Alexandros Alexiou: Within The Dorms

Alexandros Alexiou: Within The Dorms

Independence Community College — in Independence, Kansas — has become known to the world as a second chance for football players who enter the junior college level for a variety of reasons with the help of the Netflix Documentary Series “Last Chance U.”

For the last three seasons, the Independence Pirates had been led by Head Coach Jason Brown of Compton, California. Coach Brown gained popularity in ICC’s first stint on the third season of the series as a hardcore coach, who uses tough love to get the most out of his players.

Although Brown was the most successful at the position in many years, bringing recognition and upgrades to the facilities and values of the team, he is not perfect and — much like anyone — when pushed far enough loses his temper and says things he doesn’t mean one-hundred percent.

As many may recall, back in February, Coach Brown resigned as Head Coach of the Pirates due to a text message exchanged between himself and freshman football player, Alexandros Alexiou, of Bergkamen, Germany.

Screenshots of the text message exchange got out on social media and shortly after were picked up by various media outlets across the country, making national headlines and putting a dark cloud over not just the football program, but the entire college.

Brown listed several reasons as to what triggered his anger in his own way of an apology, but instead of considering that might be a possibility the people of the community who already had hard feelings towards him sided with the student athlete.

Through all the investigations though, no one seemed to think of asking someone who was on staff at the time that lived in the dorms if any of the reasons Brown listed were at all true. Working an internship as the college’s Sport Information Director this past year and being brought on by Coach Brown and Athletic Director Tammie Geldenhuys in August, I was provided a dorm room to live in during my time there.

Being a part of the living community in the dorms, along with several coaches from the other sports, I saw the students quite frequently, seeing and hearing everything that they did from day to day. For the most part, they were all very nice and respectful to each other, but with every group there’s always one that dares to be different.

Every night, Alexandros, or Alex as everyone referred to him around campus, would constantly run down the hallway on the second floor banging on doors and disturbing the people that lived in each room and interrupted quite frequently between myself and other staff members when we would be discussing business situations of what to do for various projects of the athletic department. These were personally the only issues I had with him during the first semester, however during the second semester I saw more around campus.

During the second semester, the football players became more active on social media with the season behind them and posts of social media were rampant amongst the team. I was leaving the cafeteria one night and I was stopped by one of them who wanted to show me a video on their Snapchat. The video showed Alex holding a copy of the book Mein Kampf and walking around the parking lot making gestures like those of Adolf Hitler during WWII. Alexiou also put a picture of the book on his Instagram story, but would later remove the post. Not knowing the extent of it, I just shrugged it off and laughed until days later I continued to hear people continually discussing the behavior of Alexiou and that he had made mentions of the Nazi leader.

I also began to work basketball games where I would sit up top above the crowd to have a better view of the events. During several events, I would glance down and see Alex trying to communicate with some of the women’s basketball players while they were sitting on the bench during the playing of the game. I feared that one of the coaches would see and go off on him, but no one seemed to notice. However, just because you don’t get caught immediately doesn’t mean that you won’t pay for it later.

Surely enough, the next day it all came full circle as (Jason) Brown had been observing this activity from a few rows back. Opting not to make a scene in public, he waited until the next day to send a text message revealing all these issues amongst others he had with Alexiou within the program. Unfortunately, the wording of the text message wasn’t worded correctly and thus the drama unfolded. Coach Brown resigned shortly after and later Associate Head Coach Kiyoshi Harris was promoted to the position. Meanwhile, with several football players knowing the truth and being angered by the news Alexiou was provided a place to stay in town for his own safety by the school.

After all this one question remains: Why would this player turn on Coach Brown like that? During times where Alex would miss meals due to oversleeping or holidays when the cafeteria wasn’t available, he would always come in bragging about the food that he (Brown) had provided him with so that he wouldn’t go hungry. The most logical answer is that (Jason) Brown has become a celebrity like figure nationwide and the guy just wanted some of the spotlight by starting a commotion and costing him his job and possibly his career.

This is not to defend Coach Brown completely or to say that Coach Harris isn’t the right fit, because he is going to do a great job and lead the program just as well if not better. This is simply an inside look to what people failed to realize about the situation.