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Yes, that’s correct! Last week, the brand new women’s volleyball coach at Grambling State University in north Louisiana advised all 19 women on the team that they had been dismissed. All scholarships will be honored through the end of this spring’s semester.
When hearing about this situation, my first thought was, “How bad was the Grambling volleyball team last season?” They must have gone 0-20 or nearly that bad, right?
Nope. The team went 11-17 last year. Sure, that’s not exactly championship material, but the Grambling volleyball team went 8-8 in the Southwestern Athletic Conference during the 2021 fall season.
The long-time volleyball coach at Grambling, Demetria Keys-Johnson, stepped down from the job back on December 1 to “pursue other opportunities within the University” according to a press release. According to her bio which is still displayed on the university’s website, Ms. Keys-Johnson ( a Grambling alum) is also a mental health professional.
On February 14, 2022, Grambling announced the hiring of Chelsey Lucas (a 2007 Grambling graduate) as the school’s new volleyball coach. Ms. Lucas comes to Grambling after coaching the past three seasons at the University of Arkansas – Pine Bluff. Her 2021 team put together a very impressive 13-3 record last season.
Early last week, a Shreveport television station (KSLA) reported that Coach Lucas had sent a text message to each of the 19 current Grambling volleyball players that she was rescinding every volleyball scholarship from last season’s players at the end of this spring’s semester.
Even non-scholarship walk-on volleyball players who weren’t even receiving any athletics money will not be part of next season’s team.
Grambling’s Athletic Director Dr. Trayveon Scott also issued a statement on this matter last week. He said, “Just as the transfer portal empowers student-athletes, our coaches are also empowered to make the decisions they deem necessary to advance their programs.”
Wow! This action at Grambling may have just set the entire college sports world on fire!
Think about it. Grambling’s Athletics Director is saying that his coaches may do whatever they deem necessary (within the rules, of course) in order to find better players and become winners.
This story isn’t so much about Grambling and its volleyball team as much as it is that big large red flag which is called the NCAA’s transfer portal process.
You cannot read the sports headlines most days without finding another story about one or more college football or basketball players putting their names into the NCAA’s new big “Wheel of Fortune” called the transfer portal in hopes that the player can transfer to another college next year to receive more playing time and/or a better financial “package” of NIL (Name, Image, and Licensing) money from the school’s wealthy supporters.
After #15 seed St. Peter’s College of Jersey City, NJ shocked the college basketball world by reaching the Elite Eight in the NCAA March Madness men’s tournament just a couple of weeks ago, the head basketball coach left the school to become the new head coach at his alma mater, Seton Hall.
So much for the commitment the coach made to those players recruited to come to St. Peter’s!
As a result of their coach abruptly leaving, three starters from this year’s St. Peter’s Peacocks’ basketball team and two key bench players have entered the NCAA’s transfer portal and are seeking to find another school to play basketball. Would anyone be surprised to find some of these same players at Seton Hall next season?
If these student-athletes were attending St. Peter’s to receive a valuable college education in addition to playing basketball, why would they consider leaving the school simply because they will have to play for a new basketball coach?
Isn’t the school and its academic programs a bigger reason you selected to come to St. Peter’s?
The St. Peter’s basketball story also provides another shocking statistic. About 2,000 college basketball players are expected to attempt to transfer to other colleges via the NCAA’s infamous transfer portal between now and August. The NCAA estimates that 18,000 young men annually participate in college basketball, so this massive transfer pool equates to 11% of all men’s college basketball players trying to transfer between today and next fall.
Why?
Though some may not wish to hear this, some athletes are (gasp!) primarily using college basketball as a method to chase a statistically unlikely chance of becoming a professional basketball player (either in the NBA or abroad). The NCAA’s own website reveals that just 1.2% of men’s basketball players will play professionally at any level.
Many will enter, but few will win.
Yet, 11% of this year’s men’s college basketball players are ready to play musical chairs in hopes of getting a better chance to fuel their personal dream. If a college basketball player is really NBA material, the vast majority of those young men will be selected by the NBA at its upcoming player draft.
Forget the academic achievements of college. The NBA’s only requirement is that each person eligible to enter the professional league must be one-year removed from high school. Many young basketball players will select a high profile college basketball program such as Duke or Kentucky where they will receive the maximum television exposure for one season.
Grades? Are you kidding? Many of these AAU-semi-professional basketball players hardly attend college classes at all and are on academic probation by the time their second semester in college begins. Since their only goal in attending college was to tread water while waiting for the NBA to call their name this spring, the whole process is a big joke.
The NBA’s “one-and-done” rule has harmed college basketball, but the colleges continue to reap the cash from bigger television deals and incremental season ticket revenue made from the adding one of these “rent-a-players”, too.
Let’s now return to the Grambling volleyball team.
The new volleyball coach believes that the school will be able to utilize that same NCAA transfer portal system to acquire an entirely new squad prior to next fall.
Since the new coach is coming from UA-Pine Bluff, I wouldn’t be surprised to find that several athletes coming to the Grambling volleyball squad this fall will include players migrating 150 miles to the south from Pine Bluff, Arkansas to Grambling, Louisiana.
So, what happens to the 19 women who played for Grambling this season? It’s likely that a few may find another college volleyball home, but the majority will not.
With Grambling cutting their athletics scholarships, many of these young women will now face a larger financial burden in order to stay at the university (if that’s the primary reason they came to the school).
In the not-too-distant past, a student’s athletic scholarship was rarely discontinued if the person contributed to the team and met the academic requirements of the university. Though some schools have quietly pulled the athletic scholarship away from a football/basketball player for other reasons, those cases had been relatively rare. A student-athlete was usually able to count on keeping his or her athletic scholarship as long as they qualified for the team every season and maintained their grades.
With Grambling’s bold move to abruptly cancel the athletic scholarships of all of its volleyball players, why shouldn’t we soon expect to see other higher profile colleges doing the same thing when it comes to their under-performing athletic teams?
In men’s college basketball, high profile basketball teams such as Georgetown (which went 6-25 this year and 0-19 in the Big East Conference) and the Pac-12’s Oregon State (the Beavers went a woeful 3-28 overall and just 1-19 in conference play) might be giving thought to dumping their entire roster and try to “hire” a new squad via the NCAA transfer portal next season.
If the students may now transfer for no reason and without prior warning, why shouldn’t the school itself be allowed to do the same thing if the athletes aren’t performing as hoped for?
This new “Grambling Option” will quickly gather steam, and I expect other colleges to follow suit with regard making wholesale personnel changes within under-performing sports on campus.
Sigh. I miss the good ol’ days.
I remember how the NCAA and college athletics departments suggested that the term “student-athlete” be used when discussing students who also participate in college athletics programs.
The phrase “student-athlete” feels so 1990’s and 2000’s, doesn’t it? At least we may confirm that the term should have been “athlete-student” all along.
Here in the topsy-turvy world called 2022, we are fully into a new “Pirate” age of college athletics.
Both the athlete (who may vanish via the Transfer Portal and abscond with signing bonus money from the crooked NIL programs) or the college (who may now follow Grambling’s model by yanking an athletic scholarship right from under your feet) can be made to walk the plank with little or no notice.
Forget the team-oriented college days of “One for all and all for one!” We’re now witnessing the equivalent of mutiny on the high seas of college athletics today.
Arggh! Grab your life preserver, matey…Another man just went overboard!