Now 0-5 this season, Grambling State is looking for a new head coach who can bring back the good ol’ days of hard knocks to the university.
Effectively immediately GSU will begin a search for a new head football coach.
— The Gramblinite (@TheGramblinite) October 1, 2013
According to reports a press conference for Grambling State University’s head football coach position for current interim coach George Ragsdale was scheduled yesterday at 10:00 a.m.
Still it was not always like this for Grambling.
Grambling’s late football coach Eddie Robinson, who coached from 1941-1998, holds the NCAA division I school record for most career wins as a head coach with 408 victories. His coaching career helped the university gain national attention because of a number of athletes to join the NFL as professionals.
[Did you know Robinson recorded just one losing season between 1960 and 1990?]
When Doug Williams, the former Grambling State standout and NFL Super Bowl XXII MVP, succeeded the legendary coach in 1998 he certainly had big shoes to fill. Yet Williams kept the momentum moving and Grambling State’s reputation as a college football team powerhouse continued as he led the Tigers to three consecutive Southwestern Athletic Conference titles from 2000–2002 before leaving to the Tampa Bay Buccaneers for a personnel executive position.
Today however all of that momentum from years of triumph has come to a sudden halt. Grambling State, once feared and admired, have become dwarf like versions of actual Tigers and more like puny cats with tails between their legs.
Though Williams rejoined the team in 2011 he could not stop the wheels from flying off. After losing their first two games by a combined score of 71-19 Grambling State dismissed him and placed running backs coach Ragsdale as interim coach. (The Tigers were 1-10 last season under Williams.)
Williams said Grambling President Frank Pogue told him of his firing during a meeting in the president’s on Sept. 11: “There wasn’t a lot of conversation. I told him, ‘OK,’ and I was gone.”
So, with a little less than a month after firing Williams, the search for a new head coach has officially began. The committee for the search will include athletic director Aaron James, VP for Finance and Administration Leon Sanders, a student rep and others, the Gramblinite says.
More members will be named later.
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