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Really bizarre story unfolding there after the firing of Doug Williams last week. The players staged a walk out of practice on Wednesday and there was no practice yesterday. Interim coach George Ragsdale was dismissed and replaced with defensive coordinator Dennis Winston. A school that had the same head coach for 57 years has now had three in the last five days. They are supposed to leave via bus for Jackson, MS this afternoon for a game with Jackson State tomorrow, and nobody knows how many, if any, members of the team will show up.
Some of the concerns, besides Williams' firing, center around a lack of funding. Pretty bleak times for the once-proud program.
This provides a nice overview of the financial issues:
Start with the floor.
To understand why the players on the 0-7 Grambling State football team revolted earlier this week, walking out of a Tuesday meeting with the school's president and athletic director and boycotting practice earlier this week, visit the weight room in the school's Stadium Support Building. Then look down.
Covering the concrete floor are large interlocking rubber tiles. They are light gray now but were almost certainly a different shade when they were installed years ago. Many of them curl at the edges or have corners missing, hazards that can cause an unsuspecting player to trip. In some areas, entire tiles are gone, creating a perilous sort of hopscotch. Imagine hoisting 300 pounds while having to watch your step. In a sport where injuries are common enough, the last thing players need are physical hazards in their own eight room. That is how Grambling football players train.
The floor is not the only sign of the building's decay. There is rust around some windows and insulation droops down from where ceiling panels are absent. Southwestern Athletic Conference (SWAC) schools "are often asked to do more with less," says Grambling president Dr. Frank Pogue, and that is indisputable. But that floor represents more than the financial constraints that have long hampered Grambling and other historically black colleges. It also embodies the political infighting and mismanagement that have plagued the school in recent years, precipitating the football program's rapid decline and helped spark this week's unprecedented protest by the players.
How can a floor stand for so much?
Near the start of the season, the Grambling Legends, a group unaffiliated with the school, funded much-needed replacement flooring for the weight room. Doug Williams, then the Tigers coach, a popular alumnus, former Super Bowl MVP and member of the Grambling Legends, helped arrange the purchase of the new rubber flooring, just as he had done earlier with new flooring for the team's locker room. Williams had a history of ruffling administrative feathers -- in April 2012 he sued the school for a performance bonuses he says he was owed -- and he often circumvented the school's chain of command. The funds to pay for the new weight room floor were yet another instance of that, as the money had not been filtered through the school's foundation, as Pogue and athletic director Aaron James demanded.
In response, Pogue and James ordered the flooring to be stored in a another building near the team's practice field. Then, a week after the large rolls of flooring were mothballed, Williams was fired as Grambling's coach.
The players, unaware of the politics, knew only that one minute they were getting the badly needed new floor and then they weren't. They knew only that Williams, who led the team to a SWAC title as recently as 2011, was their coach and then suddenly he was not.
Their revolt earlier this week was reported to be a protest of long bus trips, a lack of food on the road, and a general decline in the support of the program, and that is true. But as SI learned while at Grambling as the events of the past week unfolded, the players' actions were also driven by the need for answers they have long sought: Why can't they get a new floor in the weight room and other things they feel they need to win games? Why did Williams get fired? And, the overarching question: What has happened to Grambling football?
To understand why the players on the 0-7 Grambling State football team revolted earlier this week, walking out of a Tuesday meeting with the school's president and athletic director and boycotting practice earlier this week, visit the weight room in the school's Stadium Support Building. Then look down.
Covering the concrete floor are large interlocking rubber tiles. They are light gray now but were almost certainly a different shade when they were installed years ago. Many of them curl at the edges or have corners missing, hazards that can cause an unsuspecting player to trip. In some areas, entire tiles are gone, creating a perilous sort of hopscotch. Imagine hoisting 300 pounds while having to watch your step. In a sport where injuries are common enough, the last thing players need are physical hazards in their own eight room. That is how Grambling football players train.
The floor is not the only sign of the building's decay. There is rust around some windows and insulation droops down from where ceiling panels are absent. Southwestern Athletic Conference (SWAC) schools "are often asked to do more with less," says Grambling president Dr. Frank Pogue, and that is indisputable. But that floor represents more than the financial constraints that have long hampered Grambling and other historically black colleges. It also embodies the political infighting and mismanagement that have plagued the school in recent years, precipitating the football program's rapid decline and helped spark this week's unprecedented protest by the players.
How can a floor stand for so much?
Near the start of the season, the Grambling Legends, a group unaffiliated with the school, funded much-needed replacement flooring for the weight room. Doug Williams, then the Tigers coach, a popular alumnus, former Super Bowl MVP and member of the Grambling Legends, helped arrange the purchase of the new rubber flooring, just as he had done earlier with new flooring for the team's locker room. Williams had a history of ruffling administrative feathers -- in April 2012 he sued the school for a performance bonuses he says he was owed -- and he often circumvented the school's chain of command. The funds to pay for the new weight room floor were yet another instance of that, as the money had not been filtered through the school's foundation, as Pogue and athletic director Aaron James demanded.
In response, Pogue and James ordered the flooring to be stored in a another building near the team's practice field. Then, a week after the large rolls of flooring were mothballed, Williams was fired as Grambling's coach.
The players, unaware of the politics, knew only that one minute they were getting the badly needed new floor and then they weren't. They knew only that Williams, who led the team to a SWAC title as recently as 2011, was their coach and then suddenly he was not.
Their revolt earlier this week was reported to be a protest of long bus trips, a lack of food on the road, and a general decline in the support of the program, and that is true. But as SI learned while at Grambling as the events of the past week unfolded, the players' actions were also driven by the need for answers they have long sought: Why can't they get a new floor in the weight room and other things they feel they need to win games? Why did Williams get fired? And, the overarching question: What has happened to Grambling football?
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