The culture. The coaches. The student athletes. The opportunities. Just a handful of reasons why Brian Howard decided to come back to the G.
Howard, who was the sports information director for Grambling State from 2017-2019, left to work at Florida A&M for two years but is now back at GSU and will enter his first year as the Senior Associate AD for Athletic Communications.
Howard said even after being gone for two years, it felt like he had never left.
“I have a tremendous love for Grambling State University and its fan base and its alumni and its student athletes,” Howard said. “My heart was always here. So coming back and having the opportunity to come was something special to me, and I’m just super blessed to be back.”
Some of his job duties include but are not limited to overseeing football, writing press releases for all sports, updating the GSU Tigers athletic website, creating graphics for game day, finding ways to promote the program, as well as providing game day notes for opponents to use. His new role is quite similar to his old role, but now he is in an overseeing position and now has two assistants working under him.
His favorite part about the job is being with the student athletes and seeing them succeed, while also having interns under him that he can serve as a mentor to.
"They're the ones that I constantly put the blood sweat and tears into to succeed," Howard said. " If they're not going to be professionals, that's fine. I want them to succeed in life."
Howard has worked in the athletic department for a plethora of HBCUS including Lincoln University, Alabama State, Young Harris College and LeTourneau University. While at Florida A&M, he worked in the University's communication department. Another reason why he came back was because he missed working in athletics, being in the locker room and being around the student athletes.
Since being at Grambling State University back in 2017, Brian Howard created an Instagram page for the athletic department that now has over 10,000 followers. Additionally, the engagement on the athletic Twitter page has increased. Now he is looking forward to bringing Grambling a new design athletic website which may include a section where student athletes can obtain their game day pictures.
"I think they embrace me very well," Howard said. "I think that over the course of time if you do the work and you do good work, people will embrace you and that's what they do at Grambling. One of the greatest compliments I could ever get was comparing me to Collie J. Nicholson who was the first sports information director at Grambling, who worked under Coach Eddie G. Robinson. People would compare me to him all the time. I'm not Collie J. Nicholson, I'm just Brian Howard but to be in that same breath, that same sentence spoke volumes. So people embrace me here. Sometimes you'll have haters, everyone does but I have more people who embrace me than the haters."
Brian Howard