The Texas Southern University athletic department has been engulfed in controversy for more than a year after it was first learned that decorated men’s basketball player and longtime Vice President of Athletics Kevin Granger was facing a lawsuit on sexual assault charges against an employee.
It took off from there with the awkward outside hiring of Dr. Paula Jackson as interim athletic director while Granger was under suspension. Then we learned earlier this year that Granger had indeed been relieved of his duties and that his retired playing jersey had been removed from the rafters.
But it only became more strained after highly successful men’s basketball coach Johnny Jones suddenly resigned in the spring to take an assistant coaching job at LSU, where he had once been the head coach. This all, of course, led to one of the oddest dual searches ever, with TSU President J.W. Crawford leading the charge to hire a new director of athletics and a men’s basketball coach simultaneously.
Finally, last month, with the Board of Regents approval, Crawford hired Jackson State’s Vice President of Athletics Ashley Robinson as the new vice president of athletics, and then hired little-known Seton Hall assistant basketball coach Corey Lowery to replace Jones. None of this came without frustration from the men’s basketball players and their families, as well as alumni and supporters, who all held conflicting opinions about who should have been hired for both department-shifting appointments.
Once it was all done and over, the Defender sat down with Regents chairman James Benham and Crawford for a candid conversation about the hiring process, the state of the athletic department, and exactly where the football team’s home games will be played after this season, upon losing use of soccer-first Shell Energy Stadium this season to the Houston Dynamo. The football program is forced to play all its home games at a high school stadium in Aldine, miles away from campus, this season.
Crawford also answered the burning question alum and supporters have been asking about his prior relations with Lowery when both lived near each other in New Jersey.
Watch the video above for the full interview with Crawford and Benham conducted by the Defender’s Terrance Harris.
