Wild brawl mars classic HBCU rivalry game

In position to avenge a loss a year ago to an HBCU rival as well as Southwestern Athletic Conference foe, Grambling and Bethune-Cookman engaged in more than a football rivalry contest Saturday afternoon inside Grambling's Eddie G. Robinson Memorial Stadium.

After Grambling carried a 24-20 lead from halftime into the opening moments before the start of the third quarter, a raucous, wild melee broke out on the sidelines.

In a video shared of the fracas, Grambling Tigers defensive back Xhane Williams is seen swinging on Bethune-Cookman defensive end Isaiah Washburn, who loses his helmet and retreats onto the playing field from multiple Grambling players who appeared to be in attack mode.

After the game, in his postgame press conference on the heels of his team's 31-23 win, Grambling coach Mickey Joseph -- a popular Louisiana figure who's been a top-level assistant in previous years at state flagship school LSU, blasted the "disrespect."

"When you play here, you gotta make sure as a coach, support staff, anyone, that all your players come down," Joseph said postgame. "If you're going to walk down there, and take your time, and now it's three minutes, three minutes and 30 seconds on the (halftime) clock, and we're standing on the stairs and you got four or five kids who are just walking down, taking their time, listen guys, at the end of the day I'm thinking, 'They know what they're doing.' They taking their time, so we're trying to give them their respect."

The chaotic scene resulted in a total of nine ejections -- five Grambling players, four from Bethune-Cookman -- who were ineligible to compete in the second half and also face additional time on the shelf in their respective teams' upcoming games.

Joseph continued to provide his perspective. 

"So by the time, we gotta go ... we can't wait on two players," said Joseph, whose Grambling squad improved to 7-3 with the win. "But they should never leave their players. Who leaves their players? Who leaves their players over there knowing that we had to come down?

"But see, that's what I'm talking about. That's the disrespect stuff. And we're not going to tolerate disrespect here at Grambling. You won't disrespect us. We're going to meet disrespect with disrespect, because be responsible, get your kids out the locker room, make 'em get to the field. They came down on the field, they walked on the field. That's disrespecting the game, first of all. That's my perspective and I told them after the game, I said, 'You can't leave your kids up there. You can't leave your kids up there.' We talked. I know we're going to hear from my A.D., he'll talk to his A.D. I told him, I said, 'If they fine us, then you know what ... "

While Bethune-Cookman's second loss in SWAC play puts its essentially out of contention for a spot in the league's title game, Grambling could still reach the SWAC Championship if it wins its final two games -- against rivals Alcorn and Southern in the Bayou Classic -- and Prairie View A&M loses a game.