Moving up: James Rollins III has been named chief executive officer of BancorpSouth Inc., a financial holding company headquartered in Tupelo, Miss., with $13.2 billion in assets. Rollins will succeed BancorpSouth’s current CEO, Aubrey Patterson, on Tuesday, the company announced today. The 53-year-old Rollins has served as president and chief operating officer at Houston-based Prosperity Bancshares Inc. since April 2006. BancorpSouth Bank, a wholly owned subsidiary of the holding firm, operates 293 banking branches in nine southeastern states, including Louisiana.
Word on the street: Baton Rouge-based The Smyth Group, in partnership with LSU student newspaper The Daily Reveille, has developed an LSU-themed edition of its mobile app word game, So You Think You Know Words. LSU puzzle topics for the game include LSU history, sports and campus life. “We are huge LSU fans, and people have been asking us to produce an LSU version of our word game,” explains Jamie Smyth of The Smyth Group of the decision to make the LSU edition. The app game for iPhone and iPad is $1.99 and can be found here. An Android version will be released soon, the company says.
Horseshoes and rabbits’ feet: There’s plenty of speculation as to why the SEC has been the dominant conference in college football in recent years. Most people point to the additional dollars spent on student athletes at SEC schools or the unparalleled passion the schools display for football. But Los Angeles Times columnist Chris Dufresne says there’s another factor at play. “The SEC loves to brag of its football superiority in the Bowl Championship Series era, which is easy when you’ve won eight national titles and six in a row. It rarely speaks of its mistress, Lady Luck,” Dufresne writes. Read the full column here.
