BHS football coach Jermain Crowell out, can’t coach in Michigan

Last week, a report in The Detroit Free Press by longtime columnist Mick McCabe announced that Belleville High School head football coach Jermain Crowell was fired as coach and will be impossible for him to get a job in Michigan anytime soon.
The Free Press report said on Nov. 22 the Michigan High School Athletic Association extended Crowell’s earlier penalty for violating the undue influence rule, barring him from coaching any sport at any school in the state for the next two academic years.
BHS had immediately suspended Crowell after it received a letter of inquiry from the MHSAA once it began investigating Crowell for violating the undue influence rule.
DeJuan Rogers has been the interim head coach since the state playoffs began and he held up the trophy on Saturday for a picture after BHS won the District 1 championship for the second straight year.
BHS athletic director Joe Brodie is reported as telling the Free Press that there is no way Crowell will be coaching at Belleville for the 2025-26 school year when his suspension ends. Brodie told them they will find a new coach.
On Nov. 23, Jermain Crowell posted the following on Twitter: “To all my supporters I appreciate all your words of encouragement. Know that it’s not necessary. I’m good with this. I was grooming Rodgers [sic] to take over anyway. I was really tired and need to spend time with my family. Thanks a million Belleville!!! I can never repay you.”
At Monday’s school board meeting, School Supt. Pete Kudlak told the Independent that Crowell was not fired but he will not be coaching for the district any more and they will be getting a new coach. Supt. Kudlak said the MHSAA had suspended him.
He said he did not know about the status of the district job Crowell has in security. He said Monday’s meeting would not discuss the coach but would concentrate on the team.
“This meeting is for the kids,” he said.
He confirmed that the district’s football program was already on probation because of a violation last spring and an assistant coach was suspended, as reported by the Free Press. Kudlak said the district self-reported this violation to the MHSAA.
After Monday’s meeting, when Reg Ion said he had not heard about the probation until recently, Kudlak said it had been in the Free Press last spring. The Independent had printed no report on this probation.
MHSAA executive director Mark Uyl told the Free Press there is no wiggle room left as far as Belleville’s football program is concerned because it remains on probation through the 2024-25 school year.
The most recent inquiry began when a student at Detroit King said Crowell contacted him before he entered the ninth grade. He also said that Crowell picked him up and drove him to summer practice sessions and seven-on-seven competitions. This year, the student, now a senior, and his father reportedly denied these allegations and Kudlak told the Independent the charges weren’t true.
While investigating those allegations, the MHSAA discovered a 2018 episode of the TV show “Sports Stars of Tomorrow,” which carried a segment on Belleville seniors Devontae Dobbs and Julian Barnett. The show claimed the two were living with Crowell.
Kudlak also previously had told the Independent that the claim that students lived with Crowell in his Van Buren Township home were untrue.
“It was certainly a violation and our staff has spent a lot of time since this whole process started around Oct. 21 or 22,” Uyl reportedly told the Free Press. “The time that our staff has invested going over the last month, we found multiple cases of a violation and we’ve provided a penalty that we feel fits with the facts as we know them.”
Coaches across the state for years have accused Crowell of cheating, the Free Press reported. This was Crowell’s eighth football season at Belleville and the Tigers made the state playoff every one of those seasons.
Belleville is a school of choice district, but other coaches believed it unfathomable that any school of choice coach could amass the sheer number of high-quality players that Crowell did without violating the undue influence rule many times over.
According to an Independent report, Crowell also was hired Oct. 8, 2018 as a job coach in special services.
At Monday’s school board meeting, Kudlak said, “The stuff in the paper is not accurate, but we have no control over what they print.” He said the coach issue will be discussed at the board’s next meeting, which is 7 p.m., Dec. 12.
On Tuesday, Kudlak clarified that a lot of the information published in the Free Press was not correct. He said he had talked with the Independent before its last story and it was correct.