| Wednesday, May 27, 2026 |
| University recognizes exemplary staff members during annual MSU Zacharias Awards | |
 | Mississippi State is recognizing a dozen university staff members for their exemplary professionalism and dedication with this year's Donald W. Zacharias Distinguished Staff Awards. A tribute to the university's 15th president, the Zacharias awards were presented May 22 during the annual Staff Appreciation Day, organized by the MSU Staff Council. "This is one of the most dynamic universities anywhere in the nation, and it's great because of the people I'm looking at -- all of you. Y'all run this campus," said MSU President Mark E. Keenum, who presented the awards and congratulated award winners, as well as all nominees. "Thank you for all that you do." "Your university annually contributes $4 billion to Mississippi's economy," Keenum added. "That's massive in our state, and for every dollar that we receive from the state of Mississippi in appropriations, we generate $25 directly back to the state. There's not a better return on the tax dollar from an investment standpoint than Mississippi State University, so that's something we should all be very proud of -- what we do to contribute to the wellbeing of our state and in educating these wonderful students who go off and do amazing things with their Mississippi State degrees." |
| Beth Ford Wants You to Know That American Farmers Are in Crisis | |
 | Talk about versatility. Beth Ford had worked at six companies spanning five industries, including Pepsi, Mobil and Scholastic, before arriving at Land O'Lakes. As CEO of one of the only cooperatives in the Fortune 500, today she's answerable not to shareholders or investors but to thousands of decentralized owner-members. Half of the U.S.'s harvested acres flow through the Land O'Lakes network. What does she see from her vantage? A gathering storm in American agriculture. She believes the country isn't paying enough attention. With bankruptcies doubling in the past year, median farm income is trending downward, and roughly 90% of family-owned farms and ranches rely on alternative sources of income to survive. While some operations thrive, less than 5% of farms are profitable. Growers have been hit especially hard. To raise awareness, Ford, 62, has brought farmers to President Trump's office to share their troubles. An outspoken advocate, she's called for immigration reform, a new farm bill and infrastructure investment as she champions an industry contributing more than $1.5 trillion to the U.S. economy. |
| EXCLUSIVE: Gipson talks gubernatorial run in interview with Magnolia Tribune | |
| Andy Gipson launched his gubernatorial bid in June of last year, becoming the first announced Republican to throw his hat in the ring for Mississippi's chief executive in what is likely to be a crowded field in the 2027 statewide election cycle. "We launched this campaign in June of 2025 and the response has been very, very positive and sometimes overwhelming," Gipson told Magnolia Tribune in a recent interview. "People started asking for yard signs really early and I just have gone ahead and got them and give them to folks when they see me." Gipson has served as Mississippi's Commissioner of Agriculture and Commerce since 2018, leading the statewide Department of Agriculture. Food security is one of Gipson's primary issues he hopes will resonate with Mississippians. Gipson want to take what is already Mississippi's largest industry, agriculture, and double it. "The way we do that is to bring back the processing, storage, distribution of local food products to our local stores and to our local region and country," the commissioner said. |
| Neshoba County Fair political speaking schedule announced | |
| Political speaking at the 2026 Neshoba County Fair will begin on Wednesday, June 24, and continue through Thursday at Founders Square. Wednesday's program begins at 9:30 a.m. with state Sen. Lane Taylor of Philadelphia, followed by 3rd District congressional candidate Michael Chiaradino and U.S. Senate candidates Ty Pinkins and Scott Colom, as well as state Treasurer David McRae, Attorney General Lynn Fitch, and Lt. Gov. Delbert Hosemann. Thursday's slate opens at 9 a.m. with state Rep. Scott Bounds of Philadelphia and Central District Public Service Commissioner DeKeither Stamps and Transportation Commissioner Willie Simmons, then continues with Supreme Court Justices Jenifer Branning of Philadelphia and Kenny Griffis. The program concludes with Agriculture Commissioner Andy Gipson, Secretary of State Michael Watson, House Speaker Jason White, and Gov. Tate Reeves, who is scheduled to speak at 10:30 a.m. |
| Mississippi leader weighs in on Pope Leo AI stance | |
 | Mississippi's chief economic development official, Bill Cork, used his personal blog on May 25 to gently push back on Pope Leo's assessments on artificial intelligence. Pope Leo had urged governments to slow down and closely regulate the development of AI systems in his first major document, released on May 25, warning that they spread misinformation, prioritize conflict and risk leading the world down a path of unending war. The first U.S. pope called for ownership of AI data not to be left solely in private hands, for policy-makers to protect the rights of workers and keep children safe from the technology, and urged the cooling of competition between AI companies. In his blog, Cork, who is a practicing Catholic, said he understands where the Pope's perceptions are, but doesn't necessarily agree on all points. Cork was respectful of the pontiff, but as the Mississippi Development Authority Executive Director, he is the first Mississippi official to speak out on the Pope, who has been vocal on many issues in recent weeks and months, including his connecting AI as a form of slavery and denouncing the church's historical role in slavery. |
| Gulf shrimpers want help from Congress as fuel costs climb | |
 | When Acy Cooper finished building a new 31-foot trawler, he had a problem: his wife had just given birth to their daughter. And it's tradition to name boats after a woman. "So how do you do that and cover both of 'em?" he asked. Cooper found a simple solution. He took his newborn daughter's first name and his wife's middle name and christened the vessel the Lacy Kay. That was in 1983. For the next 40-plus years, the Lacy Kay was the main ship in Cooper's three-boat fleet, hauling in thousands and thousands of pounds of shrimp from the Gulf. But not this year. These days, the Lacy Kay remains tied to the dock in Venice, Louisiana, about an hour's drive south of Port Sulphur, where Cooper is now piloting rented vessels, ferrying oil rig workers to and from the platforms that dot the Gulf. He's been shrimping since he was 15, working alongside his father before getting his first boat. He's still adjusting to having a boss instead of being one. "I'm making money," Cooper said. "Not what I would be making, but you take what you can get." He took the second job to help make ends meet after his fuel costs spiked more than half in just three months. Blake Price, director of the Southern Shrimp Alliance, which lobbies on behalf of commercial shrimpers from North Carolina to Texas, says the industry was already limping before this year's fuel crisis hit. |
| Vance calls Pope Leo's AI warnings 'profound' | |
 | Vice President JD Vance praised Pope Leo XIV on Tuesday for issuing a new theological document rife with warnings about unbridled advancements in AI. The text, Leo's first encyclical since his installation as pope last year, urged a restraint that doesn't stop progress but, rather, functions as the "exercise of responsible care for the human family." Vance, a Catholic and a proponent of AI technology, said in a telephone interview with NBC News that he had yet to read the entire encyclical but had scanned "bits and pieces" and summaries of it. "What I read of it sounds very profound, and the sort of thing that you would expect and hope from a leader of the church," he said. Vance's interview Tuesday was his first to preview his forthcoming book, "Communion," set to be released June 16 by HarperCollins. The book traces Vance's faith journey -- a Protestant upbringing, a drift into atheism and, most recently, a conversion to Catholicism. |
| NDAA mark unveiled by House Armed Services Committee chairman | |
 | The House Armed Services Committee chairman released on Tuesday a proposed $1.15 trillion fiscal 2027 National Defense Authorization Act that emphasizes bolstering America's defense industry. The so-called chairman's mark from Rep. Mike D. Rogers, R-Ala., would authorize almost $1.15 trillion for the base-budget part of President Donald Trump's record $1.5 trillion defense proposal for fiscal 2027. But fully $350 billion of Trump's request would come via a separate reconciliation measure that Congress may have trouble enacting in this session. A GOP aide on the House Armed Services Committee told reporters Tuesday the chairman's mark did not attempt to "pad" its base budget measure with funding for priorities that the president offloaded onto the reconciliation request. Many of the administration's top priorities -- from drones to missile defense to munitions -- are contained in the reconciliation request. "We did not secret squirrel money away," the aide said. The committee plans to mark up the fiscal 2027 NDAA on June 4. The Senate Armed Services Committee has yet to announce its markup schedule for the companion bill. |
| Trump to hold Cabinet meeting amid declining approval on Iran, economy | |
 | President Donald Trump canceled a trip with his Cabinet to Camp David set for Wednesday, citing forecasts of bad weather as the reason he won't make what would have been a rare visit to the rural presidential retreat. Instead, Trump said, he will convene his Cabinet at the White House, a meeting that comes as he seeks to negotiate an end to the war with Iran and boost his flagging approval ratings ahead of the fall midterms. The White House had announced plans Tuesday morning for the meeting at Camp David, which would have been only the second time Trump visited since returning to office. But Trump wrote on social media in the evening that he would be "postponing the Cabinet trip to Camp David" because of possible bad weather and would meet at the White House. Showers and storms are in the forecast for Wednesday. A White House official told The Washington Post that foreign and domestic issues will be discussed during Wednesday's meeting. Other recent presidents used Camp David far more than Trump has. Former president George W. Bush visited the retreat nearly 150 times during his eight years in office, according to data compiled at the time by White House journalist Mark Knoller. |
| Donald Trump's revenge tour might not end in 2026 | |
 | Donald Trump just ousted another Republican he viewed as insufficiently loyal. Two years from now, his revenge list could be even longer. The president has already lashed out at two House Republicans due to perceived slights, with the White House floating a longer list of potential targets over the past year. Trump could also take aim at several GOP senators up for reelection in 2028 -- including Alaska's Lisa Murkowski, Kentucky's Rand Paul and Indiana's Todd Young -- as he seeks to make a lasting mark on the Republican Party in the final stretch of his presidency. The prospect that Trump's much-ballyhooed "revenge tour" could continue into another election cycle was underscored by his late decision to endorse against Texas Sen. John Cornyn, who lost his renomination bid Tuesday night to Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton. But the real fireworks could come in 2028 Senate primaries, which could feature several of Trump's most persistent critics. |
| Medical student overcomes personal hardship after father's ALS diagnosis | |
 | Jonathan Parke, a Clinton, Mississippi, native, always planned to follow in his family's footsteps. When his father was diagnosed with ALS during his third year of medical school, Parke said his faith has kept him at peace as his father's condition progresses. "Sometimes things can be so bad that it doesn't feel real almost at the same time," Parke said. "It was so heavy and so much to think about that when I'm helpless and I have no other way of going about it and don't know how to go about it, the first thing that I do is to get on my knees and get into prayer." Parke's father, Ivan Parke, was a professor in the Department of Christian Studies and Philosophy at Mississippi College. He had taught at the university for more than 20 years before retiring due to his illness. Dr. Mike McMullan is the associate dean for student affairs at the school of medicine. He has known the Parke family for years, even before Jonathan arrived at UMMC. McMullan believes Parke's experience with his father's illness will help him excel in his career as a doctor. "He is a very genuine and sincere individual who's very hard-working," McMullan said. "He's able to deal with patients in a professional and engaging manner. He is a guy who really wants to understand his patients and relate to his patients." McMullan said Parke's father was his interim pastor at Broadmoor Baptist Church in Madison. He said Ivan was inspirational as a pastor. The last book Ivan Parke wrote was about Job from the Bible. |
| UMMC AirCare expands fleet with addition of fixed-wing aircraft | |
| The University of Mississippi Medical Center AirCare flight team is preparing to expand its fleet with the addition of a fixed-wing aircraft and is looking to hire 10 additional medical staff members to support the new service. The aircraft, a Pilatus PC-12 provided through UMMC's partnership with Global Medical Response, will become the fifth vehicle in the AirCare fleet, expanding the program's ability to provide in-state and regional patient transport. "Adding a fixed-wing aircraft is a natural evolution for AirCare and gives us another tool to serve patients across Mississippi and the surrounding region," said Jeremy Benson, director of the Mississippi Center for Emergency Services, and program director for AirCare-Helicopter Transport. "It allows us to move patients safely and efficiently over longer distances, particularly when rotor-wing transport may not be the most practical option." AirCare is currently hiring for several positions to support the expansion of the flight program, including Flight Paramedic, Critical Care Paramedic and RN Flight / Transport roles. |
| Millsaps agrees to cover at least half of tuition for eligible JPS students | |
| Eligible Jackson Public Schools students will now be able to attend Millsaps College with at least half of their tuition covered under a new partnership announced Tuesday. The agreement, finalized through a memorandum of understanding between the two institutions, provides renewable undergraduate scholarships covering at least 50% of tuition for JPS students who meet Millsaps' standard admissions requirements. The scholarships may be renewed for up to four years. Millsaps officials said the initiative is designed to help more Jackson students pursue higher education locally while creating a stronger long-term workforce pipeline within Mississippi. "Mississippi's future depends on our ability to educate, retain and empower homegrown talent," Millsaps President Frank Neville said in a statement. "This partnership creates a clear pathway for Jackson students and families to see a future for themselves right here." The agreement also extends benefits to Jackson Public Schools employees and families. Dependents of full-time JPS faculty and staff will also qualify for the undergraduate tuition scholarship. |
| War of Words Over U. of Florida's Presidential Pick | |
 | Controversy is once again swirling over the University of Florida's presidential pick. When UF announced former University of Alabama president Stuart R. Bell as the sole finalist for its presidency last week, it bucked the prevailing trend in the Sunshine State, where other public institutions have prioritized hiring former Republican lawmakers over seasoned academics. In the hiring announcement, UF touted various accomplishments from Bell's 10-year run at Alabama, which ended in 2025. Under his leadership, Alabama saw its rankings and retention rates increase, won multiple college football championships, and achieved R-1 status. Republican governor Ron DeSantis -- who wields significant influence over presidential hires in the state -- signaled his support, nodding to Bell's success during his time at Alabama. "Dr. Bell did much to elevate the University of Alabama when he was the president in Tuscaloosa and I have no doubt that he will help UF reach new heights during his tenure in Gainesville," DeSantis wrote on X. "He is a great selection and has my full support!" But like the previous presidential hiring cycle at UF, Bell's selection soon sparked controversy. |
| White nationalist expelled from U. of Florida will argue free speech at trial | |
 | The University of Florida is going to trial May 27 to defend its expulsion of a self-described white nationalist for an antisemitic post on social media. The federal case could test just how far a public university can go in punishing offensive speech. And UF, the state's flagship university, is often touted by Gov. Ron DeSantis as a bastion for free expression. At issue is UF law student Preston Damsky. He first gained national attention last summer after his controversial remarks became the focus of town halls. He even got the highest grade in a class for his classwork and essay outlining his extremist views, which prompted national outrage. The lawsuit's outcome could be significant for students across Florida – and even across the country -- who face discipline from their state universities for speech considered antithetical to American values, or that may appear threatening or hateful. |
| What happened when one university set out to purge 'woke' classes | |
| Students in both classrooms were considering historic events. In Introduction to Sociology, the discussion was about globalization. Three buildings over, a Civil Discourse class was debating 1798 America and the federal government's battle with the states for supremacy. Both courses fall within the broad field of study known as the humanities. But at the University of Florida, the class on early America is part of a growing and well-funded effort to counter what the state considers "woke" liberal indoctrination, while the sociology class is considered a prime example of the problem. One of these classes is being nurtured; the other strangled. The Civil Discourse class is offered by the Hamilton School for Classical and Civic Education, which in just a few years has grown from an idea into a full-fledged school with nearly 50 professors, four majors, 69 classes this spring and tens of millions of dollars appropriated directly by the Florida legislature. Not so for Introduction to Sociology. Beginning this fall, the class, which covers issues of class, inequality, race and gender, will no longer count as one of the general education courses required for graduation. Enrollment is expected to plummet. |
| U. of Texas Board Makes It Easier to Fire Faculty, Close Programs | |
| Faculty members at the University of Texas at Austin say new systemwide personnel policy changes could pave the way for politically motivated program closures and further disenfranchise faculty from decision-making related to their own departments. And, according to the Board of Regents' recent meeting agenda, more policy changes are on the way. The revised rule 31003, approved unanimously last week by voice vote, establishes new grounds to close academic departments. In addition to academic reasons -- such as low enrollment or poor program quality -- and financial exigency, presidents can now shutter programs due to "extraordinary circumstances" that necessitate "accelerated program closure due to regulatory requirements" and bypass typical review procedures. They were developed "in collaboration with stakeholders throughout the U.T. System," the agenda states. But faculty members were not made aware of the changes, said Brian Evans, an engineering professor at UT Austin and president of the Texas American Association of University Professors–American Federation of Teachers. Most faculty learned about the proposed revisions when the board posted the agenda 72 hours before the board meeting, which is the minimum notice period required by Texas law, Evans explained. |
| Baptist Church Funds Mizzou's Defunded Black Student Council | |
| A Baptist church is stepping in to fund the Legion of Black Collegians, the University of Missouri's historic Black student council, after the university moved to cut the student governing body's designated annual funding. Mizzou leaders announced last month that they planned to stop official funding for the Legion of Black Collegians and at least several other minority affinity groups, starting in July, in response to a U.S. Department of Justice memo restricting diversity, equity and inclusion efforts. The Rev. Howard-John Wesley, the pastor of Alfred Street Baptist Church in Virginia, told churchgoers on Sunday that "we decided we are not going to let that student organization fail to have programming." The church helped the student council create its own 501(c)(3) to receive the funds. Wesley said the move sends a message to the Trump administration: "When you don't support us, we support our own." |
| Woman fired by Indiana university over Charlie Kirk post to receive $225,000 legal settlement | |
 | A woman fired by an Indiana university over her Facebook post criticizing conservative activist Charlie Kirk after he was killed will receive $225,000 to settle a lawsuit that accused her former employer of violating her free-speech rights, the woman's attorneys said Tuesday. The American Civil Liberties Union announced the settlement in a federal lawsuit it filed last year on behalf of Suzanne Swierc against Ball State University President Geoffrey Mearns. Swierc worked as director of health promotion and advocacy at Ball State's campus in Muncie, Indiana, before she was fired last September. Ball State cited Swierc's private Facebook post about Kirk as the sole reason for her termination, saying it caused "significant disruption" to the campus. Swierc's firing violated her constitutional rights because she was "speaking as a private citizen on a matter of public concern," said Stevie Pactor, an ACLU attorney in Indiana. |
| The First Class of AI Natives Is Graduating. Offices Are Getting Ready. | |
| Emma Kanjorski doesn't consider herself an advanced AI user---at least compared with some of her fellow 2026 graduates. She avoided ChatGPT for much of her time at the University of Vermont because she didn't want to cut corners. Eventually, though, she figured out how AI could help her parse dense financial reports and process data. By senior year, the business major was advising younger classmates on using AI to gut-check their case study work and showing a professor how to prompt a "sanity check," or getting AI to critique its own output. Now Kanjorski sees AI as a potential edge when she starts as a financial analyst at an insurer in Burlington this summer, a spot she feels lucky to have after applying to around 40 jobs. "I would like to be the person who can help other people understand it better or figure out how it fits into their day-to-day," she said. Here comes the Class of AI, the most AI-native group of graduates to enter the workforce -- a cohort employers are already trying to figure out what to do with. They started college just a few months before ChatGPT splashed into the world. They're leaving as AI rapidly shakes up the entry-level jobs that were once thought of as solid career launchpads. |
| Trump, GOP put pressure on ABA over rolling back DEI initiative | |
 | The American Bar Association (ABA) is moving closer to rolling back a key diversity initiative in an effort to hang on as the nation's law school accreditor while the Trump administration and Republicans ramp up pressure on such DEI initiatives. In recent years, conservatives have looked to sideline the ABA over concerns it leans politically to the left. They no longer view it as a neutral group that can be trusted. Front and center in the fight are the ABA's diversity initiatives. Under what is known as Standard 206, law schools desiring accreditation must "demonstrate by concrete action a commitment to diversity and inclusion." The standard was suspended the month after Trump took office, and it's not currently set to go into effect until at least August 2027. As conservatives aggressively push back, the ABA might now scrap it once and for all. It heads to the ABA House of Delegates for consideration this summer at their annual conference. |
| For most Americans, gas prices are the top public policy concern rising from Iran conflict | |
| Columnist Sid Salter writes: President Donald Trump told the press, going into the Memorial Day weekend travel crush, that a peace deal with Iran is "essentially negotiated." For the sake of Republican candidates in mid-term congressional elections in places where partisan races are actually competitive, they should hope that Trump's assessment is correct. Elections in reliably "red" states like Mississippi are highly unlikely to see partisan shifts over high gas prices and associated rising costs, but in "purple" states where both the GOP and Democrats are competitive, the outlook is decidedly different. The late New York Times writer William Safire of William Safire, wrote about a competing metropolitan newspaper's poll describing a voter as someone who "understands and cares about kitchen-table issues," and noted that those issues were "the problems that everyday working people face in trying to make ends meet." In April, the Pew Research Center reported that of all the possible ramifications of the U.S. conflict with Iran -- sending in American ground troops, large numbers of U.S. casualties, terrorist attacks in the U.S., expansion of hostilities outside the Middle East, or a shortage of U.S. weapons, the largest single concern of Americans was higher gas and fuel prices. |
| Supreme Court Takes Key Title IX Case on College Sports Employees | |
| Last week the U.S. Supreme Court announced it will review former Georgia Tech women's basketball coach MaChelle Joseph's Title IX lawsuit against the school for sex discrimination in employment. The case could open the door to more employment-based Title IX claims brought by coaches, trainers and other athletic department employees at a time when college sports law is in flux, with numerous lawsuits involving college athletes, NIL, antitrust and eligibility. Title IX prohibits discrimination based on sex in education programs that receive federal financial assistance. It can be enforced through private litigation or by federal agencies. As detailed in a Supreme Court brief by Gregory J. Dubinsky and other attorneys and in related court documents, Joseph argues that a coach can use Title IX in employment litigation when the coach's employment -- and her ability to do her job -- was allegedly harmed by inferior treatment of her team. |
SPORTS
| Mississippi State Softball Pulls Off David-Like Shocking Upset at No. 2 Oklahoma, Heads To First College World Series In School History | |
| Samantha Ricketts wanted her players to simplify their thinking. Remove the excess, and focus on the next pitch, the here and now the Mississippi State coach encouraged. Focus was paramount for a team two games from Oklahoma City but one that had the demons of offensive inconsistency a fresh memory. Clearing your thoughts seemed like good advice for most players. Then there was Delainey Everett. It was hard to focus strictly on the enormity of the softball weekend when a key part of your softball past was missing. Everett, whose father Brandan – who had also been her coach through much of her pre-college competition --- died days before the start of the 2025 season, collected herself, properly channeled her emotions, and pitched her teammates to a massive 6-0 upset. He weighed heavy in her thoughts while she pitched State to the most significant win in program history. The Bulldogs cranked out 17 runs in two wins against softball royalty as they earned a spot in the Women's College World Series for the first time. MSU will face No. 4 seed Texas Tech Thursday morning at 11 Central on ESPN. |
| Softball: Five Bulldogs Earn Academic All-District Honors, Goold Academic All-American Finalist | |
| Mississippi State softball saw five student-athletes named to the College Sports Communicators (CSC) Academic All-District team this week. The Bulldogs were represented by Morgan Bernardini, Alyssa Faircloth, Peja Goold, Abby Grace Richardson and Morgan Stiles. Goold is a three-time all-district honoree and will be an Academic All-American finalist for the second year in a row. Bernardini is a two-time all-district honoree at MSU, and Faircloth was an All-American finalist last year while at Troy. Richardson was a junior college Academic All-American in 2023. Goold now advances to a national ballot to be voted on by CSC members. Goold, graduated this spring with a degree in marketing, and will begin a professional playing career this summer with the OKC Spark. She earned her first two CSC honors while at Chattanooga and has earned Academic All-District honors every year of her career (freshmen are ineligible). She was named a Second Team All-American by Softball America and USA Today Sports' SEC Newcomer of the Year. |
| Softball's Big Stages Nothing New For Richardson | |
| Softball's biggest stage awaits Mississippi State beginning Thursday when the Bulldogs play their first-ever Women's College World Series game. MSU will battle in a setting no one in MSU Maroon and White has before. In times like these, with so much on the line, it always helps to have someone to look to and lean on. Enter State senior Abby Grace Richardson whose career has consistently featured ballgames where the stakes were the highest possible. "I think my past has taught me how to win and how to be on a winning team and how to play a leadership role that a team needs," Richardson said. "I think it's all helped me to bring the fight and the grit that it takes to win, even if you're an underdog." To steal and adapt a line from T-Pain, all Richardson does is win, win, win no matter what. Wherever she's been and wherever she's played, success has followed for her teams. |
| Sun sets on SoCon Saturday: SEC ADs vote to end 'cupcake' November nonconference scheduling | |
 | The SEC is officially ending cupcake weekend. Or "SoCon Saturday," as it was also derisively called. SEC athletic directors voted Tuesday to have everyone play a conference game on the penultimate week of the regular season. That will be effective for the 2027 season, ending a tradition that began two decades earlier. "I think that's the end of cupcake weekend in late November," commissioner Greg Sankey said, smiling. "We never got that one sponsored, though." SEC teams became known for scheduling weaker opponents the week before Thanksgiving, sometimes from the Southern Conference of the Football Championship Subdivision, thus the "SoCon Saturday" moniker. It wasn't always just that weekend, sometimes the previous weekend, but either way the programs saw it as a way to give their starters a late-season rest before rivalry games on Thanksgiving weekend. This year, there are four such games scheduled for Nov. 20 (Week 12): Chattanooga at Alabama, Samford at Auburn, Wofford at Ole Miss and Tennessee Tech at Mississippi State. There are five conference games. In the future, they will all be conference games. |
| Georgia's Smart fears massive football budgets will imperil other sports | |
| Kirby Smart is a two-time national champion in the NIL era who works at one of a handful of schools able to routinely fund a massive budget for talent acquisition. But as coaches gathered for the SEC's annual spring meetings on Tuesday, Georgia's Smart was quick to call for sanity in the marketplace. Smart was among a number of SEC coaches to bemoan the massive uptick in spending from revenue sharing and NIL, and he suggested, if trends continue, that the ballooning football budgets will put all Olympic-level sports in peril. "My biggest concern for our sport is we're going to ruin all the other sports," Smart said Tuesday. "People say, well, that's just the way it is. I don't agree with that. We fund Olympic sports at our program and we go to class with [other athletes]. You learn culture by being around those people. But that's why we're talking about student-athletes, which most of you all would argue that there is no student in the athlete. I still think the best thing is to get a degree while also training to be a professional athlete. We're going to lose that if we keep spending because not everybody can spend at the rate we're spending." |
| Laura Rutledge pens heartfelt farewell to SEC Nation: 'It has truly been an honor' | |
 | Laura Rutledge penned an emotional farewell to SEC Nation on Monday, calling her time with the show "one of the most meaningful chapters of my life." It was reported in March that Matt Barrie will replace Rutledge as host of the SEC Nation football pre-game show on the SEC Network this fall. Rutledge is expected to take on larger duties with ESPN's NFL coverage as the network gets set to broadcast its first Super Bowl in February 2027. "SEC Nation has never just been a show to me," she wrote. "It's been a family, a front-row seat to the passion of college football and a weekly reminder of what makes the SEC so special. From the roar of packed stadiums on crisp fall mornings to the quiet, behind-the-scenes moments that viewers never see, every second has meant something. Seeing all of you show up for us every Saturday and feeling genuinely honored you wanted to take pictures and chat will always stick with me." |
| Bipartisan college sports bill with antitrust protection, salary cap for players set to be introduced in days | |
| The bill is finally coming. After years of dead ends, a bipartisan bill on college sports from Sens. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, and ranking member Maria Cantwell, D-Wash., is expected to be introduced within days, sources familiar with the legislation told CBS Sports on Tuesday night. Language for the bill is being finalized and is now moving through the standard pre-introduction process. The bill is expected to carry the prize college sports leaders have chased for the better part of a decade: a limited antitrust exemption regarding player eligibility and transfer rules -- the legal shield that would let the industry write its own rules and enforce them without being challenged in the court system by players seeking additional years on the playing fields and courts. What else is in the bill has largely remained a mystery, frustrating university leaders who previously backed the since-withdrawn SCORE Act, which also promised antitrust protection. As with any bipartisan bill, compromises were part of the process in drafting the Cantwell-Cruz bill, and what did and didn't make it into the upcoming legislation is paramount to the power players. |
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