JACKSON -- Defensive football players and coaches highlight the six-person 2009 Induction Class for the Mississippi Sports Hall of Fame that was announced at the Mississippi Sports Hall of Fame & Museum.

Former defensive stars Tyrone Keys, an All-SEC player at Mississippi State and a member of the 1985 Super Bowl champion Chicago Bears and Natchez, Miss., native and four-time Pitt All-American Hugh Green, the 1980 Heisman Trophy runner-up, the highest Heisman finish ever for a pure defensive player, are joined by college and NFL defensive coaching mastermind Jim Carmody in the Class of 2009.

Coincidentally, Carmody is one of two former Southern Mississippi head coaches included among the 2009 honorees. Jeff Bower, the second winningest coach in USM football history, is the other inductee.

John Stroud, the most successful coach in Millsaps' history and the all-time scoring leader in Ole Miss men's basketball history, as well as the number three scorer all-time in the SEC and Robert Morgan, who retired after 38 years in 2006 as the longest serving director of a PGA tournament in America, round out the class.

The six will be inducted at the 47th Annual BancorpSouth Mississippi Sports Hall of Fame Induction Banquet on July 31, 2009.

Officials from BancorpSouth and the Mississippi Sports Hall of Fame also announced at the press conference the extension of the Tupelo, MS-based bank's title sponsorship of the induction banquet weekend through 2012.

With the addition of the Class of 2009, there will be 257 members in the Mississippi Sports Hall of Fame.

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