Grambling State Got 14 Players Suspended for One Postgame Fight — Its Second in Two Seasons

Grambling State walked off its own field Saturday with a three-point loss. On Monday, it walked away with something worse — 14 players suspended, a $25,000 fine, and a second straight November in which a fight at Eddie G. Robinson Memorial Stadium swallowed the game that came before it.

UPDATE — Monday, Nov. 9: Two more photographs from Saturday's game have been added to this story — the Lincoln Parish Journal's picture of Jordan Bride's 73-yard kickoff-return touchdown, and a frame from the fight footage carried by HBCU Sports. The story now carries four pictures from the game, plus the KNOE 8 News video of the brawl. Three more photographs from Saturday's game have since been added — two from Grambling State Football's Instagram and one from photographer Gabe Hochstetler's Instagram — for seven pictures from the game in all.

The Southwestern Athletic Conference suspended 23 players in all — 14 from Grambling State and nine from Arkansas–Pine Bluff — and fined each school $25,000 over the postgame altercation that followed UAPB's 35–32 win on Saturday, November 7. Multiple players drew two-game suspensions because of the severity of their actions. The rest will serve one game.

The conference said its investigation, conducted with both schools, found that each program violated the league's code of ethics and conduct through acts of unsportsmanlike conduct, and it issued the fines under its bylaws. "We're extremely disappointed by the events that transpired during the postgame of the Arkansas-Pine Bluff at Grambling State football game," Commissioner Dr. Charles McClelland said. "Acts of that nature have zero place in the Southwestern Athletic Conference and intercollegiate athletics." The conference office, McClelland added, "has and will continue to enforce a zero-tolerance policy" for unsportsmanlike conduct.

The brawl buried a game that deserved better. UAPB built its win on two fourth-quarter touchdowns that erased a 25–21 deficit — an 82-yard touchdown pass to Demetric Whitlock Jr., who finished with five catches for 107 yards, and DaeDae Allen's 76-yard punt return, which stretched the lead to 35–25. Grambling answered on the first play of its next drive, Jacobe Robinson finding Byron Eaton Jr. down the left sideline for a 78-yard touchdown that cut it to 35–32 with 5:41 left. The Tigers outgained the Golden Lions 408 yards to 406 and got a 73-yard kickoff-return touchdown from Jordan Bride — and still lost their Senior Day by three, a week after a 23–20 overtime loss at Texas Southern.

What happens next is partly unwritten. The SWAC did not name the suspended players. It did not say how many drew the two-game bans, or which games the suspensions will cover. The calendars make the silence loud: Grambling, 4–5 overall and 2–4 in the SWAC, plays at Bethune-Cookman on Saturday. For Arkansas–Pine Bluff, 6–3 and 4–2 and winners of four straight, the nine suspensions land in the middle of a title race: the Golden Lions are tied with Prairie View A&M and Alcorn State atop the West Division, and Saturday's visitor in Pine Bluff is Prairie View itself — a game that could help decide who reaches the SWAC Championship Game on December 5. The conference has split the difference before: after a 2011 postgame fight between UAPB and Southern produced 41 suspensions, the SWAC staggered the Golden Lions' one-game bans across three games rather than gutting the roster for one Saturday. Whether it does the same here is unanswered, and the math underneath the question is unforgiving: Grambling plays at Bethune-Cookman on Saturday and then not again until the Bayou Classic against Southern in New Orleans on November 28 — so every two-game suspension the conference handed down on Monday reaches into the biggest game on Grambling's calendar.

Grambling announced its 14 suspensions itself on Monday, and apologized. "I apologize to the Grambling State University community and to the UAPB team and their fans," said Dr. Trayvean D. Scott, the school's vice president for intercollegiate athletics. "I have been in contact with UAPB Director of Athletics Chris Robinson to express our sincere apologies, as well." Grambling's own statement, like the conference's, named no players. Head coach Mickey Joseph had said on Saturday night, before the ruling, that "decisions will be made" once the conference reviewed the film. On Monday he apologized too, and said another incident "won't happen again." UAPB's Alonzo Hampton had condemned it on Saturday night, right after the game: "It's embarrassing. That can't happen."

Grambling has stood in this exact spot before — same stadium, almost to the day. On November 8, 2025, a halftime fight with Bethune-Cookman brought 27 suspensions, 18 of them Grambling players, and a $40,000 fine for Grambling; Bethune-Cookman was fined $25,000, and three players drew two-game suspensions. Grambling led that game 24–20 at the half and won it 31–23. Joseph said afterward that his program would "meet disrespect with disrespect." He later apologized to the SWAC and to Bethune-Cookman, and said the comments were not meant to condone violence.

Put the two Novembers together and one program's ledger reads 32 players suspended and $65,000 in conference fines, both bills arriving after fights in its own stadium. This year's fine came in $15,000 lighter than last year's, and the SWAC's release does not say whether the repeat figured into the number. Saturday offers no distance from any of it: Grambling travels to Daytona Beach to face Bethune-Cookman, the other program from last year's fight, carrying 14 fresh suspensions.