During the final Southwestern Athletic Conference football coaches’ conference of 2024, two head coaches were ready to move on from an investigation that made national headlines.
Late last week, a report surfaced that the conference was investigating a claim that Jackson State had access to Arkansas-Pine Bluff’s practice footage ahead of the team’s Nov. 2 meeting, which Jackson State won 41-3.
UAPB coach Alonzo Hampton, in his first public comments on the matter, explained what occurred from his perspective.
“We realize that our system was compromised. I had coaching changes in the summertime, including our video guy, and we did not remove those young men. Someone used his account to log in and watch film,” Hampton explained. “Everybody knows it’s illegal to share your credentials. [The former player] said he didn’t do it. Well, someone logged in to his account. I’m not the judge or the jury. We know our system was compromised, and someone logged in and watched some film.”
Jackson State released a statement on Friday saying that “we are aware of the allegations brought to the attention of the conference. After working with the conference office and having full transparency into our program, no violations were found, and the matter was closed.”
“I’ll leave everything up to the SWAC offices to clear that up,” JSU head coach T.C. Taylor said. “I do want to say this; we don’t need to go that route in order to beat any football team. I’ve been doing this a long time and I pride myself on doing it the right way. I’m going to leave it at that.”
Hampton expressed similar sentiments.
“Jackson State is the best, in my opinion. They have a really good football team,” he said. “I don’t think they needed to do anything if they did. I’m not saying they did. They were better than us. Let’s let this thing go away. They were the better team. That’s why they went undefeated in the SWAC.”
