Jackson Bandits

East Coast Hockey League (1999-2003)

Background

The Jackson Bandits were one of two Mississippi-based minor league hockey teams in the East Coast Hockey League during the early 2000’s, alongside the Biloxi-based Mississippi Sea Wolves. The Bandits were the first and, to this date, last professional hockey team to make their home in Jackson.

The Bandits lasted four seasons but were ultimately undone by a looming legal reckoning for the team’s billionaire co-founder and the organization’s failure to construct a planned $25 million arena to replace the outdated Mississippi Coliseum.

On The Ice

ECHL veteran Derek Clancey coach the Bandits and ran the team’s hockey operations for all four seasons of play. The Bandits had three winning seasons under Clancey and never finished below .500. Jackson’s best postseason run came at the end of the 2001-02 season.  The Bandits’ in-state rivals, the Mississippi Sea Wolves, swept them out of quarterfinal round of the 2002 Kelly Cup playoffs.

Center Jeff Bes, who skated with the Bandits in 2000-01 and returned for the 2002-03 season, ranks as the franchise’s all-time point scorer with 34 goals and 60 assists in 83 goals. Brian Callahan (Bandits ’99-’01) scored with most goals in team history with 51 over two seasons.

Arena Problems

The Bandits were founded by prominent Mississippians Bernie Ebbers, the billionare CEO of telecom giant MCI WorldCom and J.L. Holloway, whose firm Friede Goldman International built offshore drilling platforms. The pair purchased and relocated the ECHL’s Chesapeake Ice Breakers to the Mississippi Coliseum in July 1999. That same year, Forbes magazine pegged Ebbers’ wealth at $1.3 billion and ranked him as the 376th richest person in the world.

The 37-year old Coliseum was one of the oldest buildings in the ECHL. Each spring, the Bandits had to leave town for 20-game road trips because the Coliseum was booked for the Dixie National Rodeo and Mississippi’s state high school basketball tournament. Jackson’s 36 home dates were jammed lopsidedly into the remainder of the ECHL calendar, resulting in gluts of home games that were difficult to sell.

“I love hockey, but even I get tired of it three times per week,” Ebbers told The Jackson Clarion-Ledger (5/1/2002).

In February 2000, midway through the Bandits debut season, Holloway held a press conference to announce plans for a $25 million, 7,500-seat new arena in Jackson. In October 2001, Bandits officials announced they had acquired a land lease for the Arena next to Jackson State’s 60,000-seat Veterans Memorial Stadium. But the financing was still up in the air. And Ebbers’ run at WorldCom was about to come to a spectacular end.

WorldCom Scandal & Demise

Ebbers resigned as CEO of WorldCom in April 2002. The company’s collapse was swift. Less than two months later, WorldCom acknowledged $3.9 billion in accounting misstatements.  The company filed the largest corporate bankruptcy in U.S. history (at the time) in July 2002. In 2005, a judge sentenced Ebbers to 25 years in prison on fraud and conspiracy charges related to WorldCom’s corrupt accounting practices.

Ebbers dropped out of the Bandits ownership group. Holloway soldiered on and recruited several new local investors. But the team went into cost-cutting mode and the arena project remained stuck in neutral. Attendance crashed 36% to 2,182 per game during the 2002-03 season, which ranked 26th out of the ECHL’s 27th clubs. The Bandits lost an estimated $500,000 during their final season (Jackson Clarion-Ledger 4/5/2003).

The Bandits ceased operations on April 4, 2003, three days after playing the final game, a home playoff loss to the Pensacola Ice Pilots before 1,139 at the Coliseum.

Jackson Bandits Shop

Links

ECHL Media Guides

East Coast Hockey League Programs

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