The cancellation of college sports does not just hurt college towns and avid fans.
Locally, it also is having a detrimental impact on the Mississippi Sports Hall of Fame and Museum.
The hall sponsors annual awards to honor the top athletes in college sports.
These awards programs also serve as major fundraisers for the museum, which use the proceeds to cover operational costs and to promote sports across the state.
This year’s C Spire Ferris Awards program, for instance, was canceled because there was no college baseball.
Meanwhile, whether or not the state will present the Conerly Trophy, the annual award given to the state’s top college football player is still up in the air.
At press time, the Southeastern Conference had not decided how or if football would go on this fall. The Big Ten and Pac-12 conferences had already canceled non-conference games, while the Ivy League had canceled all sporting events for the fall.
“Who knows what’s going to happen with the Conerly Trophy,” said Bill Blackwell, the hall’s executive director. “We had the Howell and Gillom trophies for basketball. We had those ceremonies before we closed down.”
The hall shut down in mid-March as a result of the coronavirus pandemic. Along with it, many of the museum’s major fund-raisers were canceled or postponed.
“Our annual golf tournament has been postponed twice already. We’re hoping we can have it November 2 and can get crowds enough so we’re able to host it,” Blackwell said.
“The Farm Bureau Watermelon Classic, which is held every Fourth of July, was held virtually this year. Fortunately, that went very well. We had 573 people that participated. Of course, that’s compared to the 1,200 we have when we run the race.”
Fundraisers bring in about 60 to 70 percent of the hall’s $750,000 annual budget. The rest comes in through rentals, museum admissions, advertising support from corporations and the like.
“Normally, we have rentals,” he said. “All of our rentals have vanished.”
Since March 10, just one group has rented the facility. Other groups have been unable to meet because of social distancing requirements or capacity restrictions, Blackwell said.
“Fundraising helps cover operational expenses. The state owns the building and we lease it from the state,” Blackwell said. “Heating, cooling, water, sewer, all the operational needs, exhibitry – that’s generally on us.”
The hall is currently looking at updating its exhibit to include a virtual reality component.
That component would allow people to “get an idea of what it’s like to stand in against someone throwing a 90 mile-per-hour fastball or having a big lineman coming at you if you’re going back to throw a pass,” Blackwell explained.
Blackwell was unsure when or how that project would be funded and was unsure if a recent state allocation could go to that work. The state recently received a $1 million allocation as part of the legislature’s annual bond bill. Those funds likely will go toward building maintenance, he said.
Meanwhile, the executive director was unsure how the museum would make up for the lost revenue. “We did get PPP money - $60,000, plus or minus,” he said. “About 2.5 times our payroll.”
Funds have been used to keep the hall’s five full-time and three part-time employees in place. So far, no one has been furloughed.
And even though the museum has reopened to the public, many of its fund-raisers and marquee events are still on hold.
On June 30, the board of directors voted to postpone its annual induction ceremony, which is usually held in late July or early August.
This year’s inductees include Pete Brown, the first African American to win a PGA Tour event, Larry Templeton, a former athletic director at Mississippi State University, sports arena designer Janet Marie Smith, former NBA basketball player Antonio McDyess, former NFL linebacker Patrick Willis, and Jerry Boatner, the winningest high school baseball coach in the state.
The hall is located on Lakeland Drive, in between the Mississippi Agricultural and Forestry Museum and Smith-Wills Stadium.
The facility draws about 40,000 people annually, from sports fans and tourists to school children coming in on field trips.
Since reopening in June, attendance has been slow. Said Blackwell, “We’ll have a few people come in each week, but all the schools, all the tour groups, have disappeared.”
