HBCU coaches at odds over pregame chatter, handshake

Two HBCU coaches on opposite sides of a heated early-season matchup have two very different stories about what took place before and after the game.

Shaw University head coach Adrian Jones says he took offense to Albany State head coach Quinn Gray not shaking his hand and his assistant coaches targeting his players before the game. Jones, in his ninth season at the Raleigh, NC-based HBCU, says that prior to Saturday’s game at Albany State, several assistant coaches began to taunt his players

“You know you got grown men talking to my my players. You know I don’t mind coaches going back and forth,” Jones told HBCU Gameday in an exclusive interview on the network’s D2 football show. “But I can guarantee you that when they played Valdosta State they didn’t do that about Valdosta State. So you know once again anything we are good football team.”

Shaw ended up picking up the 43-40 win on the road, icing the game in the last minute of regulation. Jones said that Gray didn’t shake his hand after the game — which he found insulting.

“Win, lose our draw, we talk about showing character as head coaches and leading our young men and showing them how, young men are supposed to be. The slap in the face is not shaking my hand after the game.”

Gray responded to Jones’ claims on Wednesday night on “The Rebuttal.” He says he couldn’t speak to what his assistants may have said prior to the game because he wasn’t there. He did, however, take issue with Jones’ assertion that he lacked sportsmanship by not shaking hands — though he confirmed that he did not.

“It wasn’t because I didn’t want to shake his hand. After the game there was a situation where his team stormed across the field and I was trying to make sure that my team stayed under control and didn’t get out of control to the point…because I did have a couple of young men who were upset — obviously because of the kind of game it was, there’s a lot of competitive banter during the game. So there were some emotions during the game or right there at the end once the clock hit zero,” Gray said.

Gray, a former Florida A&M star and NFL quarterback with the Jacksonville Jaguars, says he was more focused on keeping the piece than exchanging pleasantries.

“And I definitely had to keep my team under control. And while I was trying to keep my team under control, his team continued to approach our guys on our sidelines, talking in “such a way that would be upsetting to anyone who had just lost a game. But at the end of the day, it is all competitive. But at the end of the day, I did have to continue to control my team and keep my team under control.”

Gray is in his second year as head coach at the Albany, GA-based HBCU program.

“If it got lost in translation that I didn’t shake his hand, then I apologize for that. But at the end of the day, it is what it is. Like every other coach, he has my phone number, and if we want to talk about professionalism, he could have called my phone and we could have talked about it like men instead of going to these media outlets.”

The post HBCU coaches at odds over pregame chatter, handshake appeared first on HBCU Gameday .