When Will HBCU Football Programs Be ’Great’ Again?

Its that time of year again — where HBCU football teams take trips to play their FBS counterparts in ’money games’ (that usually ends up with an embarrassing loss and a bruised ego for the HBCU). The main reason for these games being scheduled is for a easy win for the more dominant school and for the lower level schools keeping their respective athletic budgets afloat.

This practice has been pretty standard for quite some time now, with some host universities even going so far as to require the visting team’s band to show up and perform in order for the school to secure their paychecks (in which most cases, the band sees none of this money). The FBS schools that schedule these games know that in most cases, no one wants to go to see their beloved nationally ranked team beat up on an FCS school with ‘inferior’ talent, coaches, facilities and overall resources, so they require the HBCUs to bring their band along to try to maximize the attendance. Think of it as lagniappe.

In some cases, HBCUs schools keep the games competitive. Just last week, Alabama State University lost to the University of Alabama at Birmingham by 5 points - a big ’moral victory’ considering UAB was a 42.5 point favorite to win, won 10 games last season against other FBS schools - including a bowl game, and ASU finished last season 4-7.

In an extremely rare case, an HBCU pulls off an upset of their FBS ’big brother.’ In 2017, Howard University defeated UNLV in the biggest point-spread upset in modern college football history. They also received a $600,000 payday for making the trip from the nation’s capital to ’Sin City.’

It’s no secret that the majority of rosters of these Power 5/blue blood conference and ’Group of 5’ conference schools are comprised of African-American athletes. And more times than not, they are generally the best players on each of these teams. With the large success and profitability of college football coming largely on the backs of black players, one question always lingers — how and when will the best black athletes start choosing HBCUs over their PWI counterparts?

ESPN 2019’s number 1 overall high school football player Kavon Thibideaux signed with the University of Oregon. But before that, he made headlines when he made an official visit to FAMU (an HBCU). On the surface, there’s no big deal about it, but when you do a little deeper digging, you will find that players on Thibadoux’s caliber NEVER even consider visiting a black college, let alone attending one. So the fact that he even visited was considered a huge win and a ray of hope for all-black schools.

Some of the best players in the history of the sport have come from HBCUs, including several Hall of Famers: Jerry Rice, Walter Payton, Michael Strahan, Mel Blunt, Deacon Jones, Shannon Sharpe and Aeneas Williams just to name a few.
 

Other HBCU players who haven’t been enshrined imto the HOF but have made a profound impact at the highest level of football include Steve McNair, Doug Williams, Donald Driver, Ben Coats, Nate Newton, Robert Mathis, Dominique Rodgers-Cromartie and Hugh Douglas.

The main argument against the top athletes choosing these schools is that the financial resources hail in comparison to PWIs, the facilities are not up to par for the players to fully develop (who could forget the fiasco at Grambling State in 2013?), and that the level of competition not being as strong as the FBS level. Another long standing argument against players going to HBCUs are that it will be harder for them to make it to the NFL and when they get there, they will be fundamentally ’behind the curb.’

To the first concern, there is a clear solution. If the top players choose HBCUs, the money will follow them to said universities - this helping them become better athletes and drawing more eyeballs to HBCU football, which will help money trickle into these universities & helping them prosper as a whole. If these players start going to these schools in droves, the level of competition will also increase, the top coaches will come and facilities will be substantially upgraded. From there, the product would be much better.

As far as it being harder to make it to the NFL from HBCUs, look no further than 2019 Houston Texans 1st round pick Tytus Howard - an Alabama State University product. Howard was the third offensive lineman taken in the draft and figures to be the opening day starter when the Texans take on the New Orleans Saints. Howard is a prime example of the old saying “if you’re good enough, they will find you.”


So with all of that being said, the question remains, what excuses do top athletes have now to not give back to the universities that gave so much to black people for so long? It is past time that our colleges and universities get the spotlight they deserve.