Southern Jaguars thin for Alcorn State

Baton Rouge, Louisiana -- As Southern football coach Stump Mitchell noted last week, his wasn’t the only team to engage in questionable activity lately. Yes, a fight broke out after the Jaguars lost at Arkansas-Pine Bluff on Oct. 15. Yes, the Southwestern Athletic Conference suspended 16 Southern players and 25 UAPB players.

Maybe something’s in the air this month. On Oct. 14, Baker High and Parkview Baptist engaged in a third-quarter brawl. So did Bastrop and Carroll. Last week, a Georgia high-school coach, David Daniels, was beaten with a football helmet as he and his Warren County team returned to their locker room after a 21-2 victory over Hancock Central.



And the Pac-12 Conference suspended 10 players for their roles in a fight Thursday during the UCLA-Arizona game.

Nevertheless, Mitchell said, he’s doing what he can to convince players that fighting isn’t worth it, regardless of circumstances.

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Bayou Classic to be on NBC through ‘12

New York, NY - NBC Sports announced Tuesday it will continue to televise the annual Bayou Classic through 2012. The Southern-Grambling football rivalry in the Louisiana Superdome has been televised by NBC on Thanksgiving weekend since 1991. As part of the agreement, State Farm is continuing its title sponsorship.

“The Bayou Classic is a slice of Americana, and at the end of this agreement we will have broadcast this iconic event for 23 straight years,” said Jon Miller, president of programming for NBC Sports and VERSUS in the announcement. This year’s Bayou Classic is scheduled for Nov. 26.

“The NBC Sports broadcast and the title sponsorship helps us spread our Jaguar pride into millions of households nationwide,” Southern University System President Ronald Mason Jr. said in the release. “(The) Bayou Classic is more than a football game; it’s a tradition of family fun and camaraderie that we look forward to every Thanksgiving weekend.”

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Southern, Grambling State already in a Bayou Classic mode

State Farm presents…

2011 BAYOU CLASSIC

November 25-27, 2011

New Orleans, LA

Baton Rouge, LA - Southern fans have already penciled in the Nov. 26 football game on the Jaguars’ schedule as an automatic victory. The problem is that Grambling State fans have done the same thing.

It’s not because they view each other as a slouch. Rather, it reflects the deep level of passion and pride behind the State Farm Bayou Classic, now in its 38th year. There are certainly no shortage of story lines for this year’s game. Second-year Southern coach Stump Mitchell’s team is seeking to rebound from a 2-9 season that included a 38-17 loss to Grambling.

Grambling interim athletic director Aaron James is no stranger to the New Orleans area, having played in high school at Cohen, then collegiately with the Tigers, and in the NBA with the New Orleans Jazz.

“This is a great rivalry and a family affair,” James said. “It’s the Black College Super Bowl. The reason why we are out here this early is that, since Hurricane Katrina, the attendance has dropped, and we want to build it back up to where it use to be. We’ve got to get the 65,000-75,000 people back in the Superdome.”

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