Alcorn football coach ousted

VICKSBURG - Alcorn State University's mistake, Percy Norwood said, has now been rectified.

Melvin Spears, the school's controversial, boastful and recently suspended football coach, was fired this week.

"Sometimes in life you make mistakes," said Norwood, president of Alcorn State's national alumni association. "You have to accept that. We made a mistake. We're rectifying it."

Also on Friday, Alcorn announced the hiring of Patric Simon from Langston University in Oklahoma City as the school's athletic director. Simon takes a job that was vacant for nearly a year.

Spears' firing wasn't all that surprising - it came more than a month after The Clarion-Ledger reported in January that Spears' faced a pre-termination hearing.

Still, it was met by a roaring applause when Alcorn President Christopher Brown made the announcement in front of several hundred purple-and-gold clad Alcornites who attended Friday's alumni conference at the Vicksburg Convention Center.

"You show your knowledge and character, or you go from the Alcorn campus," Brown bellowed to an applauding audience.

Just a year ago, Alcorn fans cheered in the downtown Jackson Marriott when Spears' hiring was announced.

That seems so long ago.

In between, Spears, who did not return a call seeking comment, had one tumultuous ride in Lorman.

The Braves won just two games and lost eight in a season rife with bumps. There was a preseason, on-campus argument with a player's father, sagging attendance (Alcorn got a combined 3,000 at its final two home games), the dismissal of once-star quarterback Brandon Bridge and a season-ending 51-7 loss to rival Jackson State University.

The result: the school's fifth different coach in the last six years.

Todd McDaniel, the team's defensive line coach and a former Wingfield High School coach, is taking over in the interim, but a national search to replace Spears will be conducted.

This is the second time in six years Spears has been fired by a school.

Two years ago, Spears was awarded about $600,000 in a wrongful termination suit against Grambling State University, which fired the coach in 2006 after three seasons.

Spears has two years left on a contract at Alcorn paying him about $130,000 yearly. But Brown said Spears was terminated "with cause" and that he isn't owed any of the money.

Asked what Spears did, Brown said Spears violated the school's "code of conduct" but did not get more specific.

Told about Spears' successful suit against Grambling, Brown said: "I can tell you I've never lost a lawsuit."

Brown fired Spears on Thursday after receiving a recommendation from the committee that conducted the coach's hearing in January.

McDaniel will compete in "a national pool of candidates," to be the next coach, Brown said.

Simon, the new athletic director who will help conduct the season, is in his fourth year as the AD at Langston University, a historically black school with an enrollment of about 4,000.

Langston is not affiliated with the NCAA. The Lions play in the NAIA, one of the smallest classifications of college athletics.

"This is already a great, great, great program," Simon said of Alcorn. "There's a rich tradition here and a great legacy. I didn't go to Alcorn, but today I bleed purple and gold."

A start date for Simon hasn't been set, Brown said.

The coaching search isn't likely to begin until Simon officially takes over in Lorman.

Brown said he had no regrets in hiring Spears.

"He's a strong Alcornite. He loves the university," Brown said. "I'm pleased I got the opportunity to know him and hire him."

And now McDaniel takes over a program that hasn't won a Southwestern Athletic Conference championship in nearly 20 years.

He does so with a splintered staff and a roster depleted by defections during Spears' reign.

Brown did not extend the contracts of at least three of the Braves' eight assistant coaches.

"My whole thing is I want to make sure Alcorn is stabilized," McDaniel said. "I want to move Alcorn forward."

McDaniel, a 34-year-old Alcorn graduate, joined Spears' staff last year after stops as a high school head coach at Wingfield and Hazlehurst, his hometown.

"I'd love to be the head coach (at Alcorn) come this season," McDaniel said. "I'm fully capable of doing the job."

Source: http://www.clarionledger.com/article/20120225/NEWS/202250337/1001/RSS01

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