One of the downsides to working in the industry of sports is that there are certain times of year — like this one — where you don’t get weekends off.

Friday nights are filled with high school football and Saturdays are wall-to-wall college football. Sundays are reserved for the NFL, as well as a host of other weekly chores that put one week to bed and reset for the next.

Among those is compiling our weekly “How They Did” feature, which is a list of how the college football players from around Vicksburg did in their games the day before. I’ve never liked the name, but couldn’t think of one more clever and “How They Did” stuck. Branding and all that.

In any event, once the master list of players is compiled it usually flows pretty smoothly. About 30 minutes of scrolling through box scores and it’s done.

Usually. The first version for 2023 was one of those unusual times.

Some teams still had not posted their rosters, even with a month to figure out who was on the team. Others kept their season openers a state secret. Mississippi Valley State played a barn burner in Chicago against Central State — the latter won 24-21 on a last-second field goal — but you’d never know it because it seems no official record of the game exists.

Neither school posted more than the final score on its web site and there was little local coverage of the game in Chicago. Maybe the two teams just agreed to hit the town together, make up a score, and see if anyone noticed.

We have several players at Division II Miles College, but its roster was incomplete until this week. Its Week 1 opponent, Lane College, had a box score but only listed numbers for Miles’ players and not names. Trying to decipher it required a decoder ring that I didn’t have.

At other schools, our local alumni simply didn’t play. They are either backups or freshman who haven’t broken through yet, or are at positions like offensive line where it’s hard to tell if they played one snap or 50.

All in all, “How They Did” had only a slightly better opening weekend than the SEC.

But, the good thing about Week 1 is that it quickly turns into Week 2. We can learn from this. The most improvement you make is from the first game to the second. Insert your favorite early-season football cliche here.

There are nearly 30 players from Vicksburg and the surrounding area on college rosters this season. They play at 19 schools spread across six states. We might have missed a few, but we’ll keep checking and looking every Sunday and give it to our readers no matter how hard we have to hunt.

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Ernest Bowker is the sports editor of The Vicksburg Post. He can be reached at ernest.bowker@vicksburgpost.com

Vicksburg’s college football players
A list of four-year college football players from Vicksburg-area high schools.

Southern Miss
• Shardez Taylor, OL, Sr. (Vicksburg)

Mississippi State
• Caleb Bryant, DL, Fr. (Vicksburg)
• Michael Robinson, LB, So. (St. Al)

Alcorn State
• JD Kelly, DB, Fr. (Vicksburg High)
• D’Marious Hicks, DB, Jr. (Port Gibson)

Mississippi Valley State
• Taylen Smith, DE, Jr. (Warren Central)

Delta State
• Carter Coullard, TE, So. (Briarfield Academy)

Millsaps College
• Zion Nixon, RB, So. (Warren Central)

Mississippi College
• Jaylin Thompson, DB, Jr. (Warren Central)
• Brady Price, B-Back, Fr. (Central Hinds)
• Kolton Price, OL, Fr. (Central Hinds

Southern University
• Joshua Griffin, K, Jr. (Warren Central)

Northwestern State
• Stevie Ballard, OL. Jr. (Central Hinds)

Louisiana College
• Brandon Snowden, OL, Fr. (Warren Central)

Coastal Carolina
• Laurence Sullivan, CB, Jr. (Vicksburg High)

West Alabama
• Lamar Gray, LB, Sr. (Warren Central)
• Mason Watts, OL, Fr. (St. Aloysius)

South Alabama
• Reed Buys, OL, Jr. (Warren Central)

Troy
• T.J. Thompson, LB, So. (Warren Central)

Miles College
• Jeffrey Scott, DB, Sr. (Vicksburg High)
• Dareh Minor, TE, Fr. (Vicksburg High)
• Kellen Washington, DE, Fr. (Vicksburg High)

Georgia State
• Jeremiah Johnson, S, Sr. (South Delta)

Bluefield University
• Tyrese Wolfe, DB, Sr. (Vicksburg High)
• Jehari Riley, OL, Sr. (Vicksburg High)

Virginia Union
• Joseph Johnson, FB, Sr. (Vicksburg High)

Reinhardt University
• Vertez Shorter, DL, Jr. (Warren Central)