Black College Football - The Big Idea

(***2nd edit complete. One more to go.***)

College football is by far my favorite sport. The traditions, pageantry, Bowl Games, constant debates over playoffs, etc... I love it all. But when I turn on the TV for the big games on fall Saturdays, I can't help but be a little sad that I don't see black school featured in any CBS spotlight games of the week.

Many institutions of higher learning use their athletic programs as free advertising for the rest of the university, and big money generators as well. For whatever reason, HBCUs don't take full advantage of what they have. I went to an HBCU, specifically, the best school in the country - Florida A&M University.

FAMU has a strong football tradition and program and the added attraction of the world's best band... the incomparable Marching 100. We won the first 1-AA/FCS title in the late 70s and beat Miami in the same season. Somehow, over the last 30 years we've gone from beating the Hurricanes to not even being in the conversation with them for recruits.

Its not just FAMU either. Eddie Robinson, possibly THE greatest coach ever in college football, won his games at Grambling. Southern, Tennessee State, South Carolina State and other black football programs have similar stories to tell.

When I was at FAMU, the Rattlers football team was in the midst of playoff streak that reached 8 years. It ended during an aborted attempt to move the football program up to the 1-A/FBS level. At the time, we would often see Troy State in the playoffs. Troy was a pretty good 1-AA team, but they had NOTHING on the Rattlers and we'd beat them 3 out of 4 years to advance or something like that.

Ten years later, Troy is in the Sun Belt Conference, playing division 1-A football and making up to $1 MILLION dollars a game (Arkansas State, also in the Sun Belt, is getting $1 M to play @ Auburn next year http://blog.al.com/auburnbeat/2009/03/auburn_adds_arkansas_state_to.html) and we're getting paltry checks from Mickey Mouse to sell out the Citrus Bowl with BCC (BCU?) in the Florida Classic.

This bothers the shit out of me. On two counts. 1) there's nothing special about Troy, but they're getting money we should be. Oklahoma and Virgina Tech were ready to chip in more than $500,000 each to play FAMU when we announced our move to 1-A. 2) Black Colleges routinely FILL mega-stadiums and domes with alumni fans and students and do not get anywhere near the $ these 1-A schools get.

For example - The Chick-fil-a Kickoff Classic paid Clemson and Alabama more then $2 Million EACH for a sellout of the Georgia Dome. Guess who else sells out the Georgia Dome?

FAMU vs Tennessee State. Last Saturday in September every year. And it'd be an even BIGGER game is FAMU played SOUTHERN there every year like i'd prefer.

Do FAMU and TSU take home $2 Million for the same sellout that Alabama and Clemson get? Hell no. Why? Partially bad negotiating, partially the fact that we're playing small-time football.

It's BEEN time for that to be over.

Considering the campus make-up, smaller class sizes, and focus on the students' success you find at HBCUs, its a shame they haven't become powers in the world of NCAA college athletics... And I'm talking in all sports.

OK, that's a lot of set up for One Idea. Let's skip to it.

Here's my idea.

I want 8 to 12 HBCUs to create a new football conference and apply for admission to Division 1-A together.

There are multiple components to this idea. The MONEY. The SCHEDULE. The ORGANIZATION.

Let's start with the SCHEDULE.

The minimum requirement for 1-A football is average attendance of 17,000. There are a handful of HBCUs that meet this off top. ( http://web1.ncaa.org/d1mfb/2007/Internet/attendance/IAA_AVGATTENDANCE.pdf )

HOWEVER, this doesn't factor in the "neutral site" games that define the Black College Football Experience. If a school were to play in two big classics a year, considering one a home game and one an away game (you are allowed to do this, according to NCAA regulations), these contests would only need to pull about 30,000 fans to swing the the attendance of several HBCUs on the above list above 17,000 for the year.

When FAMU tried to move up to 1-A, they discovered some serious issues internally, but the biggest program in my mind was the schedule and its lack of attractiveness to fans.

FAMU Football Transitional 1-A Season (2004) Schedule
@Illinois
@Tulane
@Temple
Tennessee State - Atlanta
Virginia Union
Nicholls State
@Va Tech
Savannah State
Florida Atlantic
BCC - Orlando
@Florida International



Nicholls State? Tulane? Florida Atlanta? Who the F wants to see us play them? I don't. As a football fan I don't care about those program, but as an HBCU grad I want to see the Battle of the Bands and the Southern University Dancing Dolls as well.

In a PERFECT world... for FAMU, the 1-AA/FCS schedule looks like this in my mind.

@ Florida
vs Grambling
- Southern in Atlanta
@ Tennessee State
@ Hampton
vs North Carolina A&T
@ Prarie View or Texas Southern
vs Jackson State
vs Alabama A&M
@ Alabama State
- BCC in Orlando

Not only does this schedule provide compelling HBCU matchups, it takes the football team to areas where there are good recruits. South Florida, Louisiana, Georgia, Tennessee, Texas, Virginia, etc... And it guarantees 17,000 fans at home games.

THE ORGANIZATION

The schedule above isn't a 1-A schedule unless these schools become 1-A. So a concerted effort to get facilities and programs in order by say, 2015 to qualify has to be done and it has to be done with harmony and agreement. The SWAC and MEAC won't be happy, but they can be appeased financially and this could technically be a football-only deal.

THE MONEY

Football is THE money making sport in college sports. Basketball can be too for very successful programs like Duke, UConn and North Carolina. But its all about football. And football, and running a university, is all about money.

This is how I see the money working.

FBS/1-A schools get to play 12 games a year. At $1 Million per road "guarantee" game against a big, powerhouse program, there's plenty of money being given out to build a REAL football program over, say, a decade. (Again, see Troy as an example. Did they get destroyed in all their early 1-A games? Yes. Do they now? No...because they took their $, invested in facilities for football, got better, took advantage of their TV exposure, recruited better, and made themselves into a 7-5 type of program. The next step would be to LEAVE the Sun Belt and get to a real conference like Conf USA)

With $1 Million guarantee games available, and increased negotiation power for the Classics (over time), now that the football being played "matters" more, the HBCUs that do this would have the $ to get better over time. I also think that there will be players from Florida who would JUMP at the chance to play for FAMU and have their NFL dreams still be realistic (same with Louisiana boys and Southern/Grambling)... so the rebuilding on the field wouldn't take as long.

So here's the list of schools who could possibly pull something like this off based on attendance (mainly), programs, and what I know about the schools.

FAMU
Southern
Grambling
Jackson State
Tennessee State
Alabama State
NC A&T
Norfolk State
South Carolina State

Maybes
Hampton
Howard (a university that can do whatever it wants but has ignored athletics for some reason I don't get)
Alabama A&M
Prarie View (based on their market, Houston)
Texas Southern (ditto)

...and finally, FAMU's 1-A schedule as part of the new conference

@ Oregon
- Grambling in New Orleans
@ Hampton
vs Tennessee State
@ NC A&T
vs South Carolina State
@ Jackson State
- Southern in Atlanta
@ Ohio State
vs Norfolk State
- BCC in Orlando
vs Alabama State


The MONEY Part 2

Here's the other piece of the $ puzzle - the conference championship game. The SWAC does this now, and if done properly, could be a big deal at the 1-A level sometime around... 2020. That's an extra $500k per school with a $6 million rights fee. I'm not sure what Dr Pepper is paying to sponsor the Big 12 and SEC title games, but if you can win $1 million at halftime kicking a 50 yard field goal i suppose the conferences get way more than that. $6 million is a conservative estimate for sure. And I didn't include the broadcast fees yet either.

If 12 teams are in the conference in two divisions...
West / South Division
FAMU
Southern
Grambling
Jackson State
Prairie View
Alabama State

East / North Division
Tennessee State
Norfolk State
North Carolina A&T
South Carolina State
Howard
Hampton

...a conference championship game the first week in December in Atlanta or Miami would be do-able.

The DOWNSIDE

There's a lot of potential pitfalls for this idea. Most of which involve some form of crabs-in-the-barrel behavior at either the collective or an individual institutional level.

There's also the split-small-town attendance issue. FAMU and FSU share Tallahassee. Southern and LSU share Baton Rouge. Can FAMU and Southern get 17,000 to the stadium without Classics? They already do...again, FAMU trying to schedule Nicholls State and not Grambling State for a home game is part of the short sightedness of going it alone.

The investments needed to upgrade the facilities to even minimum "you call yourself a 1-A institution?" standards are substantial and critical to the success of the project, as there won't be a LOT of kids willing to pass up the Nautilus machines and player lounges at FSU for a weight room at FAMU that's not even as big as the one at their powerhouse, state champion high school.

HOW LONG WOULD IT TAKE?

10 years and the HBCU conference will be at least as good as the MAC or Conference USA. They're already as good as the Sun Belt.

The benefit of moving up TOGETHER is that while the decade passes, and the seed money comes in from getting beat up by Auburn and Oklahoma is put to use, the BLACK COLLEGE GAMEDAY EXPERIENCE DOESN'T CHANGE for students and alumni of these institutions.

Everyone who went to an HBCU, especially the ones listed somewhere above, understands the difference between going to a game to watch the band and going to watch the game. FAMU fans are lucky enough to understand both (I'd try not to get upset when everyone left after halftime when we were up 36-0 back in the Billy Joe "Gulf Coast Offense" days, but I was never disappointed when we had a close game or were down - Rattler fans stayed until the end of the game and participated well).

Using this experience as a starting point for something much much bigger is what I'm bout... and by much much bigger I mean...

FAMU vs Southern on ESPN2,
Young kid sees the game, the band, and says "cool, I want to go there". He's 8.
10 years later, he's a scholarly lad, and wants to be an engineer. Well guess what, now when he considers FAMU, NC A&T, etc... he's not going to some small backwater school no one has heard of, because these teams get on TV as much as the SEC and Big Ten schools now...
So when he graduates with honors and goes to career fairs... he doesn't have to explain his school. And when he starts working on engines for Harley-Davidson, no one asks him "Florida A&M, you mean Florida State?" - response: "NO, Bitch. FAMU", followed by "Oh, where's that?"
And when companies schedule those trips... and cut those scholarship checks... and alumni have to choose between giving to their HBCU undergrad or their Ivy/Big Ten grad school...

You see where I'm going with it. HBCUs are an important piece of the educational history and fabric of the USA and have been somehow relegated to 2nd-class status in many ways. This is tragic. People have to hear of you to care about you... And in America, football is King.


(***To be completed***)