Inside the harsh realities HBCUs face amid college football’s uncertain future (2024)

Throughout their shared history, the athletic departments of Division I’s historically black colleges and universities, many of which compete in the SWAC and MEAC, have always faced concerns regarding financial difficulties and underfunding.

In some sense, this is nothing new.

“We’ve had to deal with a copious amount of revenue struggles for over a century. At some places, for over a century and a half,” MEAC commissioner Dennis Thomas told The Athletic last week. “We’ve been able to survive when most people didn’t think we would. And in most cases, not only have we survived, we’ve thrived. We are used to difficult times. …”

But, Thomas said after a long pause, “… nothing like this now.”

HBCU athletic departments already live in a harsh reality, but that outlook is even bleaker as the COVID-19 pandemic threatens to stress their institutions beyond the breaking point financially and academically.

The world of HBCU athletics is filled with logistical issues in the immediate aftermath of the shutdowns, financial pitfalls in the short and long term, and plenty of unknowns scattered along the way.

For HBCU commissioners and administrators, the No. 1 priority is inarguable: the physical and mental health of their student-athletes, some of whomhad their seasons, and in some cases their collegiate careers, cut short. Some are set to graduate and go into the real world with an uncertain future.

For some student-athletes, “There was no place to go back to,” Florida A&M athletic director Kortne Gosha said. “I have a small population of student-athletes where FAMU is home. … We had some where families had symptoms of COVID-19 and we couldn’t send them back. We’ve had a number of people step up and donate food, time and energy and from a university perspective, being able to house them at this time.”

Gosha is far from the only HBCU athletic director who has had to find a way to secure housing on or off campus for his student-athletes.

Aside from that, HBCU administrators share one looming concern: academics. HBCUs have disproportionately been the recipient of NCAA penalties as a result of low Academic Progress Rates for years now. In 2019, six of the eight teams that received postseason bans in a specific sport for falling short of the NCAA’s required APR score came from four different HBCUs. In 2018, seven of the nine programs that received postseason bans belonged to HBCUs. Those totals are an improvement from 2016, when 22 HBCU teams were denied postseason eligibility; Southern had nine teams receive a postseason ban that year.

Although the SWAC and MEAC have taken significant steps toward improving those numbers, clearing that bar across every sport is still a challenge for individual schools, one that will only be amplified by the pandemic.

“We still have a predominant first-generation college student attending our member institutions,” said SWAC commissioner Charles McClelland, who presides over 10 public institutions across five states from Alabama to Texas. “So to switch over from a traditional collegiate model to an online collegiate model is presenting a bigger challenge for us than it probably would have for other institutions who don’t have to deal with our demographic.”

A lot of those concerns are centered around resources — or lack thereof. And that goes for both the athletic departments and their student-athletes.

Take the SWAC’s Mississippi schools for example. Jackson State has four academic employees who aren’t graduate assistants listed on its athletics staff directory. Alcorn State has four as well. Mississippi Valley State has two. Meanwhile, Ole Miss has a total of 14 employees listed under the categories of Academic Counseling or Academic Enrichment. And Mississippi State’s athletic department has 10 staffers with titles devoted to academics.

Florida A&M, a member of the MEAC, has two academic employees in its athletic department. The Rattlers play their home games less than two miles away from Florida State, which has 13 academic staffers for athletics and several interns.

HBCUs’ resources are limited; they simply can’t offer the same academic oversight as some of their Division I counterparts, which affects the graduation rates that lead to APR issues. And because of the shutdowns forced by the COVID-19 pandemic, the academic staffers the schools do have can’t help the student-athletes in person as they finish out the spring semester.

“I am concerned about the infrastructure from an academic standpoint because this is new,” McClelland said. “It was thrust upon all the member institutions in a matter of days. We’ve improved considerably from an academic standpoint to increase our APR … and we are concerned this could create another gap in the academic line that we have been able to kind of figure out and this has created a tremendous hurdle for us to cross.”

The forced switch to remote learning provides other complications, too. Some student-athletes had on-campus access to things like laptops and the internet that they don’t have at home.

“We had kids floating around restaurant parking lots stealing Wi-Fi,” said Bethune-Cookman athletic director Lynn Thompson. “We have kids trying to do lessons on cell phones.”

“Our students weren’t necessarily ready,” Southern athletic director Roman Banks said. “There are a lot of kids that don’t have the tools at home and live in rural areas and just don’t have the financial resources. And the university and athletic department don’t have all the resources to give them laptops and do some things. … We are very concerned and looking at this heavily to make sure the student-athletes are doing what they’re supposed to do and the teachers who weren’t quite ready, making sure we communicate with them so we don’t get ourselves in a jam.”

But like every athletic department in the country, all HBCUs can do now is wait. And of course, their minds can’t help but wander to the fall.

Administrators from across the SWAC and MEAC, which compete in the FCS but are not guaranteed automatic bids into the playoffs, are trying to plan for all the possibilities. Will football season start on time? Will it be delayed, possibly as far back as the spring? Will there be a football season in the 2020-21 academic year at all?

“The one thing we do know is we don’t know enough,” Grambling athletic director David Ponton said. “It’s been rough.”

When USA Today last year examined the finances of the athletic departments at 230 Division I public institutions for the 2017-18 fiscal year, eight schools from the SWAC or MEAC showed up in the bottom 10 in revenue generated. No school from either conference ranked higher than No. 149 (Prairie View A&M).

Many of those budgets are supported by student fees, which will decrease as enrollment drops, and by football. HBCUs generally aren’t drawing from donor bases anywhere near the likes of their opponents on Saturdays in size or financial might. The obstacles to balancing the books whenever school reopens will be numerous.

As college sports administrators try to map out the path to a season this fall, the fate of nonconference schedules looms particularly large for HBCUs. A good chunk of their revenue for the year comes from guarantee games, or “buy games,” in which they travel to play FBS opponents for a nice paycheck in exchange for a nearly certain loss. Nonconference “classics” in big stadiums against other HBCUs generate another sizable portion of revenue. If the season were to be shortened and schedules cut short or altered to focus on conference games, HBCUs would be left in a tough spot.

According to Jackson State athletic director Ashley Robinson, his department usually makes anywhere between $350,000 and $400,000 from the Southern Heritage Classic, the Tigers’ annual matchup with Tennessee State at Memphis’ Liberty Bowl in Week 2. This season, Jackson State is scheduled to play Southern Miss the next week in return for a $350,000 pay day. It may not seem like a lot, but it matters for an athletic department operating on a $9.2 million annual budget.

Bethune-Cookman was paid close to $500,000 for its 63-0 loss to Miami last season and is set to receive a little more than $400,000 for its game at South Florida this season. For a school that was going through furloughs and layoffs before a pandemic, those pay days mean something.

Southern opens its season with two nonconference games. The Jaguars are set to play Tennessee State in the Detroit Football Classic at Ford Field and then host Florida A&M the next week.

“If we don’t play our first two games,” Banks said, “that’s probably $750,000 to $1 million (we’re losing).”

“Every dollar counts for us,” said Gosha, whose Florida A&M program opens with Albany State in the Orange Blossom Classic (a $325,000 guarantee) and has a game at UCF, which paid FAMU $350,000 for its 2019 game. “We’ve cut programs to the point where we can’t cut anymore prior to COVID-19.”

In June, the department will cut its men’s cross country and tennis teams.

“For us, not to be able to essentially generate the revenue football can for us as an institution with guarantee games and gate receipts, we’re in trouble,” Gosha said.

These financial issues go well beyond the field of play; for some universities, they’re existential in nature. Bethune-Cookman needed $13 million in new state funding from Florida in March in order to make up an $8 million operating deficit that essentially pushed the university to the brink of extinction.

Gosha is correct: Every dollar does count. And the latter portion of his statement cuts to another issue. There have been plenty of conversations about the possibility of Power 5 programs playing without fans as an option to get through the season as scheduled. That’s not financially prudent for the SWAC and MEAC, which have small media agreements with ESPN but rely heavily on attendance to generate revenue.

The SWAC has sat atop the FCS attendance rankings for essentially four decades now. Jackson State averaged 33,762 for its five home games last season, which led the FCS and was 11,000 more than the next closest program (Montana). The SWAC reported an average attendance of 15,266 for its conference games last season, which led the FCS. The MEAC ranked second in that category.

Grambling and Southern hold the Bayou Classic in New Orleans every Thanksgiving weekend in large part because the teams make more money from that game — around $1 million each — than they would by playing in the FCS playoffs the same weekend, which could actually cost them money depending on where they played.

The Bayou Classic drew an attendance of 68,314 to the Superdome last season.

“Our fans come out to the games, they participate, they tailgate. It’s an experience,” Ponton said. “It’s not just a game. The bands, the cheerleaders, the dancers. All that revolves around the game.”

A sizable portion of fans attend HBCU games for the bands more than the actual game. Those bands are reliant on student fees as well, per Banks, and they could be impacted by an enrollment dip themselves, especially when it comes to traveling. Ponton said it costs less to move Grambling’s football team, which has a travel roster of about 120 with coaches, staff and administrators included, than its band, which has a travel roster of close to 250 people.

A much worse scenario, though, is a season without fans. That option, according to Thomas, the MEAC commissioner, “doesn’t help us. That’s a slice of the revenue that won’t be there. If it’s without fans, that’s another financial hit that we’ll take. The SWAC has been at the top of attendance of the FCS for decades. And we’ve been in the top five as well, if not No. 2. That’s not good, not only for HBCUs but for FCS as well. We have several games that attract 50-60,000 people. Those are revenue numbers that we would not want to lose.”

Of course, HBCUs have to think sensitively about their consumers as well. African-Americans have been infected by and have died from COVID-19 at alarming rates. A combination of several aggravating factors — less access to healthcare, more pre-existing health conditions and a common inability to work from home — has left the community vulnerable.

“Our fans, of our season ticket holders, 70-75 percent of our fans almost fall into that at-risk category,” said Banks, whose school is in Louisiana, where African-Americans are dying at a high rate. “So it’s a lot different from other universities. I’m not going to say, ‘We’re going to play football while you guys are at risk, with high blood pressure, you have diabetes, you’re over 60.’ That’s our total demographics. So I just believe the SWAC is not in the same position to make decisions as the Power 5 may be.

“It also speaks to society where some are saying, ‘Open up and we know that a percentage is going to die from that and we’ll take that risk.’ I’m not willing to take any risks like that.”

Gosha is already expecting a decrease in attendance from those who fall into one of the groups most at risk.

“I’m not going to be naive,” he said. “Within our demographic you’re going to have a set of people that say, ‘You know what? I’m probably not going to go this year.’ Or, ‘I’m not going to do that because of how COVID-19 has affected our community. In mortality rates, access to healthcare, unemployment and all those things.’ ”

Thomas has concerns that things might start opening up too soon, essentially welcoming the virus back and forcing things to shut down again. With fans at risk and attendance revenue likely to drop significantly no matter what, Banks said he’d rather give science and medicine a chance and play in the spring.

That presents its own set of issues as well. Southern has one director of sports medicine and two assistant athletic trainers. Same with Grambling. LSU, Louisiana’s lone Power 5 program, has 25 employees dedicated to athletic training, nutrition and mental health, per its staff directory. One state over in Mississippi, Alcorn State has just three athletic training employees, and Mississippi Valley has just two (plus one graduate assistant).

Those resources, along with security, statisticians, equipment managers and more, would all be stressed in a spring season that overlaps more directly with the basketball calendar.

“Adding football in the spring when you have softball and baseball, and a limited staff, it really has a major hit,” said Mississippi Valley State athletic director Dianthia Ford-Kee. “You can’t make a decision on, ‘Well, I’m not going to have a trainer at this sport or I’m not going to provide staffing at this particular game because we have a football game.’ No, we have to continue to provide the same level of support if we move football to the spring. With that said, we’ll have to make some adjustments. Maybe we won’t play baseball or softball on the weekends and move those games to midweek games or Sunday/Monday or change from a three-game series to a two-game series. We’ll look at what combinations work best for each individual institution to come up with a plan that would allow every sport we sponsor the same level of support and commitment so that their game-day experience is a success.”

Added Thomas, “I think spring football boils down to making the best decision out of the worst environment.”

So no matter what road HBCUs take, there are bound to be bumps along the path.

What, exactly, does the outlook look like for HBCUs to bounce back from this? It depends on who you ask.

“I think we are better positioned than any other conference other than the MEAC,” McClelland said. “We’re probably better positioned for this pandemic because of the thin margins and the decisions we have to make on a yearly basis as to how we operate. We automatically understand our resources are limited and we have to cut back on the things that we do. So rebounding for us realistically is not going to be as difficult as some of the other institutions. And the financial hit to us isn’t going to be as significant as to other institutions.

“It’s a lot easier to come up with $800,000 than $800 million.”

Gosha has a different opinion.

“Even though revenue and expenditures may be at a smaller numerical level than your Power 5s,” he said, “I think the impact is greater at the HBCU level just because of the limited revenues, and quite frankly, the opportunities to rebound. So when you look at all of those types of things — you don’t have a rabid fan base that could help you.

“I think I saw an article where (University of Georgia) had $100 million in reserves. That’s great. That’s 10 years of my operating budget. I’ve heard the equations about, ‘Well, we want to play with no fans.’ Well, that model doesn’t do us a great deal of service because at this level you’re not getting TV money and what you do get, it doesn’t move the needle.”

Yes, HBCU athletic departments have been tested before. They’ve navigated those waters with resiliency. But COVID-19 poses a different threat at several levels.

“This pandemic just puts another layer on our ability to handle difficult times,” Thomas said.“These are very unprecedented, uncharted times for everyone. But for most HBCUs, this is another challenge we’ve been facing since our existence.”

(Top photo: Ken Murray / Icon Sportswire via Getty Images)