Another former Hinds County sheriff candidate is guilty of lying to a pawn shop dealer when he bought a firearm, saying it was for him rather than a convicted felon.
Torrence Mayfield, 53, pleaded guilty Wednesday to one charge of making a false statement to a firearm dealer, according to federal court documents. He was set to go to trial.
On Oct. 26, 2021, Mayfield bought the firearm from the shop, which is a federal firearms licensee. He had to complete a written form to make the purchase, and on it he noted the firearm was for him.
His sentencing is scheduled for March 4, 2025. Mayfield faces up to 10 years for the charge and a $250,000 fine.
Mayfield is a former Jackson police officer and chief of the Edwards Police Department.
He originally faced four counts. The additional charges were two counts of selling ammunition to a convicted felon and one count of selling a firearm to a convicted felon, according to a 2023 superseding indictment.
It is against federal law for a felon to possess a firearm or ammunition.
In 2021, Mayfield was one of 13 candidates for Hinds County sheriff, a position that opened up after the death of former sheriff Lee Vance. Mayfield received less than 1% of the vote.
Former Interim Hinds County Sheriff Marshand Crisler (left) enters the federal courthouse with his attorney John Collette, Wednesday, Nov. 6, 2024, in Jackson. Credit: Vickie D. King/Mississippi Today
Another candidate in that race, Marshand Crisler, was found guilty weeks ago of soliciting and accepting a bribe and giving ammunition to a convicted felon during his 2021 campaign.
Prosecutors revealed during trial that the convicted felon is Tonarri Moore, who worked as an FBI informant and recorded in-person meetings and conversations with Crisler.
During cross examination, Moore was questioned if the FBI asked him to wear a wire and talk with a policeman about a firearm. Moore invoked his Fifth Amendment right to remain silent and did not answer.
Crisler’s attorney clarified that he was asking about Mayfield and asked if Moore still wanted to plead the fifth, to which Moore replied no. When asked, Moore said he talked with Mayfield about some bullets and that he planned to testify against him.
Mayfield’s name also came up during some of the recorded conversations between Moore and Crisler, some of which were played during Crisler’s trial.
Mississippi voters have dealt defeat to one conservative state Supreme Court justice and forced a moderate justice into a Nov. 26 runoff, with the final outcome possibly making the court more open to considering the rights of criminal defendants.
The nine-member court is largely conservative but justices have recently split in high-profile decisions that sharply affected state politics, including a ruling that shut down citizen-led ballot initiatives in Mississippi and allowed some state control over local criminal cases in its majority-Black capital. The court has also rendered rulings that have made the state increasingly unfavorable to defendants appealing their cases.
“The ability of death row inmates in particular, and inmates in general, to access the courts has been recently curtailed significantly,” Matthew Steffey, a professor at Mississippi College School of Law, told The Marshall Project – Jackson and Bolts following the Nov. 5 election.
Justice Dawn H. Beam joined the majority in those decisions, acquiring a reputation of being hostile to appeals by criminal defendants, and she ran for reelection this fall as the Republican Party’s favored candidate. However, she lost in the state’s 2nd District on Nov. 5 to David P. Sullivan, a defense attorney who has worked as a public defender.
Even if Sullivan turns out to be more centrist or independent than Beam on criminal law, any overall shift in power on the court depends on the outcome of a runoff election next week.
Two-term Justice Jim Kitchens and challenger Jenifer B. Branning will face each other in the Nov. 26 runoff election after neither won more than 50% of the vote on Nov. 5. The runoff will take place across the 22 counties that make up the Supreme Court’s central district, including Hinds County, home to Jackson. Throughout the campaign, the state GOP targeted Kitchens with attacks, while Branning, a Republican state senator with a conservative voting record, is endorsed by the party.
Kitchens is one of two reliably moderate-to-liberal high court justices. Justices from among an additional group of four sometimes veer away from the majority, as well, but can be more unpredictable, and this group does not vote as a bloc.
Quinn Yeargain, a Michigan State University law professor who closely watches state courts, recently analyzed the court’s voting patterns and found Beam was consistently more conservative than Kitchens in recent cases. Yeargain told The Marshall Project – Jackson and Bolts that conservative and liberal voters often have few signals about how to select a candidate in judicial races. “It’s very hard to label the justices,” they said.
Sullivan — whose father was a Mississippi Supreme Court justice from 1984 to 2000 — called himself a “conservative” throughout his campaign. But he has also touted the value of judicial independence and criticized Beam for campaigning on her endorsement by the state Republican Party.
“I think that rubbed a lot of people the wrong way,” Sullivan told the Sun Herald newspaper, speaking of Beam’s use of the endorsement. “Judicial races are nonpartisan for a reason. A judge’s impartiality could be called into question.”
Sullivan has broad legal experience, but much of his career has focused on private criminal defense while also doing some public defense work. He told The Marshall Project – Jackson and Mississippi Today that he supported a new administrative rule handed down in 2023 by the state Supreme Court to require continuous legal representation for poor criminal defendants from the beginning of their cases. An investigation by The Marshall Project, ProPublica and the Northeast Mississippi Daily Journal last year found, however, that many courts were unready at the time to implement the new representation rules.
During the campaign, Sullivan told The Marshall Project – Jackson and Mississippi Today that more work is needed to improve public defense.
Kitchens has also advocated for public defense reforms during his two terms on the court. He told a committee of legislators last year that the “playing field is far from level” between prosecutors and poor defendants.
On other criminal justice issues, he has sometimes dissented from opinions upholding death sentences. His decisions have scrutinized prosecutorial conduct and inadequate legal representation.
Branning, the Republican senator, has a voting record on criminal justice issues that suggests a harsher approach toward criminal defendants. She has supported higher mandatoryminimum sentences and reclassifying misdemeanors as felonies, has opposed expansion of parole and was among only a few lawmakers who voted against legalizing medical marijuana.
She also supported increasing the jurisdiction of a controversial, state-run police force inside the majority-Black city of Jackson as well as increasing state control over many felony cases in Jackson. The Supreme Court unanimously curtailed much state power over these felony cases, but a majority left some control intact, with Kitchens and another judge dissenting.
Branning did not respond to questions from The Marshall Project – Jackson and Mississippi Today during the Nov. 5 campaign about her possible judicial outlook.
Kitchens was a prosecutor and then in private practice before joining the bench. Branning is a practicing attorney who typically handles civil cases.
The winner of the Nov. 26 runoff will join Sullivan on a court that in recent years has been restricting the ability of people who say the legal system has wronged them to seek relief, legal experts told The Marshall Project – Jackson and Bolts this month.
Krissy Nobile, director of the state’s Office of Capital Post-Conviction Counsel, said it’s become “increasingly more difficult to correct a wrongful conviction.” Her office provides legal counsel for indigent people on death row.
She said a number of recent cases showed the barriers the high court has erected for criminal defendants appealing their convictions, and demonstrated indifference to civil rights violations. Kitchens disagreed with the majority, in full or in part, in all but one of the appeals, which the court unanimously denied.
In a case earlier this year, the Court ruled to monetarily fine an incarcerated person for filing any future post-conviction relief petitions that lacked merit. Kitchens joined a dissenting opinion condemning the fine. In another, the court denied a man who argued that his lawyers were ineffective and that they did not challenge prosecutorial misconduct or false forensic evidence presented by a medical examiner with a checkered past. The court’s majority denied the motion, and in the process, overturned a precedent that allowed ineffective counsel as an adequate reason to give a case another look in some types of appeals. Kitchens dissented, along with two other justices.
“For decades in Mississippi, the Court held that it would correct errors if there was a violation (of) a person’s fundamental rights,” Nobile said. But she added this has changed considerably. Now, if you land a terrible lawyer who rushes your case, “You are out of luck,” she said, “even if your core constitutional rights have been clearly violated.”
For the court’s majority, Nobile added, “The legal technicalities now trump a person’s constitutional rights.”
Branning, left, and Kitchens at the Neshoba County Fair in August 2024. Credit: Eric Shelton, Mississippi Today
The runoff is the nation’s final supreme court race of the year. Thirty-two states held elections for their high courts earlier this year, resulting in a muddled picture, with liberals and conservatives each gaining ground in different places, Boltsreports.
Mississippi’s runoff outcome will heavily depend on turnout and the composition of the electorate. In the Supreme Court’s central district, voters split narrowly between Democrat Kamala Harris and Republican Donald Trump in the presidential election on Nov. 5, but the runoff is just two days before Thanksgiving and will likely see a large dropoff in turnout. Branning received 42% of the vote in the first round, and Kitchens received 36%, with three other candidates making up the rest.
There will also be a runoff the same day in the Gulf Coast area between Amy Lassiter St. Pé and Jennifer Schloegel for an open seat on the state Court of Appeals. The Court of Appeals hears both criminal and civil cases that have been appealed from lower courts. The Mississippi Supreme Court can hear cases directly on appeal or can assign cases to the Court of Appeals.
Observers agreed that against the national legal backdrop, neither a Kitchens victory nor a Branning victory would lead to a seismic change since neither outcome would flip the court’s conservative lean. Still, a modest shift could impact some of the most controversial cases, such as a rare 5-4 decision that upheld the death sentence in Willie Manning’s case.
A Kitchens win, coupled with Sullivan’s upset earlier this month, would deal the Republican Party rare setbacks in a state where it has been dominant and could put moderate forces in a position to grow their numbers further in future elections.
“You might end up with a normal conservative court,” law professor Yeargain said, “instead of one of the most conservative courts in the country.”
Desks scooted into a circle, the day’s mental debris dumped into five quiet minutes of no-rules writing, and the high-schoolers were primed to tackle poetry.
It was midweek, after school at Murrah High, with students gathering in yet one more classroom for yet more word work, this time their efforts aimed at the school’s award-winning literary/arts magazine, Pleiades. Adviser Sarah Ballard’s classroom provided a supportive spot to share, workshop and perfect pieces that may be bound for Scholastic Writing & Arts Awards submission as well as for the 2024-25 Pleiades.
As each soft voice finished a final line, finger snaps, praise and feedback followed in friendly exchanges that were all about encouragement. Hesitant voices grew stronger as they weighed in, and suggestions bounced around on recitation tips, avenues to explore and personal details to flesh out.
“It’s given me a safe space … I think it was the very first safe space for my writing,” said Murrah senior Nadia Wright, Pleiades editor for the 2024-25 issue. “It’s my first sense of belonging in the writing community, and from then on, I’ve just been placed in these opportunities I never thought I would have,” including awards, scholarships and her selection as one of five National Student Poets of 2024 (the program’s first from Mississippi).
Founded in 1954, Pleiades had been an annual Murrah High project, but production sputtered in the 1990s. By the late 1990s into early 2000s, it was no longer published and had been nearly forgotten. The magazine was resurrected in 2012, when student interest fueled its return. Sarah Ballard, an English teacher at Murrah since 2005, had been advising the school’s Poetry Club for a few years when a transfer student asked, why didn’t Murrah have a literary magazine?
Murrah High’s award-winning literary arts magazine The Pleiades, revived in 2012 and published annually, showcases student writing and artwork. Credit: Sherry Lucas/Mississippi
Ballard recalled a colleague’s mention of one in the past, called Pleiades. “That night, I went home and I googled Pleiades Murrah literary magazine,” Ballard said, “and I was blown away to find out that this was something that had been in existence for a very long time. It has won awards. It had award-winning writers associated with it, including Eudora Welty and Richard Ford and many others.”
Ballard shared that history with her students, and they revived a legacy. Their discovery of old issues of Pleiades, stashed in a school library drawer, further fed their mission. A letter shared with contacts and alumni raised donations that funded the publication for 2012, and a bit beyond.
“That was the beginning. … And, every year it has just gotten better and better,” Ballard said, with writing by Murrah students and “amazing” artwork through partnering with Wells APAC art program. She noted its best literary magazine honors from the Mississippi Scholastic Press Association for three years, a superior rating last year and “more awards than I can name” for short stories, poetry and design.
But, fundraising became an annual stress point. “The school had no money to give us,” Ballard said. “We were completely funded, for years, through our own fundraising.” That took the form of Poetry Night events, GoFundMe efforts, even selling the magazine (albeit at a low price) to try and recoup some expenses.
Then, another group of alumni picked up the baton. When Murrah’s Class of 1970 had their 50th reunion in 2020, a small group felt strongly about commemorating their dramatic senior year, when integration brought so many changes to the public school.
“We wanted to do something for Murrah,” Susan Shands Jones said of the group that included Karen Ezelle Redhead (also of Jackson, Mississippi), Georgia Wier (now of Portland, Oregon) and the late Sarah Reid Winbigler DeYoung (of Maryville, Tennessee). Redhead, a retired teacher, knew of Ballard’s efforts to fund Pleiades production.
“This was a project ready and waiting for us,” Wier said. “It was particularly appropriate for us, too. … I had been editor of The Pleiades, and all of us had worked on it, so we grabbed onto that idea.” All brought plenty to the table, she said: lawyer Jones’ legal know-how and, with Redhead, connections to Murrah alums; Redhead’s school contacts; DeYoung’s student counseling at the University of Tennessee; and folklorist Wier’s own experience in the arts realm.
After an initial push within their own class raised funds, they aimed for longer-term support and started the Murrah Pleiades Literary and Visual Arts Fund at the Community Foundation for Mississippi in 2020, to create a steady income for its production and free up the magazine’s adviser to focus on fostering students’ creativity, rather than on fundraising.
With targeted outreach to additional classes and past Pleiades staffers, plus word of mouth, donations of all different amounts came in from throughout the country and across the state. Recurring contributions keep money coming in. “One doctor sent us $1,000 from Washington. It really hit some people — we were lucky,” Jones said.
“For my end, that has been a game changer,” Ballard said.
The group’s engagement extended even beyond the fund. “It makes you think, what can we do for these kids?” Jones said. When Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright and fellow 1970 Murrah grad Beth Henley was a panelist at the Mississippi Book Festival this past September, Jones emailed her in advance, asking if she could visit the school, too. Henley agreed, Jones said, and her hour-long visit the following week “was magical.”
“It was amazing!” Murrah senior Ashley Carter agreed.
“We would love to keep doing supportive activities,” Jones said. Noting the awards, opportunities and scholarships that have opened up for students involved with Pleiades since its revival, Redhead added, “It really is a vehicle for these college-bound kids.”
Former Pleiades editor, Murrah and Yale graduate Jeffrey Caliedo, now an English teacher back at Murrah, said love for poetry and art drew him to the magazine, and its rewards lasted beyond his high school years. “Being able to create art, win awards and get recognition for it — that was a big thing for me,” he said. “I do think it offers a lot. It really builds your writing, and not just creative writing,” but also editing, feedback, attention to detail and a creative outlet for expression. “These students have a lot to say, and sometimes they really need a platform.”
Senior staffers on The Pleiades this school year at Murrah include, from left, Hannah King, Alexia Anthony, Sabréa Jordan, Ashley Carter and Nadia Wright. Credit: Sherry Lucas/Mississippi Today
Back in the classroom, young Pleiades writers keyed into qualities that keep them coming back after school, week after week. “For me, It’s really just about being a part of a community of writers,” said Murrah senior Sabréa Jordan, who values constructive conversations with fellow fans of reading and writing. “It has done a lot for me in my years as a student.”
“It teaches us a lot about being ourselves,” Murrah senior Hannah King said, “about being authentically and unapologetically who we are, and expressing ourselves in however we see fit. It’s just such a free space. It’s a very welcoming space, and I feel like it could probably inspire someone to go out and make sure there are spaces like that everywhere.”
The Pleiades experience, plus exposure to writing camps, programs and workshops also shows them an attainable career path. “You realize writing isn’t just being a best-selling author,” senior Alexia Anthony said. “There’s a lot of different ways to succeed in that field, and if that’s what you love to do, then you should pursue it.”
As the young writers find their way forward, the support from generations that came before brings both endorsement and encouragement.
“It’s a group of people who really see value in Murrah’s students’ voices today,” Ballard said. “Murrah looks very different now than it did when they were in school here. And, the population is different. But, it’s still a group of Jackson kids who are creative and smart, and have stories to tell, and have things to say.”
To support Murrah High’s Pleiades literary/arts magazine, visit the Community Foundation for Mississippi homepage formississippi.org, click Donate and select Murrah Pleiades, or simply click here.
JXN Water said Wednesday it’s confirmed no lead in about 43% of the city’s service lines, and that it will continue to investigate the remaining lines as it complies with recently updated guidelines from the Environmental Protection Agency.
A representative for Jacobs, a contractor that manages the city’s drinking water plants for JXN Water, told Mississippi Today their goal is to fully determine whether there’s lead in any of the city’s nearly 75,000 service lines by 2027.
Yvonne Mazza-Lappi, water compliance manager for Jacobs, said JXN Water has so far identified nearly 14,000 galvanized iron service lines, or about 18% of the total amount. For each of those lines, she explained, JXN Water will have to find out if they were ever downstream of a lead service line, as lead particles can attach to the surface of those pipes according to the EPA. If so, JXN Water will have to replace the galvanized line.
There are another roughly 29,000 service lines, she added, where the material is unknown.
"With this inventory, the EPA requires certain validation," Mazza-Lappi said. "So we can't just assume that someone's service line is non-lead. We have to prove that. We use historical records. If we don't have enough of those, we do build inspections."
The EPA in October finalized a revision to its Lead and Copper rule, requiring public water systems around the country to find and replace lead service lines over the next decade.
JXN Water released a mapping tool where residents can look up their address and see the latest information for their service line, both on the customer side and the utility side. JXN Water spokesperson Aisha Carson said the utility will mail notices this week to residents that fall in the "unknown" or "galvanized" categories.
Mazza-Lappi said that so far, JXN Water has found just four lead service lines in the city, and that it replaced those lines earlier this year. She said they also offered those residents filters and will do follow-up sampling in January to make sure their water meets federal standards.
While there are still tens of thousands of lines to examine to make sure there's no lead present, Mazza-Lappi said that their predictive modeling suggests there's no widespread presence.
In the notices JXN Water is mailing to customers with galvanized lines or lines with unknown materials, the utility lists a number of ways to reduce the risk of lead contamination, such as letting the tap run before drinking, using a filter, or cleaning faucet screens and aerators.
A federal appeals court has ruled, again, that members of Jackson’s airport authority can’t sue over a state takeover of the city’s airport.
The court overruled a lower federal court decision, and ordered it to dismiss members of the airport authority in a lawsuit to block a state takeover of the Jackson-Medgar Wiley Evers International Airport.
“For the fourth time, Mississippi state legislators appeal a district court order compelling discovery in an eight-year-old dispute over control of the Jackson-Medgar Evers International Airport,” Judge Edith Jones wrote in the U.S. Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals opinion issued Tuesday. “For numerous reasons that have percolated throughout this litigation, we conclude that the current plaintiffs, members of the Jackson Municipal Airport Authority, lack … standing to sue. Groundhog Day has come to an end. Accordingly, we vacate the order of the district court and remand with instructions to dismiss.”
Jackson’s mayor and city council remain as plaintiffs, and the authority members could appeal Tuesday’s order, but the federal appeals court has appeared to make clear it doesn’t believe the challenge should be in federal court.
“This suit is nothing more than a political dispute between state and local governments over control of an airport and the land around it,” the court wrote Tuesday. “One side has dragged that fight into federal court by tricking it out in equal protection colors. That won’t fly.”
The state Legislature in 2016 passed a measure that would abolish the Jackson Municipal Airport Authority and replace it with a regional authority with members from the cirt of Jackson and Madison and Rankin counties. Currently, the Jackson mayor and council appoint JMAA’s members.
Under the new regional authority, the governor would appoint five members including one each from lists supplied by the Jackson City Council, Madison supervisors and Rankin supervisors. The lieutenant governor would appoint one and the mayor of Jackson one. The adjutant general of the Mississippi National Guard and director of the Mississippi Development Authority would also serve on the nine-member authority.
City leaders and Jackson’s lawmakers have opposed the move, and the city and authority in its litigation claimed the move was racially motivated by a group of white lawmakers and violated Jackson citizens’ voting rights. They point out state leaders are treating Jackson differently — an argument city leaders have also made on the state’s takeover of policing and courts in the downtown Jackson area and efforts by lawmakers to take over the city’s troubled water system, which is now under federal control.
U.S. District Judge Carlton Reeves has ruled in favor of the city and JMAA several times in the airport litigation, but then has been reversed by the Fifth Circuit.
On Nov. 15, Deep South Today’s network of newsrooms, Mississippi Today and Verite News, hosted a members-only program exploring the pressing challenges facing journalism in the South and their connection to the national fight for press freedom.
Mississippi Today Editor-in-Chief Adam Ganucheau and Verite News Editor-in-Chief Terry Baquet were joined by national press freedom experts Emily Wilkins, president of the National Press Club, and William McCarren, director of the Press Freedom Center. Together, they discussed the critical role local newsrooms play in holding power to account, how journalists can prepare for ongoing threats to press freedom, and how the public can support these efforts.
As nonprofit newsrooms, Mississippi Today and Verite News rely on reader support to power their work. Events like this are exclusive membership benefits. Learn more about becoming a member at mississippitoday.org/donate or veritenews.org/donate.
Watch the discussion:
As a nonprofit newsroom, Mississippi Today relies on reader donations to power our work. This programming is a membership perk. Learn more about becoming a Mississippi Today member at mississippitoday.org/donate.
Monday’s news that Mississippi College will become Mississippi Christian University and discontinue the sport of football caught everyone off guard, including the Clevelands. Fred McAfee, the most famous player in M.C. history, heard the news on the radio and said he felt like he had lost a family member. The Saints, Ole Miss-Florida, and college basketball are also discussed.
President-elect Donald Trump’s announcement to nominate former U.S. Rep. Matt Gaetz as attorney general has, again, thrust Mississippi Congressman Michael Guest, chairman of the House Ethics Committee, into the national spotlight.
Guest’s committee will potentially vote at its Wednesday meeting whether to release an ethics report on Gaetz. The committee, which was investigating Florida’s Gaetz over allegations of sexual misconduct and illicit drug use, was set to release the report before Gaetz abruptly resigned from Congress.
Guest is a Republican who represents Mississippi’s 3rd Congressional District and has chaired the bipartisan House committee that investigates whether House members have committed ethics violations since January 2023.
Gaetz resigned last week shortly after Trump announced he planned to nominate him to lead the Department of Justice, despite having been previously investigated by the department for alleged sex trafficking crimes. The department declined to pursue criminal charges against Gaetz.
After the resignation, House Speaker Mike Johnson announced that he does not want the House to make the committee’s report public because Gaetz is no longer in office.
Guest declined to comment to Mississippi Today about recent developments with the committee’s investigation into Gaetz. But the Mississippi Republican told Politico that the panel will make its own decision about releasing the report, regardless of Johnson’s opinion that it should be kept under wraps. Lawmakers on both sides of the aisle have called for the report to be provided to senators before a confirmation vote on Gaetz and-or to the public.
Guest is the former district attorney of Rankin and Madison counties. He also gained national attention when he introduced a resolution last year to expel New York Congressman George Santos from the House.
Some U.S. senators such as Republican John Cornyn of Texas have publicly called for the Ethics Committee to hand over its report of the Gaetz investigation. Neither of Mississippi’s two U.S. senators, Roger Wicker and Cindy Hyde-Smith, sit on the Senate Judiciary Committee, but they will get to vote on the nomination if it reaches the full Senate.
Wicker, a Republican from Tupelo, told Mississippi Today that the Senate has the constitutional obligation to “provide the president with advice and consent on executive and judicial branch nominations” and he takes that responsibility seriously. He did not comment on Gaetz.
“I think that we are in a position to give President-elect Trump good advice on what is likely to work,” Wicker said. We are going to fulfill our constitutional role, and we are going to do so as friends of the president-elect and as members of a team who want him to be as successful as possible.”
Hyde-Smith, a Republican from Brookhaven, did not respond to a request for comment.
Fred McAfee runs for yardage in the snow in Mississippi College’s 3-0 victory over Jacksonville State in the 1989 Division II National Championship game at Florence, Ala. The championship was later vacated because the Choctaws far exceeded NCAA Division II scholarship limitations. (Photo courtesy Mississippi Sports Hall of Fame)
Monday’s news that Mississippi College – soon to be Mississippi Christian University – will no longer field a football team seemed to come out of nowhere. “Shocking” is the word many have used to describe the news.
Rick Cleveland
“I feel like I just lost a family member,” said Mississippi Sports Hall of Famer Fred “Fast Freddie” McAfee, one of the two most famous football players in Mississippi College history. “I remember playing my last regular season game against Delta State before an overflow crowd. I remember winning a national championship. I just can’t believe it has come to this.”
Many readers might wonder who the other most famous Mississippi College player was. That would have been the remarkable Edwin “Goat” Hale, a College Football Hall of Famer who in 1916 led the Choctaws to a 74-6 victory over Ole Miss. You read that correctly. Mississippi College 74, Ole Miss 6. MC also defeated Mississippi State, Southern Miss, Tulane and many other southern football powers early in the 20th century.
Mississippi College competed in football for 117 years. There’s a lot of history there, both good and bad, including that 1989 NCAA Division II National Championship, later vacated for scholarship violations. McAfee, a star player on that team, says he never was on more than a half scholarship in his four years at MC.
Fred McAfee was a special teams ace.
And McAfee, who later made All-Pro in the NFL, surely didn’t receive any NIL (name, image and likeness) money, which is one stated reason why Mississippi College made its decision to drop the sport. We will get to that.
First, this: There are many losers with this decision: the coaches, who no longer have a job; long-time Mississippi College football fans who no longer have a favorite team; and even Delta State, which loses its arch-rival. Delta State football coach Todd Cooley, whose Statesman defeated MC 20-14 on Nov. 16 in what apparently is the last football game MC will ever play, called the MC decision “very disappointing” and added, “I just hate it for the players and the coaches.”
But make no mistake: The biggest losers are the MC football players, who really do play for the love of the game. They must decide if they love it enough to play it somewhere else and, if so, then find a school that will take them.
Dr. Blake Thompson, the Mississippi College president in his seventh year at the helm, says he hurts for those players but at the same time strongly believes that the decision to drop football – along with the name change – are in the best, long-term interest of the school. One primary reason is economics.
“I don’t have the exact numbers in front of me, but we’re looking at close to $2 million that we can save to put into our other sports programs, upgrade our facilities, and also put into other areas, including, of course, academics,” Thompson said. “We have a long standing tradition of academic excellence. We have among the highest incoming ACT scores of any school in the state. We’re proud of that.”
Dr. Blake Thompson
Thompson continued, “We also have bold aspirations for the future. I like the model of schools like Belmont University (Nashville), which doesn’t play football but has become quite competitive at the Division I level in baseball and basketball and other sports. Dallas Baptist, like us a faith-based school, has become a Division I baseball power.”
Thompson, who formerly worked at Ohio State, is in the middle of a seven-year term on the powerful NCAA Division II Presidents Council, and, consequently, is familiar with all aspects of of college athletics. “We’ve tried to look at the overall landscape of college athletics and determine where we stand and where we want to stand in that landscape,” he said. “We want to excel in everything we do. Sometimes, that requires tough decisions.”
One firm decision, Thompson says, “We are not in a place where we are going to be paying players. We are not going to play in that space.”
Over its last 10 full seasons, MC has won just 28 games, lost 74. Since the 1989 “championship” season MC has won 144, lost 200 and tied four. Those numbers will never be confused with Thompson’s goal of “excellence” in all MC does. None of that changes the fact, Thompson says, that this has been a gut-wrenching, quite emotional decision.
“My commitment since I got here seven years ago has been to care for these students,” he said. “All scholarship arrangements will be the same through the end of this school year. For those players who want to remain in school here, we will work with them, find scholarship money where we can from other sources. For those who want to continue playing football, we will help them every way we can with the transfer portal.”
The rest of the Gulf South Conference, including Delta State, faces a different and difficult situation. MC’s decision now leaves the league with only four football playing members: Delta State, No. 1 ranked Valdosta State, West Alabama and West Florida. The GSC was once known as the SEC of Division II football conferences. And, indeed, the four remaining football members all play the sport at a high level and all have won at least one national championship. But can four teams really be called a conference?
