Developing situation at Grambling

[NAHSTE]

http://espn.go.com/college-football...coach-george-ragsdale-replaces-dennis-winston

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:

http://sportsillustrated.cnn.com/college-football/news/20131018/grambling-football/#ixzz2i67tHYdv

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?

 

[Glenbino]

Awful.. Pretty obvious that the only reason the administration wanted the floor funds funneled through the University is so they could siphon it either for themselves or another department. Good on Doug Williams for seeing through the bullshit.

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[NAHSTE]

Awful.. Pretty obvious that the only reason the administration wanted the floor funds funneled through the University is so they could siphon it either for themselves or another department. Good on Doug Williams for seeing through the bullshit.

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Not to get too political here, but much of this stems from Jindal slashing state funding for every school (LSU is falling apart too, though the athletic department being privatized helps insulate the football team from feeling the crunch) a year after refusing to take federal aid when it was made available. Jindal stuck his nose up at it, made a big grandstanding speech about how Louisiana could take care of itself, pick itself up by its bootstraps and all that, and now every public university in the state is teetering on the edge of economic chaos.

From that same SI article:

Ask school officials why the football team and other programs are struggling and they quickly shift attention from personality conflicts and staffing decisions to the budget. Since 2007-08, overall state funding for Grambling has gone from $31.6 million to $13.8 million. The school has attempted to bridge that gap by increasing tuition, but it has fallen short, and cuts have been made across the board. Approximately 127 staff members have been laid off since 2008 and furloughs are common. Professors have also been asked to teach an extra class each year for free. Generally, the school has "cut to the bone," says Leon Sanders, Grambling's vice president for finance.

Athletics were mostly exempt from the cuts in the first few years of the recession, even as revenue generated by the department declined from around $8 million in 2007-08 to about $6.2 million last year. But that was unsustainable, school officials say. Like the rest of the university, the athletic department had to make sacrifices, and the sports programs are now feeling the pinch that the rest of the school has endured for years.

Some accounting tricks have spared the athletic department even greater pain, at least for now. In past years, the school has moved about $3.4 million out of its operating revenue to help pay for athletics. This year, the school had only $1.8 million to transfer. The difference was made up, in part, by moving $1.2 million in auxiliary funds over to athletics, but that cannot be repeated next year, Sanders says. Unless new monies are found, athletics could see its budget shaved by more than a $1 million or more for the 2014-15 school year.
"We are functioning now in a financial emergency," Pogue says.

 

[Glenbino]

Wow I was under the impression that the SWAC schools were all private. That's sad about what's happening to the sports programs though.

This is your time Tulane!

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