Category Archives: First downs

Record-smashing Grambling to face Rose Bowl champion TCU in 2012

Grambling will play reigning Rose Bowl champion Texas Christian next season, bringing the program back for another game in Dallas-Fort Worth, home to one of its strongest alumni bases. The Tigers already face Prairie View A&M annually in the Metroplex.

“It’s a done deal,” interim Grambling athletics director Aaron James told me. “Next year, in ’12, we are opening TCU’s new stadium.”

The TCU matchup is set for Sept. 8, 2012, at historic Amon G. Carter Stadium, which is in the midst of a $143 million renovation project. Expanded home-game capacity is expected to be upwards of 40,000; TCU has already sold a school-record 20,817 season tickets for 2011.

Information on the 2012 game’s guarantee was not immediately available. Whatever the cost for TCU, however, the allure of scheduling Grambling is clear: Over the last decade, the team, in tandem with the Tiger Marching Band, has helped a series of FBS teams to record-smashing gates.

Louisville welcomed 41,227 for a 2000 game against Grambling, then the 10th largest crowd in Cardinal Stadium history. Three seasons later at San Jose State, the Tigers drew 31,681, marking the first sellout for a football game at Spartan Stadium since 1990. (In 2004, without Grambling as an opponent, the Literacy Classic drew two-thirds fewer fans, just 11,360.)

Washington State played Grambling before 51,486 fans at Seattle’s Qwest Field in 2005; the school hasn’t counted more than 50,000 fans at that venue since. Grambling’s 2006 game at Houston drew 27,302 — then the biggest home crowd at Robertson Stadium since 31,784 fans watched Texas played the Cougars there in 2001.

The Tigers also helped set a new home attendance record at Louisiana-Monroe in 2007, drawing 30,101. Grambling’s away game at Nevada in 2008 brought in 20,078 folks — just outside the Top 10 all time for the Wolf Pack at Mackay Stadium. And in 2009, the Tigers were there for the first sellout ever at Oklahoma State’s newly completed Pickens Stadium, helping OSU attract 56,901 fans to outdraw an earlier record-setting game featuring SEC foe Georgia.

The University of Arkansas was also on Grambling’s radar as a possible out-of-conference foe. But ultimately school officials believed that Tiger fans in Texas would show up in greater numbers.

“When we played Oklahoma, we set a new attendance record,” James said. “This time, we are going to Dallas, and we have a big fan base there. I think we can do it again.”

TCU’s stadium opened 81 seasons ago. Officials hoped to have the renovations completed in time for the Frogs’ 2011 home opener, set for September against ULM.

Q&A: Record-breaking SWAC running back Frank Warren

Frank Warren, now a free-agent signee with the NFL’s Dallas Cowboys, arrived with a pocketful of key accomplishments from his stay in the Southwestern Athletic Conference.

He passed Pro Football Hall of Famer Walter Payton’s SWAC record for yards over a four-year starting stint at Grambling, setting new marks at the school for rushing yards as a freshman then establishing a new program record for career output. He also became the first 1,000-yard rusher at Grambling since Brad Hill in 2001, before signing with the Cowboys after a long period of waiting during the NFL lockout.

That was then. Now Warren has to start all over, and with one of the league’s most established clubs:

Q: How was it for you when you got the call from the Cowboys?
A: “It felt good. It was such a long time during the lockout, wondering where I would be. And when I got the call from the Cowboys, it was such a blessing. Dallas has always been one of my favorite teams in the NFL. I’m just trying to do my best to make the team.”

Q: What was your family’s reaction to the call?
A: “They were excited for me. They knew how bad I wanted this and deserved it. So it was really an exciting moment for everyone.”

Q: What has been your biggest adjustment since playing in college?
A: “It’s a big adjustment. In college you know you’re pretty much on the team, in the NFL you have to earn a spot on the roster, you have to treat it like a job. It is a job.”

Q: How does training camp differ from college to the league?
A: “It’s kind of crazy. In the league, they take up your entire day. You get some perks; eat good, stay in nice hotels. … In college you can sort of do your own thing, you go to your meetings but you mostly know everything and how it’s going to go. In the NFL, you have to learn everything on the fly, they are going to help you out a little bit but you have to learn quickly.”

Q: You signed as an undrafted free agent. Explain what that means.
A: “You weren’t drafted but you’re given an opportunity to try and make the team. So that’s me trying to make the team, going through camp and trying to impress the coaches.”

Q: How does it feel to be playing in your first game?
A: “It feels great just to be standing in the Dallas Stadium. You see it on TV all the time but to see it in person just how big it is. … My first NFL game is going to be crazy. I’ve been dreaming about this all my life since I was little.”

Q: What does Frank Warren have to do to make the team?
A: “Work hard. Show the coaches you can play at this level and that I’m a dependable person. I have to show that I can contribute to the, team even on special teams as well as offense.”

Q: What have you enjoyed most about your experience so far?
A: “Practicing with the guys you see on TV. DeMarcus Ware, Miles Austin, Tony Romo — guys like that. You’re bumping elbows with and practicing with them, sitting and talking and they’re trying to help you out. It’s pretty cool.”

Q: “Have you had a chance to talk with (fellow Grambling product and fifth-year Dallas defender) Jason Hatcher?”
A: “Yeah. He really helped me out when I got out here, getting adjusted and just letting me know that you have to show him that you can really play being from Grambling. He was happy to see another Grambling man in Dallas.”

Getting back to football is only thing that will save SWAC from disastrous offseason

The Southwestern Athletic Conference’s release trumpeting its football broadcast schedule, usually another ho-hum moment of preseason puffery, was this breath of fresh air after such an ugly offseason.

The upcoming slate includes eight games across the ESPN family of networks, along with national and regional television dates with NBC, Versus, and SportSouth. In all, 21 SWAC games are set to be televised during the 2011 football season — including a 10-game schedule on SWAC TV, the conference’s internet broadcast site.

This news gives the league, and its fans, a chance to focus on football for a change.

So far in 2011, of course, the focus has been on a series of Hindenburg-level firestorms: Last year’s Southwestern Athletic Conference champion Texas Southern dumped its coach when the NCAA opened a sweeping investigation into the program. Penalties there are still pending. Then, perennial SWAC East representative Jackson State — picked to win the division again in 2011 — fell under an NCAA postseason ban for low APR scores. The league also saw the departure of two coaches, both of them former conference-championship winners, to the Mid-Eastern Athletic Conference, the other Division I HBCU football league.

In all, Texas Southern lost almost 15 football scholarships after posting the worst four-year Academic Progress Rate in the nation. Jackson State lost 12. Southern became the first NCAA program to be banned from the postseason in two sports — both football and men’s basketball — during the same academic year because of low APR scores.

Explaining it all away is an empty exercise, though SWAC Commissioner Duer Sharp tried to put a positive spin on things at the league’s Media Day event: “The APR issues that we have now, I think we’ve learned our lessons and will definitely take those to heart and move forward as a conference to address those issues.”

In truth, the only path the conference has to “move forward” is to start playing games. And fast. Some of them won’t mean as much, among them that Sept. 17 game on SWAC TV featuring Jackson State at Southern, but at least there’ll be something else to talk about.

THE 2011 SWAC FOOTBALL TELEVISION SCHEDULE
Sept. 3: Alabama State at Mississippi Valley State, 5 p.m. on SWAC TV
Sept. 3: Grambling vs. Alcorn State in Shreveport, Louisiana, 9:30 p.m. on ESPNU (tape delay)
Sept. 4: Prairie View A&M vs. Bethune-Cookman in Orlando, Fla., 11 a.m. on ESPN
Sept. 10: Alcorn State at Arkansas-Pine Bluff, 6 p.m. on SWAC TV
Sept. 10: Jackson State vs. Tennessee State in Memphis, Tennessee, 6 p.m. on Fox SportSouth
Sept. 17: Jackson State at Southern, 6 p.m. on SWAC TV
Sept. 24: Southern vs. Florida A&M in Atlanta, Georgia, 2:30 p.m. on VERSUS
Sept. 24: Alabama A&M at Grambling, 5 p.m. on SWAC TV
Sept. 29: Texas Southern at Jackson State, 5 or 6:30 p.m. on ESPNU
Oct. 1: Alcorn State at Alabama State, 7 p.m. on SWAC TV
Oct. 8: Mississippi Valley State at Alabama A&M, 1 p.m. on SWAC TV
Oct. 13: Texas Southern at Alabama A&M, 6:30 p.m. on ESPNU
Oct. 15: Southern at Arkansas-Pine Bluff, 6 p.m. on SWAC TV
Oct. 15: Prairie View A&M at Alabama State, 9:30 p.m. on ESPNU (tape delay)
Oct. 29: Jackson State vs. Prairie View A&M in Shreveport, Louisiana, 4 p.m. on SWAC TV
Oct. 29: Alabama A&M vs. Alabama State in Birmingham, Alabama, 9:30 p.m. on ESPNU (tape delay)
Nov. 5: Grambling at Jackson State, 2 p.m. on SWAC TV
Nov. 12: Texas Southern at Grambling, 8 p.m. on SWAC TV
Nov. 24: Tuskegee at Alabama State, 3 p.m. on ESPNU
Nov. 26: Southern vs. Grambling in New Orleans, 1 p.m. on NBC
Dec. 10: Farmers Insurance SWAC Championship Game in Birmingham, Alabama, Noon on ESPNU
*-All time Central

As Grambling’s quarterback derby heats up, Anthony Carrothers finds new home

Even as Grambling continues to sort through its quarterback situation, last year’s starter has landed at Winston-Salem State. Anthony Carrothers is a product of Charlotte, North Carolina’s Independence High School.

He left Grambling over the summer, having passed for 1,443 yards and seven touchdowns as the Tigers went 9-2. Carrothers, a shifty, undersized dual threat, also ran for 247 yards and three touchdowns.

His departure set the stage for an on-going battle back at Grambling between Frank Rivers, D.J. Williams — son of returning Tigers head coach Doug Williams — and Jonathan Williams. That competition heated up on Friday, as the team competed for the first time in 7-on-7 formations.

“The three young quarterbacks did a good job. Jonathan Williams and D.J and Frank all threw the ball well,” Doug Williams said. “The good thing about these young guys is that they picked up the offense pretty good. That’s a blessing which means as a coach you can have confidence in whoever is back there.”

Carrothers’ transfer back to his home state follows a scary offseason for Winston-Salem State starter Kameron Smith, who helped the program to an 8-2 mark in 2010 but was missing from spring practices after surgery for Crohn’s disease. Winston-Salem State coach Connell Maynor has since confirmed that Smith will return to practice, and will begin the 2011 fall sessions at the No. 1 spot.

Florida A&M begins again after deflating end to the 2010 campaign

Florida A&M begins its 2010 preseason on Monday, Aug. 8 as players report for training camp. It likely can’t get here fast enough for a program that saw 2010 conclude on a bitter note.

The Rattlers were last seen blasting past in-state MEAC rival Bethune-Cookman behind running back Philip Sylvester, who ran for 144 yards and three touchdowns as FAMU rattled off 24 unanswered points to win 38-27. Sylvester broke through for his sixth consecutive 100-yard day.

It was Bethune’s first defeat of 2010, snapping a sterling 10-game winning streak for first-year coach Brian Jenkins — and it gave FAMU a share of the 2010 Mid-Eastern Athletic Conference title.

What it didn’t give Florida A&M: A berth in the FCS postseason.

A point system was used by the conference, since the football standings actually ended in a three-way tie between Florida A&M, Bethune-Cookman and South Carolina State. Each team finished with an identical 7-1 MEAC record. But FAMU had lost to South Carolina State 19-0 in Week 5, while Bethune-Cookman stunned then then-undefeated Bulldogs 14-0 a few weeks later. So, Bethune-Cookman earned the MEAC’s automatic bid, and South Carolina State — participants in each of the last two championship subdivision playoffs — earned a coveted at-large berth.

Florida A&M has now won three straight Florida Classic games. That season-ending victory meant Rattlers coach Joe Taylor became the fastest in program history to win 25 games, doing it in just three seasons.

Cold comfort, if you ask Taylor.

“In my mind we deserve to be in there,” Taylor said after the Bethune victory last year. “South Carolina State beat us. Bethune beat South Carolina. We beat Bethune. To me, it should be obvious that we should be in the playoffs.”

His team is projected to finish third in the MEAC this season, though the Rattlers had five first-place votes.

PRO PROSPECT OUT FOR SEASON: Rookie cornerback Curtis Holcomb, a seventh-round draft pick from Florida A&M, sustained a ruptured left Achilles tendon during a conditioning test Thursday. The San Francisco 49ers say he is out for the season.

Former Grambling standouts finally meet up at Dallas Cowboys practice

It took a little longer than expected, but two of Grambling’s most high-profile former players from the last decade have met up as members of the Dallas Cowboys.

Jason Hatcher, the standout defender from Grambling’s 2005 undefeated league championship team, ended a brief holdout on Wednesday when he agreed to a new deal with Dallas.

Waiting when he got back to the Cowboys practices was running back Frank Warren, who signed a free-agent agreement as Hatcher’s contract negotiations continued. Warren, a record-smashing running back at Grambling over the last four seasons, had spent months awaiting for end of the NFL lockout to find out which NFL club would sign him.

“It was nerve wracking,” Warren told me, “when you don’t know where your going. I just stayed positive — and now I thank God for the opportunity.”

Warren, an Alabama native, spent the down time working out with a trainer, making sure he’d be ready. When the call came, it was from an unexpected source: Warren said Dallas scouts hadn’t seen him a pro day.

“It came out of the blue, and that kind of caught me off guard,” Warren said. “It was a shock but, hey, it’s my time now. The scouts told me that they’d seen me during the season — and I put up some pretty big numbers.”

Did he ever: Warren, a starter at Grambling from 2007-10, was named the Southwestern Athletic Conference’s 2010 offensive player of the year after becoming the program’s all-time career rushing leader. He led the SWAC and was third in the NCAA in rushing with 1,592 yards. He also averaged 10.4 points per game, which was fifth in the FCS.

Warren finishes his college career ahead of Pro Football Hall of Famer Walter Payton, having rushed to second all-time in the conference with 3,910 yards. He helped Grambling to a pair of SWAC Championship Games, winning in 2008.

[TDR REWIND: Finding a replacement for record-breaking rusher Frank Warren isn’t the only thing atop Grambling’s to-do list in 2011.]

Meanwhile, Hatcher was a 2005 first-team all-conference honoree after making 71 tackles (49 solo) with 21½ tackles for loss and 11 sacks as the Tigers claimed a conference title. He also had one forced fumble, 16 quarterback hurries, a pass breakup and a blocked kick. Season highlights included eight-tackle performances against both Jackson State and Southern.

He then became the highest drafted Grambling product in decades when Dallas selected him late in the third round of the 2006 NFL Draft, as the No. 92 overall pick. An All-State tight end at Jena (La.) High, Hatcher flourished despite the belated start on defense at Grambling. Hatcher tallied 33 total tackles, 10 tackles for loss and five sacks in his first year on defense as a junior.

Hatcher made 13 tackles and a sack over 13 games as a key reserve defensive lineman with Dallas last season. Over the last five years, the Louisiana native has 85 tackles and 7 1/2 sacks in 75 games.

Receiver Jake Reed had been Grambling’s most recent first-day pick, going in the third round of the 1991 draft.

Kudos to MEAC for adding instant replay; let’s hope SWAC follows

The MEAC’s tentative move toward instant replay — it will be available to league teams whose games are televised in 2011 — is an important step in the right direction. Mid-Eastern Athletic Conference commissioner Dennis Thomas confirmed the move during the league’s media day.

“If you look at what had happened with BCS schools, I think on a whole it’s positive,” Thomas said, in published reports. “Even in the NFL, it’s been a positive but it’s not a cure-all for all the mistakes. Even the NFL and BCS make some mistakes with it when you show it on camera.”

More specifically, it could help a series of wrongs that seem to dog both the MEAC and the Southwestern Athletic Conference, where officiating seems to be a point of contention in a dizzying number of games. There are, perhaps, no better candidates for replay than these two leagues, which seem to attract more than their fair share of head-scratching missed calls, phantom penalties and weird rule misinterpretations.

You don’t have to tell the coaches.

Jackson State coach Rick Comegy was suspended for a week last year after a profanity-laced post-game tirade on the officiating, saying: “I thought they (expletive) cheated that game. They took that (expletive) game away from these (expletive) kids.” The MEAC suspended the head linesman for the remainder of the season and reprimanded the football officiating crew after a “misapplication of the rules as it pertains to the chains and down marker” during the Oct. 28 North Carolina A&T game at Bethune-Cookman in 2010, as well.

A year earlier, former Grambling coach Rod Broadway famously said: “We had one touchdown called back on a bogus call,” after the Tigers’ Oct. 10 game against Alabama A&M — comments that later led to an official reprimand. “There were four calls that were touchdown-saving calls — which is, you know, unheard of in this day and time.”

Three MEAC football officials were suspended in 2007 for one game after making what the league called “inaccurate calls” during at Bethune-Cookman game at Norfolk State. The same punishment was handed down by the SWAC in 2006 after a botched call in the closing moments of the Grambling game at Mississippi Valley State.

Those are just the ones that immediately leapt to mind. There are more — many, many more — that never resulted in either a sideline meltdown or an official getting a slap on the wrist.

Instant replay has been badly needed in these leagues for a very long time. The Southwestern Athletic Conference experimented with the concept at its league title game last year; now the MEAC has gone one step further. Let’s hope the SWAC follows suit.

Finding replacement for Frank Warren isn’t the only thing atop Grambling’s to-do list

Grambling begins fall sessions on Thursday no closer to solving the riddle that vexed the program through 15 days of spring practices: An empty place at the top of the depth chart for running back. Now, add to that the transfer of last year’s starter at quarterback.

Top rusher Frank Warren, now a free-agent signing with the NFL’s Dallas Cowboys, left quite the impression at Grambling: Record holder for rushing yards as a freshman, first 1,000-yard rusher at GSU since Brad Hill in 2001, eventual school record holder for career yards. He also passed Pro Football Hall of Famer Walter Payton’s SWAC record for career rushing yards along the way.

Look deeper into the roster, though, and you may see why: As a four-year starter, Warren began each season with a different passer under center — Brandon Landers (2007), J.P. Tillman (who was eventually replaced by Greg Dillon, 2008), Dillon (2009) and Anthony Carrothers (2010). Warren was workhorse for a system that somehow never settled on a signalcaller.

This new season, once again, finds the program looking for a quarterback after Carrothers — who threw for 1,443 yards in 2010, and 115 yards in last spring’s Black and Gold game — abruptly transferred.

[This time, rebuilding at Grambling isn’t quite as tall a task for the returning Doug Williams.]

“I still think we’ve got to wait and see what happens at quarterback and running back,” Grambling coach Doug Williams told me. “We’ve got three freshman running backs and one holdover from the spring. At quarterback, it’s D.J. (Williams, the Grambling legend’s son), (sophomore) Frank (Rivers) and a walk on. One of those guys will have to emerge.”

And quick. There’s roughly one month to go before the season opener.

Both Rivers (6-5, 205) and D.J. Williams (6-4, 193) possess a more prototypical size than the Tigers’ departed 5-10 scatback starter, but lack his experience. D.J. saw his first meaninful action under center last spring, after playing wide receiver throughout his prep career, and Rivers is only just now joining the Grambling system.