Greenwood Commonwealth. Dec. 21, 2021.
Editorial: Coaches have no leg to stand on
Mississippi State football coach Mike Leach will find many fans of the game who agree with him and don’t like it when college players decide to skip their school’s bowl game so as to not risk an injury that could hurt their NFL draft stock.
“You’ve got an obligation to the place that helped build and develop you and finish it out in the bowl,” the Bulldog coach was quoted as saying. To not do so, according to Leach, is a betrayal of a player’s teammates, coaches and fans.
There is no doubt that when star players on a bowl-bound team end their season early, it robs the bowl game of some of its glamour and interest.
However, as Blake Toppmeyer, the Southeastern Conference columnist for USA Today points out, one group that has no right to grouse about it are college coaches, who will dump their school and their players in a heartbeat for a more lucrative offer.
Just this year, as Toppmeyer notes, at least six college head coaches, including three from high-profile programs, abandoned their bowl-bound teams to take other jobs, leaving an interim coach to try to hold everything together.
Toppmeyer also dug into Leach’s own past and found the coach has a mixed record when it comes to sticking it out to season’s end with the teams that helped him advance his career. When Leach was hired by Mississippi State in 2020, he did coach his previous school, Washington State, in its bowl game before departing for Starkville. But two decades before that, when Leach landed his first major head coaching job at Texas Tech, he scooted out of Norman, Oklahoma, where he was the offensive coordinator, before the Sooners could play their bowl game.
Just as with coaches who resign prior to season’s end, the players who opt out of bowls are doing so because they think it is in their best financial interest. Although it doesn’t happen often, there are occasions when players suffer serious injury in a bowl game. Such an injury could potentially cost a top-ranked player millions of dollars on an NFL contract. And unless they are on one of the four teams that have qualified for the college playoffs, they know that whatever bowl game their team is in will be modestly followed and quickly forgotten.
College players, without a doubt, have become more mercenary than ever. Deciding whether to play in a bowl game is a rather modest manifestation of that attitude. Changes in the rules to allow players to transfer more easily to other programs and to negotiate with companies for use of the players’ name, image and likeness have turned these athletes — or at least the most talented ones — into professionals for all intents and purposes.
College football has become a microcosm of the NFL. Players at both levels want to help their teams, but they are also highly motivated to help themselves. They know the window of opportunity to make money in their sport is relatively brief for a player — a lot shorter on average than a coach’s.
Fans of college football might not like it when players don’t finish what they started, but it’s to be expected in a sport where money, especially TV revenue, strongly influences what everyone involved does. Coaches and schools have shown for decades that their top priority is their own bottom line. Why should the players be expected to be any different?
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The (Columbus) Dispatch. Dec. 21, 2021.
Editorial: We can all be investors
An item in last week’s Mary Means Business column caught our attention as we head toward the end of one year and the beginning of another.
The column noted that Josh Read, at Edward Jones Investments, has purchased the downtown building at the corner of Main and Fifth Street formerly occupied by The Fashion Barn, which has been vacant and up for sale for close to two years now.
Such transactions are not uncommon in the business column, of course, but what struck us is something Read said about his decision to purchase the property, something we believe can apply to all of us.
Read noted that the building has long been an iconic fixture downtown, but his decision goes far beyond nostalgia. He is, after all, an expert on investing, so his observation carries some weight:
“One of the best investments you can make in your life is in the community,” Read said.
Read’s purchase of The Fashion Barn building is one of several recent downtown developments that are creating a buzz. Just south from The Fashion Barn, Chris Chain’s redevelopment of another historic building, the old Stone Hotel, is nearing completion. A few blocks to the east, the long-awaiting purchase of the sprawling First Baptist Church property should be completed early in 2022 and will create a mixed use development.
It is these kinds of projects that we most often think of when we hear the word “investment.”
But when we consider the term more broadly, we find that there are other ways we can invest in our community that may do as much to shape the future of our community as these developments.
Not all of us are entrepreneurs, business owners or investors, yet all of us have the opportunity to invest in our community.
John Almond is one example of the kind of investors we are talking about. So, too, is Stan Glover.
Soon after moving to Columbus from Arizona, Almond was disturbed by the poverty he saw in Columbus and endeavored to find some small way to help. He began knocking on doors in poor neighborhoods in an attempt to learn what people needed most and discovered that many, many children had no beds to sleep in. With the help of a few friends, he began building beds, just a few at first, since there was little money available. But over the next year, he began building connections with area churches, organizations and businesses. Today the “Bedz4Kids” programs has built beds for more hundreds of children throughout the Golden Triangle. Almond has partnered with Dickie Bryan, who runs a home for men recovering from addiction West Point, under an umbrella organization called The Golden Triangle Dream Center. The Columbus Young Professionals, a program offered by Columbus-Lowndes Chamber of Commerce, is also partnering with the Dream Center.
The synergy created by these collaborations will provide a range of services Almond could not have imagined just a couple of years ago when he first started knocking on doors. It’s proven to be a big investment.
Stan Glover’s investment isn’t likely to evolve into an organization, but it’s one that has not gone unnoticed. Stan has a mental challenge, but has found a way to serve his community. You may have noticed Stan picking up trash around his neighborhood. He’s been doing this for years. On Thursday, BankFirst will hold a short ceremony to honor Stan for his “investment.”
John and Stan are two examples of hundreds of people who invest in our community.
We encourage everyone to invest as well, either through church or civic organizations or through individual donations to a wide array of charitable organizations in our community. Groups like 100+ Women Who Care are an excellent way to invest. So, too, is your local chapter of United Way, which funds and supports other local nonprofits.
Look in your closet. There are warm clothes you don’t wear that would be a godsend. The Salvation Army or Palmer Home will be happy to get those clothes to people who need them.
When we pause to think of all that we have been blessed with, we should all be investors.
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Vicksburg Post. Dec. 10, 2021.
Editorial: EPA Administrator turns blind eye on environmental injustice in South Delta
Michael Regan, Administrator for the Environmental Protection Agency, took a trip from Mississippi to Texas in mid-November, omitting a key location from his tour.
Regan visited public schools in Jackson, communities near oil refineries in the corridor nicknamed “Cancer Alley” and even stopped in New Orleans’ Gordon Plaza neighborhood. He played heavily on emotions, explaining that as the first Black EPA Administrator, the visits were “really personal” because the residents “look like me.”
It would have been prudent, given his agency’s recent gaffe with the rejection of the Yazoo Pumps Project, for Regan to visit with residents in the South Mississippi Delta as well. He was within a two-hour drive of the area, and as has been reported by The Post and quoted by several state lawmakers, the area affected by the pumps is 96 percent minority households. Instead of facing those who are disproportionately affected by the chronic flooding in the area, and owning up to the fact that his agency let them down, Regan chose to ignore them and instead go to locations that are more highly populated and, presumably, where he’d be praised for his promises of change.
Are the people of the South Delta less deserving of this “environmental justice” of which Regan continues to speak? Or are there simply not enough voters for the area to appear on his radar?
While Regan surely meant well in his statements and outward expression of emotion, it seems disingenuous given the recent rejection of the Yazoo Pumps Project. In front of the people of Jackson, of New Orleans and of Reserve, La., it seemed as though he was pandering to constituents while ignoring other issues. While he is appointed rather than elected, Regan still seemed to be practicing the “D.C. dip and twirl,” giving classic politicians’ responses.
It’s not that the people of the communities Regan chose to grace with his presence have problems that are more or less severe than the plight of those in the South Delta — they most certainly are grave circumstances and that’s not up for debate. The issue here is Regan’s willingness to showboat in front of some while failing to address others.
Regan was quoted saying he wanted to “put faces and names with this term that we call environmental justice,” but why didn’t that extend to the South Delta? Where is their justice?
If Regan truly wants to go to a place where issues are hard to ignore, as he put it, he should pay a visit to those disproportionately affected by continuous flooding in and around the Yazoo and Mississippi rivers. Perhaps, in viewing row after row of flood-ravaged homes, field after field of damaged crops and decimated wildlife resources, Regan will deem the South Delta and its residents worthy of this environmental justice he claims to seek.
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