Morgan State Athletic Director Edward Scott felt major college programs were recognizing the benefits of partnering with historically Black colleges and universities before May of last year.
The Northwestern football and Notre Dame basketball games were not held because of the coronavirus pandemic, but more events like them are coming. The killing of George Floyd last year inspired a pair of recently announced partnerships that connect HBCU and Power Five conference programs — one between the Pac-12 and the Southwestern Athletic Conference, the other between Syracuse and the Mid-Eastern Athletic Conference — which Scott and other HBCU athletics leaders hope will create lasting and more expansive ties.
“What I hope is that it’s not a news story anymore,” Scott said of the recent announcements, which both detail multiyear scheduling agreements. “I hope that it’s something that happens on a regular basis where folks expect it: When is Morgan playing Syracuse? When is Howard playing Syracuse? Right now, it’s a news story because we haven’t done it before.”
Scott knows HBCUs have long traveled to major programs to collect checks in sometimes brutal guarantee games. But he wondered why those occasional meetings could not evolve into a more substantial exchange.
In that spirit, the MEAC entered its agreement in late September with Syracuse, which aims to book up to 50 games between MEAC institutions and the ACC school across multiple sports over the next 10 years. So far, Syracuse has scheduled softball games for next year against Maryland Eastern Shore and Coppin State, while a football game against Morgan State has been added to the 2029 slate.
The deal also includes an internship exchange for a student at a MEAC school to work in Syracuse’s athletic department and vice versa, visiting professorships and a seminar for MEAC staffs to glean revenue-generation strategies from Syracuse.
“It’s the start of something that can be very beneficial not only for the MEAC but other institutions as well,” MEAC Commissioner Dennis E. Thomas said. “This is more than just scheduling games. This is making a deep dive to try to create cultural changes.”
The same week the MEAC partnership was announced, the SWAC revealed its four-year agreement with the Pac-12.
Through that partnership, six men’s basketball teams from each conference will play home-and-home series starting next season. Arizona State will play at Texas Southern, Colorado at Grambling State and Washington State at Prairie View A&M. The following year, Arizona will travel to Southern, Oregon to Florida A&M and Southern California to Alabama State. Future men’s games and the slate of women’s games will be announced at a later date.
The deal’s home-and-home component is of particular significance to SWAC schools, which are accustomed to visiting their Power Five counterparts but rarely welcome major programs to their home venues.
Over the past three seasons, SWAC men’s basketball teams played 65 nonconference games against Power Five opponents, and none of them were in their home arenas. It’s not unusual for SWAC teams to play entire nonconference schedules on the road, and the few games they play at home often come against teams from lower divisions — an arrangement that costs them money.
“That was the main point of the deal,” SWAC Commissioner Charles McClelland said. “We go to play game guarantees all the time, so the main statement of this, again coming off George Floyd’s tragedy, is that we’re all equal. We’re all the same, so let’s treat each other the same.”
While the SWAC drew the highest attendance in the Football Championship Subdivision in 2019, it featured the second lowest in men’s basketball. The average SWAC arena fits roughly 5,100 fewer people than the average Pac-12 venue, and when Pac-12 schools pack their home gymnasiums, SWAC programs come away with a more sizable revenue split than they would hosting lesser foes.
McClelland hopes SWAC schools can offset the difference by attracting more sponsorships and greater attendance for their home leg against their Pac-12 counterparts and beyond.
“It won’t generate as much as a guarantee game … but there are a couple of aspects that we’re going to be able to capitalize on bringing in these iconic brands,” he said. “Quite frankly, we struggle to get Division I teams to visit our gyms. So now [SWAC schools] don’t have to pay [Division II and NAIA schools]. They have a legitimate team that’s going to come in and is going to generate revenue and sponsorships for them, so this is not a loss at all.”
Both the MEAC and SWAC agreements sprung from the swell of self-reflection that followed Floyd’s murder by a Minneapolis police officer last year.
The MEAC deal sprouted from conversations between Thomas and John Wildhack, a longtime colleague and Syracuse’s athletic director. Separately, leaders from a few conferences contacted both leagues, pitching arrangements that aligned their programs with historically Black schools but also offered mutual benefits.
“I did not want to be used as a mission statement,” McClelland said. “It needed to be more than just a tagline. I wanted something substantive that was really going to make an impact and something that was going to last. This has never been done before. There has never been a Power Five conference that committed all of their member institutions to visit an FCS conference, let alone an HBCU conference.”
The partnerships come during a moment when HBCUs have received greater attention and extraordinary philanthropic support, and that fresh focus has coincided with increased opportunities for several athletic programs.
ESPN is broadcasting more HBCU football games across its platforms this fall, including a record 39 SWAC contests. NBA star Chris Paul partnered with the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame to create an HBCU tournament that is expected to be nationally televised in November, and he has been executive producer of an ESPN Plus series that followed the North Carolina Central men’s basketball team and Florida A&M football team. And some athletic departments have continued to develop less formal relationships that have produced positive results, as did Texas Southern, which secured a home-and-home series against Cincinnati men’s basketball starting this season that will make the Bearcats the first opponent from a major conference to visit the Houston campus in 27 years.
HBCU commissioners and athletic directors hope to keep building off these recent announcements. Thomas said the MEAC is in talks with an undisclosed conference and will announce another partnership at a later date. McClelland would like to expand the SWAC partnership beyond basketball, while Scott, the Morgan State athletic director, envisions regional alliances among MEAC and ACC schools.
“I hope it’s a partnership that can expand,” Scott said. “Hopefully this is the tip of the iceberg.”
