly pitchers this day:

• Freshman Hunter Elliott, who is 19 years old and pitches as if he is 29, started on the mound and pitched 6.2 innings of two-run, three-hit baseball. “He’s amazing,” Bianco would say. “… The bigger the stage, the better he gets. That’s what the great ones do. When the stage gets big, that’s when they shine. He’s one of those guys.”
• Senior John Gaddis pitched the Rebels out of a seventh inning mess and gave his team 1.1 innings of nearly perfect pitching. And that set the stage for …
• Closer Brandon Johnson, who went right at the Sooners and recorded three straight strikeouts on 14 pitches to save the victory in the ninth inning. “It was a dream come true,” Johnson said. “Ever since you’re a little kid, you dream of being on the mound in those situations. And when it happened, you just let go of yourself because you realize you did do it.”
• Bianco deserves much credit, as well, and not only for keeping his teams spirits up during the bad times earlier in the season and making all the right strategy calls in the College World Series. There was this: Watching the replay of an apparently successful Oklahoma squeeze bunt in the sixth inning, Bianco noticed the bunter, John Spikerman, running well inside the runner’s lane down the first baseline. Unable to get the umpire’s attention from the dugout because of the crowd noise, Bianco ran out onto the field to ask for a review. Sure enough, Spikerman was ruled out and the runner who had scored, Jackson Nicklaus, was sent back to third base.  

“Thank God for the Jumbotron, huh,” Bianco said. “I just looked up and I went, my gosh, he’s out of the running lane.”

Instead of taking a 1-0 lead and having runners at first and third with just one out, the Sooners were still scoreless and there were two out, soon to be three. There’s another lesson there: To win a national championship you not have to be good, you have to have a little luck along the way.

There were still more Ole Miss heroes: TJ McCants got the three-run, eighth inning rally started with a ringing single to center, and ever-dependable Justin Bench then moved him all the way to third with a line-drive single to right field. Bench later scored the go-ahead run on a wild pitch.

Of course, some of the loudest postgame cheers were for Elko, the captain and spiritual leader of these National Champions. 

Said Elko, “There’s just so much to be said about how much we overcame this year, how much we had to fight through, how much we had to pick each other up and never let ourselves get too down. This story of our season is going to be told for years and years and years to come.”

He’s right. This Ole Miss team can provide lessons for Little Leaguers everywhere: If at first you don’t succeed, try, try again. It may sound trite, but it rings true.

These Rebels, unsuccessful for the longest time this season, kept trying, kept believing and, in the end, got the job done.

Their hope sprang eternal. They stayed the course. They prevailed.

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If Mississippi’s political leaders had stuck to their plan, the state would now have a trust fund of more than $4 billion earning about $320 million annually to spend on health care, based on projections made in 1999.

But, as often is pointed out, “the best laid plans of mice and men often go awry.” Such is the case with the health care trust fund that was created in 1999 with the money from the state’s settlement with the tobacco companies of a landmark lawsuit to collect government funds spent treating smoking-related illnesses.

The settlement funds have been delivered to Mississippi as promised, but the promise of a trust fund was broken long ago.

The lawsuit, which originated in Mississippi, turned into a $365 billion national settlement that was announced by then-Mississippi Attorney General Mike Moore and others on June 20, 1997 – 25 years ago.

The lawsuit guaranteed Mississippi $4 billion over 25-years with annual payments of $100 million or more, based on a formula, continuing forever.

“The money is good, but the most important thing is when you look at kids smoking, it was 27% then and it is now less than 4%. We have done a lot of wonderful things in the last 25 years,” said Moore who resides in Madison County near Jackson and remains active in groups combatting cigarette use. “Adult smoking was around 30% and it is now 12%.”

He said lung disease has been cut in half and the prevalence of other diseases associated with smoking also is down. The lawsuit placed restrictions on the cigarette-makers advertising to young people and played a key role in campaigns that have led to significant reductions in tobacco use.

Moore concedes that he is disappointed that the trust fund was fleeting.

“It breaks my heart,” Moore said recently.

Slowly at first, state leaders began removing funds from the trust fund to fill budget holes. In 2005, legislation was passed to take $240 million from the trust fund to plug a Medicaid deficit. At first the Democratic-led House rejected the proposal, touting instead an increase in the cigarette tax – at 18 cents a pack one of the nation’s lowest – to plug the hole. But Republican Gov. Haley Barbour resisted the tax proposal.

In the end, the House agreed to the raid as long as there was a commitment to replenish the trust fund. Each year legislators and Barbour balked at making the repayments to the trust fund while at the same time removing more money to fill other holes.

When Barbour took office in 2004 there was more than $630 million in the fund. When he left office, the fund contained $50 million.

Eventually, the Legislature repealed the trust fund.

The erosion and eventual elimination of the trust fund was bipartisan. It began to a limited degree under Democratic Gov. Ronnie Musgrove and accelerated under Barbour. Both Republican and Democrats in the Legislature at the very least acquiesced in the trust fund withdrawals.

Still, it could be argued that the funds were used for important purposes – primarily to evade Medicaid cuts. But it is at least worth pointing out that many of the same political leaders who participated in the trust fund raids have passed tax cuts in recent years that will total more than $1 billion annually when fully enacted. Could some of those funds have gone to restoring the trust fund?

The lawsuit was concocted by Clarksdale attorney Mike Lewis upon visiting a friend – a chronic smoker suffering from cancer. He took the idea of suing the cigarette companies to recoup public funds spent treating smoking-related illnesses to Moore. The AG brought into the discussions Richard Scruggs, a nationally recognized attorney from Pascagoula, Moore’s hometown.

The lawsuit advanced the template of the state contracting with private attorneys. If the state prevailed, the private attorneys won big. If they did not, they received nothing. And the caveat was that the private attorneys had to use their own money. Legislative leaders made it clear Moore should not expend any state funds on the tobacco lawsuit that they viewed as a pipe dream.

“Scruggs spent every penny he had,” Moore said. “If it had not worked out, he would have had nothing left. It turned out the other way. But that is not what people were predicting.”

Of course, years later Scruggs was convicted in federal court in a judicial bribery scheme involving a lawsuit where some of the attorneys involved in the case were bickering about their share of funds from the settlement.

Some have argued that the judicial bribery tainted the lawsuit.

Moore conceded Scruggs made a mistake, but the lawsuit has been good for the state and nation – even though it did not result in a health care trust fund for Mississippi.

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