Grambling Football Crisis

Maybe the state of Louisiana should put more money into the athletic program there. If this happened at LSU, it'd be all over Sportscenter.

 

Good article. Thanks for the link. That part about the floor of the weight room/fight over where it would go----absurd. Typical academic in-fighting crap.
Bigger picture, the money just isn't there. Shut down football and quit losing money.

 

I say it's appropriate. Louisiana governor Bobby Jindal has definitely done his part. In 2009, he turned down stimulus money from the federal government. That same year, Jindal cut $219 million in state funds for higher education, including $5 million that would have been earmarked for Grambling. In January 2012, Jindal announced an additional mid-year budget cut of $50 million for higher education, with Grambling losing out on nearly $1 million of that total. HBCU's may not be relevant to some, but they serve a purpose.

 

I suspect very few of these kids are on full athletic scholarships to begin with. But that is a good point.

 

Football, actually football halftimes at those neutral site "Classics", bring in what little money HBCU athletic departments make. Grambling won't be dropping football any time soon.

They'll probably turn over almost 100% of their roster this offseason though.

 

And Southern is probably trying to figure out who they're going to play on both sides of the Battle of the Bands next month.

 

Grambling's players refused to get on the bus to Jackson State today, and Saturday's game has been cancelled.

Someone mentioned it above, but I wonder if the school can force these guys to play as part of their scholarship agreement. Whatever you think of the NCAA set-up, those things are akin to contracts and the players -- from a legal standpoint, at least -- would seem to be in violation of them.
Even when pro leagues go on strike, it's always after the current labor agreements or some other legal deadline expires, right?

 

Perhaps they can recruit replacement players from the nearest JC.

Perhaps Gary Hogeboom Jr. is out there.

 

They can try to force the players to play all they want but if the kids don't want to play, they won't play. Everyone of the players on scholarship will be without one next year though. But, at this point, it sounds like the players are ok with that.

Part of me hopes the fuckwits at Grambling are dumb enough to try to go after these kids through the courts. Discovery would be hilarious.

 

Yeah, I have a feeling that, at this point, if the Grambling administration made these guys play we'd see them line up and take a knee on every offensive snap, and just let the other team run by them on every defensive play. Just based on their actions, the players seem pretty unified on this. It's more than a little unhappiness at this point. None of these guys are likely to be on campus come the spring semester, whether by their choice or someone else's.

 

Couldn't the school be considered in violation of the agreement if they were providing unsafe conditions?

 

One would think.

There's also the littler matter of where all the money went.