Week 2 Grambling notebook: Doing too much, a signature win?, and long memories

Grambling coach Rod Broadway didn’t want to say that his quarterback, Greg Dillon, is trying to do too much.

The same didn’t go for Greg Dillon.

“That was on me,” Dillon told me, ruminating on a sequence of mishaps — including a game-ending interception — that choked the life out of a Grambling comeback try in its opener against South Carolina State. “I should have done a better job of taking that they gave me.”

Dillon is prone to this. It’s one of the very best things about him as a player, and the very worst. He can do most anything on the field, and sometimes he gets too caught up in trying to.

That’s part of the learning curve for any player, especially one on such a meteoric path. Remember, Dillon — the eventual Bayou Classic and SWAC Championship Game offensive MVP — was such an unknown in the spring of 2008 that I couldn’t find a coach who knew his correct first name, or hometown, at first.

Nobody works harder than Greg Dillon, nobody takes it more seriously. And nobody bounces back with more vigor and focus. We saw that last year.

“College kids make their share of mistakes; I made mine too,” Broadway said. “Greg is a player. He was trying to make plays that weren’t there. We need him to play within the system. We don’t need him to win the game, just not lose the game.”

Sorting through the difference is Dillon’s task this year.

A SIGNATURE WIN
We’ve already talked about the home-winning streak that’s on the line this week as Grambling welcomes Northwestern State.

Now comes a report, e-mailed by several alert readers this week, stating that Grambling can also win its 500th game on Saturday, becoming the fifth historically black college to reach that historical plateau. Florida A&M boasts 532 wins, followed by Southern (531), Hampton (519) and Tennessee State (503).

Only, it’s not true.

Of course, 408 of Grambling’s all-time victories game under the leadership of Eddie Robinson. Protege Doug Williams, who succeeded Coach Rob, then won 52. Melvin Spears took over and won 20 in three seasons. Broadway has already won 19 in two.

That equals 499.

Except that Robinson wasn’t the program’s first head coach — a common misconception outside of Grambling, and sometimes within. In fact, Grambling had five coaches before Rob, beginning with the university’s second president R.W.E. Jones, who served from 1926-32.

There were three coaches over the period of 1932-35 (Ira Smith, Joe Williams and Osiah Williams), followed by Emory Hines — who served from 1935 until Jones hired Robinson before the 1941 campaign.

A search through the College Football Data Warehouse, a stat bible for me, has Grambling at No. 2 all-time for winning percentage among historical lower-division programs — behind only Yale.

Drilling down, the site reports that Hines won four games during his tenure, and Jones won another — in the program’s inaugural season.

I think that’s an undercount, since the records clearly remain incomplete.

Even so, it’s safe to say that Grambling has already passed this 500-victory milestone. The College Football Data Warehouse puts the all-time total right now at 505, meaning Grambling reached 500 last November — when it beat Mississippi Valley in the midst of a 10-game winning streak to end 2008.

Also, as noted above, Grambling began playing football under “Prez” in 1926, meaning the program is in the midst of its 83rd year — not 67th, as noted in this attached piece … from, incredibly enough, comes from the Southwestern Athletic Conference.

That’s been Grambling’s home league since 1960.

They also got the 500-plateau storyline wrong.

LOOSENING UP
Rod Broadway press conferences have been feisty affairs so far this season, with much of it directed at yours truly. I love the give and take with Broadway, since it reveals a humorous side that he too often has hidden in front of the general public.

He’s a funny guy. And he’s starting to show that.

I asked him, for instance, about the team’s transition across the middle of his defense — which lost two starting inside defensive linemen — and a pair of playmaking stoppers in linebackers Keefe Hall (the team’s leading tackler last season) and Jeffrey Jack, an emotional leader.

Would there be changes from Week 1 to Week 2?

“Nick, they rushed the ball for 180 yards,” Broadway said. “You think we are going to change something or leave it like it is? Nick, you’re smarter than that. (Laughter.) Nick, say it how you want to say it.”

“Well,” I replied, “I want you to say it.”

Broadway even found a way to connect a question from Ethan Conley about scheduling both cash-incentive upper-division foes with more winnable games against teams at or below Grambling’s level all the way back to a comment I made after an ugly 13-2 win against Langston, the Oklahoma-based NAIA program, early last season.

“As you said, or as you got it from the master Nick, in the history of Grambling that may have been the worst game in history,” Broadway said, smiling broadly. “You look at it differently than we did. We won the ball game — and that’s the bottom line. Where I am from, a win is a win.”

After a moment’s thought, Broadway added: “I understand that it was pitiful ballgame on our part. It just hurt to see it in print!”

To be fair, a Shreveport-based reporter asked Broadway if he had any input into this year’s rugged early schedule, and he was equally incredulous.

“Say what??,” he said, wide eyed, to more laughter.

“I understand the current situation as far as the economy but I am not here to fix the economy,” Broadway continued, after laughter broke out. “I am here to win football games.”