The Grambling football team is going to play this week. A marked difference from last week, when they refused to travel to their game at Jackson State as part of a larger stand against their school's administration. And by not playing, Grambling's football players brought light to a much larger problem that needed to be addressed.
There were a lot of reasons for the boycott. The players were upset about the availability of water and Gatorade at practices. There were also issues with mildew on the equipment and unsafe conditions in the weight room. When Head Coach Doug Williams raised money to replace the floor, the administration kept it under lock-and-key instead of installing it because Williams didn't go through the "proper channels." He was then fired and replaced with an interim coach the players didn't like. But the last straw was having to travel by bus to road games in Kansas City and Indianapolis, the latter of which was a 16-hour trip each way. Even worse, the athletic director and school president flew to the game.
Now, I'm not going to act like I understand the entire situation or know everything that's going on, but I do applaud the players for taking a stand. While I don't necessarily agree with all of their methods, they had some valid concerns. And I can see where they felt as if a boycott was their only choice. They weren't being listened to and had to do something drastic. It took a boycott to finally bring attention to the problems with Grambling football.
The problems go far beyond football. Grambling has no money. The State of Louisiana has cut back their funding to the point that they need to rely on private donations and tuition. That model doesn't work when you're awarding scholarships for Division I athletics. If you look at Grambling's programs across the board, they're all struggling. They simply don't have the money to compete at this level in their current financial situation. That's what makes some of the stuff that happened with the football program so ridiculous.
They needed new flooring in the weight room. Grambling couldn't pay for it so Head Coach Doug Williams, a Grambling legend and former Super Bowl MVP, raised the money for it himself. And they don't install it why? Why should it matter how the money was raised? The bottom line is that the badly needed new floor was paid for, delivered and ready to be installed. The fact that it wasn't, and that Williams got fired for ordering it, shows how much dysfunction there is at Grambling.
For that, I applaud the players. By bringing the problems with their program to light, they made the country aware of the much more serious financial situation Grambling is facing. That might not have been their intent, but it was a result.
The problems with Grambling football aren't going to be fixed overnight. But they were also way too big to continue being ignored. Some of the problems were smaller than others, and I guarantee some people probably view the players as spoiled, ungrateful crybabies. I'm not one of them, though. The is Grambling football. The program built by the legendary Eddie Robinson. This is supposed to be Grambling's marquee program here, and this is the way the players are being treated? I can only imagine how much worse it is for Grambling's other athletes.
I don't know what the solution at Grambling is. But it's pretty clear that there are some pretty serious problems that go beyond just football. The school can't continue to operate its athletic department this way. At least not under this current financial model. It's expensive to run a Division I football program. Especially at the I-AA level, where you're inevitably going to lose money.
Maybe Grambling can't afford to continue playing football moving forward. It's OK to admit that. But if Grambling is committed to having a football program, they need to do things the right way. Which is not the way they were doing it.
Who's to say how much conditions are going to improve at Grambling? But the players definitely made their point. And I give them credit for making everyone aware of what was going on. Sometimes the only way to impart change is to do something drastic. At least in that, the Grambling football players were successful. Hopefully there's more success to come.
No comments:
Post a Comment