Mississippi
Mississippi Sports Hall of Fame announces Class of 2025
The Mississippi Sports Hall of Fame Tuesday announced its 2025 induction class, and it is star-studded with championship coaches and athletes from football, baseball, basketball and golf.
In alphabetical order, the 2025 inductees are:
- Scott Berry, baseball coach, at first Meridian Community College and more famously at Southern Miss, where his teams won 10 conference championships. Combined record as a head coach: 500 victories. At Southern Miss his teams won 528 games, lost 276 and tied one. They won 10 conference championships and he was five times a conference coach of the year.
- Steve Freeman, Mississippi State and NFL football star and longtime NFL official, who is among the career pass interception leaders at both State and for the Buffalo Bills. He was one of the key cogs of State’s 1974 Sun Bowl team that won nine games and was one of the leaders of a Bills’ defense that was the NFL’s best in 1980.
- Mike Justice, high school football coach. His teams won 297 games and lost only 98 over 35 seasons. He won championships at virtually every level of high school football. His 1999 Madison Central team is generally considered one of the best — if not the best — in Mississippi history.
- Dexter McCluster, Ole Miss and NFL running back/kick returner who made All-SEC and All American for the Rebels and then played eight seasons in the NFL.
- Derrick Nix, Southern Miss running back. Nix, who also coached collegiately at Southern Miss and Ole Miss and is currently the offensive coordinator at Auburn, was one of the all-time greats at Southern Miss, despite playing much of his career with a life-threatening kidney disease.
- Steve Rives, high school and Delta State basketball coach, whose teams won more than 700 games. At Jackson Prep, his teams won 260 games while losing only 23. At Delta State, Rives’ coaching record was 388-188.
- Robbie Webb, golfer and golf teacher, who will be inducted posthumously. After at outstanding college career at Southern Miss, Webb became the longtime pro at Canton and Deerfield country clubs. Webb taught and coached many future college golfers and amateur and professional champions.
- Mo Williams, basketball standout in high school, college and NBA, now the head basketball coach at Jackson State. Williams was a McDonald’s All-American at Murrah before playing two years at Alabama and then 13 years in the NBA. Williams averaged 13 points and five assists a game for his 13-year pro career.
Clearly, it’s an outstanding class, which includes several sports heroes. I have had the good fortune to cover all as a journalist and have fond memories of each. What follow are some stories you may not know:
As a junior golfer growing up in Gulfport, Webb played often with Mississippi Sports Hall of Famer Mary Mills, who would go on to win nine LPGA golf championships, including three majors. Later on, Mills played No. 1 on the Millsaps men’s golf team when Webb was playing No. 1 at Southern Miss. In a dual match once at the old Millsaps golf course, Mills led Webb one-up at the nine-hole turn. Southern Miss coach B.O. Van Hook chided Webb: “Hell, Webb, you gonna let a girl beat you.” Webb promptly took his golf bag off his shoulders and handed his clubs to his coach, saying, “Here, Hook, you try her…”
Mo Williams will be remembered as one of Mississippi’s most accomplished basketball players in history, but probably could have played professionally in baseball or football as well. Says John Richardson, the former Ole Miss football player who coached Williams at Chasten Middle School and now works as a jack-of-all-trades at the MSHOF museum, “Mo could have been a great quarterback in the SEC or probably a Major League shortstop. He was just so gifted and worked so hard at anything he tried. He was my quarterback at Chastain and we were undefeated. He could throw it or run it and nobody could stop him. I was a little disappointed when he chose to concentrate on basketball, but I’d say it worked out OK for him.”
I covered state championship victories for Justice both at Louisville and Madison Central. In a quick interview after his undefeated 1999 Madison Central team ransacked Provine in a state championship game, I asked, already knowing the answer: “Mike, do you know how many passes y’all threw tonight?” He thought for a couple seconds and then answered: “Well, I know if we threw one it was a damned audible.” They threw none.
McCluster originally committed to play football at South Florida before a late recruiting visit from then-Ole Miss coach Ed Oregon. Said McCluster: “I’ll never forget it. We were playing football, using a couch pillow for the ball, in my living room. Coach O would fake a handoff to me and throw a pass across the room to my mother. He sold me, sold my whole family. He told me I could be Reggie Bush at Ole Miss. That man could recruit.” And Dexter McCluster surely could run.
Before Tuesday’s press conference, I knew Steve Rives won a whole bunch of basketball games both in high schools and at Delta State. I knew coaches around the state considered him a master strategist and motivator. What I did not know is this: At Delta State, Rives was 8-0 vs. Mississippi Sports Hall of Famer Davey Whitney, one of my favorite all-time coaches and people. I guarantee you this: Nobody else, anywhere, can say that.
Nix was recruited by virtually every football power in the country but chose Southern Miss because his brother Tyrone played and coached there and because Jeff Bower promised him he could play running back, whereas Alabama, Auburn, Florida and others were recruiting him primarily as a linebacker. He became surely one of the greatest backs in USM history and surely would have made millions in the NFL if not for the kidney disease that almost killed him. “Derrick Nix had it all,” Pittsburgh Steelers scout Dan Rooney once told Sports Illustrated. “He reminded me of Deuce McAllister. He had a gliding style, so strong and fast. He was a can’t-miss prospect, the kind any NFL team would love to have.”
Steve Freeman has retired as an NFL official, but his son, Brad, the former Mississippi State baseball star, still officiates in the league. Asked if he misses it, Steve replied, “Nah, man, I am too old for all that travel. At 67, I looked around and noticed most of the guys were 25 to 30 years old. I knew it was time for me to go to the house.” Both the Freemans have officiated Super Bowls.
Over the years, Scott Berry has reminded me of Mississippi baseball legend Boo Ferriss in so many ways, most of them involving character and integrity and how much he cared about his players. One other similarity was how the two men manicured their baseball fields, at least until Southern Miss switched to artificial turf. Like Ferriss, Berry tended to the baseball field, making sure every blade of grass and every speck of dirt was just so. Once, when his daughter Kathryn Grace went to work with him, and watched him tend the field so painstakingly, the little girl asked him, “Daddy, is this your garden?” It really was, and on it Berry grew winners. He retired in 2023 after his seventh straight 40-victory season at a time when no other Division I program in the country had more five.
The Class of 2025 will be inducted in ceremonies next August.
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Odds of winning the Powerball and Mega Millions are NOT in your favor
Odds of hitting the jackpot in Mega Millions or Powerball are around 1-in-292 million. Here are things that you’re more likely to land than big bucks.
The Mississippi Lottery offers several draw games for those aiming to win big.
Here’s a look at July 16, 2026, results for each game:
Winning Mississippi Match 5 numbers from July 16 drawing
02-09-28-33-35
Check Mississippi Match 5 payouts and previous drawings here.
Winning Cash 3 numbers from July 16 drawing
Midday: 8-1-2, FB: 5
Evening: 8-7-4, FB: 5
Check Cash 3 payouts and previous drawings here.
Winning Cash 4 numbers from July 16 drawing
Midday: 2-0-5-6, FB: 5
Evening: 5-3-9-0, FB: 5
Check Cash 4 payouts and previous drawings here.
Winning Cash Pop numbers from July 16 drawing
Midday: 14
Evening: 10
Check Cash Pop payouts and previous drawings here.
Feeling lucky? Explore the latest lottery news & results
Story continues below gallery.
Are you a winner? Here’s how to claim your lottery prize
Winnings of $599 or less can be claimed at any authorized Mississippi Lottery retailer.
Prizes between $600 and $99,999, may be claimed at the Mississippi Lottery Headquarters or by mail. Mississippi Lottery Winner Claim form, proper identification (ID) and the original ticket must be provided for all claims of $600 or more. If mailing, send required documentation to:
Mississippi Lottery Corporation
P.O. Box 321462
Flowood, MS
39232
If your prize is $100,000 or more, the claim must be made in person at the Mississippi Lottery headquarters. Please bring identification, such as a government-issued photo ID and a Social Security card to verify your identity. Winners of large prizes may also have the option of setting up electronic funds transfer (EFT) for direct deposits into a bank account.
Mississippi Lottery Headquarters
1080 River Oaks Drive, Bldg. B-100
Flowood, MS
39232
Mississippi Lottery prizes must be claimed within 180 days of the drawing date. For detailed instructions and necessary forms, please visit the Mississippi Lottery claim page.
When are the Mississippi Lottery drawings held?
- Cash 3: Daily at 2:30 p.m. (Midday) and 9:30 p.m. (Evening).
- Cash 4: Daily at 2:30 p.m. (Midday) and 9:30 p.m. (Evening).
- Match 5: Daily at 9:30 p.m. CT.
- Cash Pop: Daily at 2:30 p.m. (Midday) and 9:30 p.m. (Evening).
This results page was generated automatically using information from TinBu and a template written and reviewed by a Mississippi editor. You can send feedback using this form.
Mississippi
Mississippi homeowners blame a noisy data center plant for sleepless nights. The mayor’s advice? “Consider selling.”
It was 4 a.m. on a Sunday and 46-year-old Jason Haley was once again wide awake.
The suburban silence that Haley had grown used to in his two decades as a resident of Southaven, Mississippi, had, for the last few months, been replaced by a constant whirring, like an airplane hovering over his home, he said.
The noise keeping Haley awake was coming from a plant powering Elon Musk’s xAI data centers in the area, according to a lawsuit filed in June against the company and its subsidiary, MZX Tech. Haley and two other Southaven residents, who live within a mile of the plant, allege in the suit that “near-constant” noise and vibrations are causing negative physical and psychological health effects.
The filing comes amid growing resistance toward data center development, with the majority of Americans opposing local construction of a data center, according to a Gallup poll published earlier this year.
Similar disputes are playing out across the country, like in Mount Pleasant, Wisconsin, where a lawsuit this month filed by residents alleges a data center emits “unreasonable and excessive noise” onto residents’ properties and in Lowell, Massachusetts, where noise from a data center’s cooling center “disrupts neighbors’ sleep,” according to an April suit.
There are more than 4,000 data centers in the U.S., according to a recent United Nations report. To power the data centers, developers are building their own plants, sometimes with little warning to residents like Haley.
Haley reached out to Southaven Mayor Darren Musselwhite about the noise in emails he shared with CBS News. In one last November, he urged Musselwhite to drive through the neighborhood “and take a listen to the constant high pitch noises.”
“I am aware of the noise and working on a solution with xAI officials,” Musselwhite had responded to Haley an hour later. “It is a problem,” he said in another email later in the day.
But soon, another sleepless night rolled around and Haley was emailing the mayor again.
“Anyone else I can reach out to?” Haley wrote to Musselwhite. “It’s almost 4 am and I can hear it from my bed. The high pitch and roaring combined is full force at this time. My ears are ringing. I can’t live in this. How was this ever approved?”
“I don’t care that this is Elon’s project”
Just north of Southaven, which sits on the Mississippi-Tennessee border, xAI’s data center Colossus went online in Memphis in September 2024. The company dubbed it “the world’s largest AI supercomputer.”
By late July 2025, Musk was announcing that another data center, Colossus 2, was set to begin operation in the area within weeks.
Days later, an announcement popped into the Facebook feeds of Southaven residents: An energy facility that had been dormant for decades will be revived to support xAI’s expanding data center operations in the area, Musselwhite said.
The post was met by a flood of comments, with some lauding the development and others expressing concern about the plant’s impact on the environment and strain on local resources.
Meanwhile, Haley started hearing sounds.
“My first thought was somebody’s got a leaf blower going all the time,” he said.
By December, the noise had become a fixture. He started getting headaches, stopped getting sleep and slipped into feelings of hopelessness and depression. The noise was inescapable, he said, and despite his best efforts to drown it out (sleeping with earplugs, getting a box fan for white noise), it continued to drone on.
So Haley began speaking up — at city government meetings, on Facebook and through TikTok, where he posts videos of himself measuring the noise with a sound meter. He later became involved in a grassroots coalition called Safe and Sound, drawing awareness to concerns surrounding xAI’s undertakings in the region.
The “activist” label is one he’s reluctantly accepted.
“I’ve never been into any kind of activism, never really kept up with politics a whole lot,” he said. “I’m just a guy that has a problem with this noise, and started speaking out and trying to raise awareness.”
When he emailed Musselwhite about the noise again in December, his message came with a disclosure: “I am not a republican or democrat, I don’t care that this is Elon’s project. I didn’t know whose it was when I started complaining about the noise that started in August.”
Musselwhite responded a few days later.
“As I mentioned to you in the public meeting, you seem to be a reasonable person,” he said. “I will give you some unsolicited advice from an older man, be careful with whom you associate so you don’t damage your credibility.”
By January, xAI was expanding its footprint with a third data center in Southaven, MACROHARDDR. As residents like Haley continued pushing back online and in city meetings, Musselwhite had a new message.
Southaven, he said in a Facebook post, was “under attack by all who choose to oppose Elon Musk because of his high-profile political stances.” He warned residents to “beware of the smokescreen of radical politics.”
In his emails to Haley, Musselwhite continued to acknowledge the noise as a problem.
“The noise issue is one of my highest priorities and I have been in detailed discussions with xAI and many independent professionals to resolve this,” he wrote in March.
But in the same email, he offered Haley more advice: “I know they want houses for employees, so you may want to consider selling your home.”
CBS News made multiple attempts to speak with Musselwhite and did not receive a reply.
Migraines, ringing ears and sleepless nights
Moving isn’t Haley’s preference, but he said he is in the financial position to do so if he chooses.
That’s not the case for everyone.
A little over a decade ago, 31-year-old Taylor Logsdon bought a home for her growing family in Southaven and began building her life around it.
“We loved it here,” she said. “It was peaceful, it was quiet, didn’t have to worry about nothing.”
But that was before the noise, so loud, she said, that it sometimes shakes her home. Logsdon, who is also involved in the Safe and Sound coalition and is suing xAI with Haley and one other Southaven resident, said she has experienced migraines and anxiety as a result of the noise.
She said she has persistent ringing in her ears and so do her children. A full night of sleep has become rare for the family.
“I would move tomorrow if I could,” she said, adding that she needs to save money before she can afford to move.
Her children, all under the age of 13, are having trouble staying awake at school.
“One of them is extra angry all the time — never, never has been that way, but he’s just irritable like all the time,” she said. “I feel like I’m snappier too.”
xAI spent millions of dollars trying to mitigate the sound with a sound wall, a berm and evergreen trees, Musselwhite said in a February Facebook post.
“It still hasn’t helped. It hasn’t even put a dent in it,” Logsdon said.
People living in areas where there is “constant humming or buzzing” report headaches, stress and sleep disturbance, said Dr. Samoon Ahmad, a clinical professor of psychiatry at New York University.
A 2023 study found that environmental noise exposure can lead to adverse associations for cardiovascular disease and mortality, diabetes, hearing impairment, neurological disorders and adverse reproductive outcomes.
“People think of annoyance as an abstract term,” Ahmad said. “It’s not an abstract term because it has real physiological ramifications.”
The World Health Organization recommends less than 40 decibels of annual average nighttime noise outside of bedrooms to prevent adverse health effects. Haley has recorded noise levels over 60 decibels as late as 10:15 p.m. from his Southaven backyard.
Musk’s Memphis
Even before Logsdon and Haley decided to take action against xAI, Musk’s growing presence in the Memphis area garnered attention from advocacy groups over health and environmental concerns.
The National Association for the Advancement of Colored People filed a lawsuit in April against xAI claiming the Southaven plant emits “significant” amounts of harmful pollutants from its 27 gas turbines, which has since increased to 59, according to a court filing reviewed by CBS News. The NAACP has also filed an appeal to challenge the Mississippi Department of Environmental Quality’s decision to issue an air permit allowing the Southaven plant to operate 41 permanent methane gas turbines. An independent study found their operation would increase air pollution in an area already grappling with a disproportionate number of asthma-related emergency room visits.
CBS News has reached out to xAI for comment.
Musk’s investment in the latest Southaven data center brings his company’s contribution to the area to $20 billion, according to the office of Mississippi Gov. Tate Reeves. The governor called it “the largest economic development project in Mississippi’s history.”
Musk’s financial footprint has also extended beyond the data centers — MZX Tech donated over $1.3 million to the Southaven Police Department in February, according to the donation agreement obtained by CBS News, and has offered half-priced Starlink for those in the Memphis region.
But Logsdon says the cost to her and her family’s health has her wondering why it feels like her city is willing to “hurt the few to get the benefits.”
“We were not a failure town before,” Logsdon said. “It’s not like our economics were terrible here.”
Southaven had a median household income of over $70,000 in 2024, according to the U.S. Census Bureau — $20,000 more than the state average.
Logsdon, currently a stay-at-home mom, will be searching for work this fall so she and her husband can start saving up to move away from the plant. For now, her goal is a full night’s sleep.
“I hope that my family can go back to having our normal,” she said. “Being able to sleep at night, being able to enjoy my backyard, being able to go swimming.”
GPS data from the Mississippi Department of Marine Resources, obtained by CBS News, tracks the movements of the boat that carried Nolan Wells to Horn Island on July 4. Wells was found dead after going missing following an outing on the island.
The vessel left a dock at approximately 9:56 a.m. that morning and arrived at Horn Island at 11:14 a.m. CBS News has previously reported that Wells was not on the boat when it departed the island.
According to the GPS data, the boat left Horn Island at 4:31 p.m. and returned to its original departure dock. It then traveled into Fort Bayou around 5:52 p.m. before returning to the dock at 6:06 p.m.
Later that evening, the boat went to the Fort Bayou boat launch at 7:19 p.m., according to the MSDMR report. From there, it traveled over land — presumably towed by a vehicle — to the Biloxi, Mississippi, residence of the boat’s owners.
The MSDMR report indicates that the boat’s owner, his mother and one other individual who was reportedly with Wells on the day of the incident have cooperated with the investigation.
The department’s report ends on July 5, following notification that the Jackson County Sheriff’s Office would take over as the lead investigative agency.
Wells, 18, was last seen on July 4 on Horn Island, where he had taken a boat trip with friends to celebrate the holiday, officials said. Wells traveled to the island with his friends but did not return to the mainland with them that afternoon, Jackson County Sheriff John Ledbetter has said.
He was last seen on the island at 3 p.m., according to attorney Ben Crump’s office. His mother reported him missing later that night and a search began.
His body was discovered July 6 off the coast of the island, which is about 10 miles south of the Mississippi mainland, following a search that involved the U.S. Coast Guard, the Mississippi Department of Marine Resources and the National Park Service.
Dental records confirmed the body was Wells, Jackson County coroner Bruce Lynd told CBS News. An autopsy took place on July 7, Lynd said, but the results were not immediately made public. Wells’ body was flown to Washington, D.C., for an independent autopsy, according to Crump.
Wells’ parents have said they don’t believe their son would’ve stayed behind on the island by choice when his friends left by boat.
“No, he wouldn’t. Nolan always stays with the group,” Elmore Wonsley, Nolan’s father, told “CBS Mornings” last week. “If you be with me, you come back with me. So that I don’t understand, and with me being a parent, if I was in that situation, I would have told them, ‘You’re going to get back on this boat with me because I don’t want to answer to your parents if something happens to you.’”
When directly asked if he believed Nolan was left behind on the island, his father responded, “Yes. I don’t believe he decided to stay on the island by himself. It just doesn’t — that’s not his character.”
Wells went to Ocean Springs High School and was a rising sophomore on Southwest Mississippi Community College’s football team. Crump said Wells was a good swimmer.
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