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| Grambling State’s forfeit to Jackson State may cost it more than just a loss on its record. (NY Daily News photos) |
The Grambling State football team is back to practicing and plans to play on Saturday. While that’s good news after a tense week of player insurgency that lasted five days, there is a new problem to deal with. Tuesday evening Jackson State University, the team was supposed to play on Saturday, announced that it will pursue legal action against Grambling and others.
Jackson State plans to sue Grambling State for financial loss of forfeit http://t.co/nwwaLquJbR (via @clarionledger)
– Ros Dumlao (@rosdumlao) October 23, 2013
//platform.twitter.com/widgets.js The school released a statement last night explaining their reasoning: recouping the loss of what “could be millions” of dollars for both the school and the community
“We have a fiduciary responsibility to Mississippi taxpayers and the JSU community to mitigate our ongoing and substantial losses. Jackson State plans to pursue litigation against Grambling State and others.
Grambling’s issues are well documented and long standing. Those issues, however, are not JSU’s issues nor are these JSU’s responsibility.
Grambling repeatedly assured us its team would travel to Jackson. Late Friday afternoon they informed us their student athletes would not travel to Jackson for our scheduled game. We have dealt in good faith with Grambling and the Southwestern Athletic Conference. The actions of both have hurt JSU.”
The release also painted a picture of a disengaged SWAC, stating that commissoner Duer Sharp not only didn’t return the school’s calls–they haven’t seen nor heard from him for an entire week.
“It’s one thing to say litigation,”Grambling spokesperson Will Sutton told the Clarion-Ledger’s Ros Dumlao. “It’s another thing to file.”
“If there is further action, we’ll look for the filing of the suit, and we’ll proceed from there,” Sutton said. “But we certainly meant no harm to our neighbor to the east, and we did everything we could to get everybody there (Jackson) and be an important part of their weekend celebration.”