By SCOTT BOATRIGHT, Lincoln Parish Journal
GRAMBLING — A history-rich matchup is set to kick off at 6 p.m. Saturday at Eddie G. Robinson Stadium as the Grambling State Tigers play host to the Tuskegee Golden Tigers.
Both teams stand at 0-1. Tuskegee is coming off a 21-13 loss to Johnson C. Smith last weekend at the Cramton Bowl in Montgomery Alabama, while Grambling fell in its season opener 40-10 at Louisiana-Lafayette.
Grambling and Tuskegee haven’t faced off since before modern-day records started being kept in 1950. But that doesn’t diminish the fact that they are still two of the most storied teams in HBCU football.
Tuskegee had another strong run from 2006-09 under then head coach Willie Slater when the Golden Tigers went 42-3, winning four SIAC championships and three Black college national titles (2007-09).
Grambling’s own golden era came especially from 1972-77 as the G-Men put together a 60-13 record during those seasons, taking four Black college national crowns (’72, ’74-75 and ’77 with shared two Southwestern Athletic Conference titles in ’74, ’75 and one outright championship in ’77.
The Tigers had a resurgence in Broderick Fobbs’ tenure at his alma mater, nearly 10 years ago, but have fallen on hard times since the start of 2019. Now new head coach Mickey Joseph isn’t taking anything for granted against the smaller division visitors.
While these days Grambling is basically considered to be the bigger and stronger program of the two, Joseph has urged his Tigers not to take Tuskegee lightly.
“I told the team — don’t get fooled,” Joseph said. “This is a really good football team. They’re well coached, and they play hard. And I told the kids that they need to remember, we’re Grambling, and we get everybody’s best shot.
“So, they’re going to come here confident and thinking they can win this game. So we’ve got to prepare. We can’t have bad practices and just think things are going to turn on Saturday. We respect them, we respect their program, we respect their university and we know that they can win games and are always in the running for something.”
Joseph said the Golden Tigers won’t be impacted by a large crowd at GSU after playing before 15,000 last weekend.
And he’s still imploring GSU fans to show up and cheer on the G-Men against Tuskegee this weekend.
“We’ve got to make sure we (GSU fans) come out,” Joseph said. “We don’t need to wait for the Jackson State game. Let’s come out and let’s pack the stadium. We want everybody to come out and see what we’re all about.
“So, we’re going to come out and put on a show. We want to put on a clinic. That’s how we’re looking at it.”
Joseph said he expects Tuskegee to present a challenge in the trenches.
“I think they’re really good up front on both sides of the ball,” Joseph said. “I think they’re really athletic. They’re big up front, they’re athletic up front and their D-line moves a lot. We’ve got our work cut out for us and we’ve got to get ready.”
Joseph said containing the run game of Tuskegee’s quarterbacks will be a key factor for his Tigers.
“They have two they play,” Joseph said of Tuskegee’s quarterbacks. “One is a big tall kid they play. We know we’ve got to watch the quarterback run because we know they’re going to do that. They run a really good scheme and we have to prepare for the quarterback run game.
“That’s hard to account for with a six-man box because that gives them seven people back there who can hurt you with their legs. So we really have to figure out how to slow that down. We can’t let them get that started.”
Contact Scott at tscottboatright@gmail.com