Ted Lewis: Its football team back on top after Bayou Classic win, ‘Grambling will never die’

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NEW ORLEANS -- Grambling football, former Tigers quarterback and coach Doug Williams likes to say, has special meaning and standing in the sport.

But in Williams’ second go-round, that something unfortunately meant chaos in the program in 2013, the embarrassment of having to forfeit a game after a player boycott and going through three coaches that season, which concluded with a single victory for the second straight year.

Two years later, though, Grambling is back.

Saturday’s come-from-behind 34-23 victory against archrival Southern in the 42nd Bayou Classic wrapped up an undefeated SWAC Western Conference championship for the Tigers.

Now it’s on to next Saturday’s conference championship game against Alcorn State and, with a victory, a trip to Atlanta to face MEAC champion North Carolina A&T in the inaugural Celebration Bowl.

But this one — in the Mercedes-Benz Superdome against the team that Tigers fans and players want to beat above all others — is the one that they’re likely to remember most about this season.

“This is a childhood dream,” said senior cornerback Nicholas Peoples, whose end-zone second-quarter interception and return to the Grambling 46-yard line was the biggest of several momentum-turning plays that got the Tigers out of a 20-3 deficit. “It’s every Louisiana kid’s dream to make it to the Superdome and win the state championship. That’s what this feels like today.”


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