Post by Aggie One on Nov 30, 2017 14:15:27 GMT -5
Hampton's Exdous: On the Outside Looking In
By Craig R. Turner
Bluedeathvalley.com
Now that most of the euphoria around N. C. A&T’s completion of a perfect 11-0 regular season has somewhat leveled off, most public attention now turns to the developing news within the MEAC. After 22 years of membership, Hampton University wasted very little time in making a couple of big moves last week. The Pirates announced that they will leave the MEAC at the conclusion of their 2018-19 competition and will join the newly revamped and still unsettled Big South Conference.
Hampton president Dr. William Harvey stated that Hampton’s move was dictated by a desire to cut the costs associated with travel of its athletic teams in the MEAC which stretches southward from west Florida to all the way up the eastern seaboard north to Delaware. He also stated that by joining the Big South there would be reduced travel distances which in turn would improve the academic performance of Hampton’s student athletes because of less time missed from classes.
So Hampton is moving for economic reasons that make sense to them. That is a true statement but the argument that they presented to the public was purely a smoke screen and here’s why.
At first glance that reasoning that was offered up made sense in the initial hours following the decision but upon closer examination, the theory presented by Hampton administration began to take on water. Besides Hampton, the Big South has also added Upstate South Carolina and North Alabama as new members. Now Hampton will be playing in a conference that will now run even further west than the MEAC from Alabama to even farther north to New Jersey (Monmouth). It was a nice try at changing the conversation but no right minded person is buying that story anymore.
The forces that drove Hampton to bolt from the MEAC are varied so I’ll give you my take on what precipitated their move. Hampton came to the realization that they could not and did not want to engage in an arms race against the larger state universities in the MEAC. Public schools like A&T, NCCU, Morgan State and Delaware State, while not rolling in cash, still have considerably better resources because of their recent and demonstrative enrollment growth and increases in alumni support.
When you examine the makeup of the Big South, who will see that the many of the members have a profile very similar to Hampton which is that of small, students private, and endowment rich universities like Gardner-Webb, High Point, Charleston southern, and Monmouth with smaller athletic budget foot prints.
A second consideration is competition. Hampton has had a degree of success with its basketball programs in the MEAC over the last decade or so. However they haven’t made any noise on football front after the surprise dismissal of Joe Taylor back in 2007. With the advent of the Celebration Bowl in 2015, the MEAC no longer has an automatic bid for tis champion to the FCS playoffs which they had enjoyed since 1996.
The decision to forego the playoffs for an independent bowl severely hampered the chances for an at-large bid for quality teams who did not win the championship although A&T earned one last year under that very scenario. Let’s be real. The Big South should not be as nearly difficult to navigate for Hampton on the football front. The once big conference powers like Coastal Carolina and Liberty have either made or are making a move to the FBS. Kennesaw State and to a lesser extent Monmouth are the bullies now and there just isn’t much of anything there to speak of after those two.
In past years the Big South has sent as many as four teams to the playoffs so the logic that is being used is that an affiliation with a playoff dedicated conference should provide them more postseason opportunities – theoretically.
Hampton is joining a conference that has its own streaming network which is a huge plus when it comes to recruiting and gaining exposure for the Big South. However, the small fan bases and the dwindling attendance figures from the just concluded football system raises concerns over its effectiveness outside of its immediate membership. And while there has been some strong basketball played there, the Big South, with a couple of rare exception years, is still a one bid conference just like the MEAC, when it comes to March Madness.
Another factor is that has been brought up and has created very sharp public debate in social media circles is one of Identity politics. Some have suggested that Harvey, a known conservative Republican, sought to ditch the confines of an HBCU label and be viewed in more favorable light in the larger arena of public perception. Well maybe yes to part of that question and then maybe no on some of the rest of it.
Whenever anyone brought up Hampton University in a conversation, the first thing that came to my mind was Booker T. Washington and his laissez faire education approach vs direct civil disobedience as a means of fighting Jim Crow.
Rightly or wrongly, from my childhood days, I had often heard from adults, and still to this day from some older folk, that Hampton had the reputation that only the so-called elite of black society need apply for admission. That only the sons and daughters of educators, doctors, and black professionals were welcomed on its campus.
Obviously those practices no longer exist at Hampton but there is a real perception out there, imagined or not, that Harvey, who has headed the school for over 40 years, was a product of that by gone history and by chance a tiny bit of those old boogey elitist views just might have made its way into making this final decision.
In any event, the trigger has been pulled and there’s no turning back at this point. I suspect that Hampton will continue to play many of its traditional rivals that remain in the MEAC because it makes good economic sense and to keep its core fan base appeased because I can guarantee from here on out there will be a lot more empty seats than normal in Armstrong Stadium when there’s not an HBCU on the weekend schedule.
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There are three immediate openings in the MEAC after Hampton, Delaware State, and Florida A&M have gave their head football coaches the big “See Ya Later” a couple of weeks ago. Now a fourth one just might be in the offing as S.C. State has a couple of huge decisions to make in the next few days not only about the future of longtime head coach Buddy Pough but about the future of its athletic program as that school continues to try to work its way back to sound fiscal ground.
For those of you who aren’t real familiar or keep up with the goings-on in Orangeburg, there are serious discussions underway within the administration as to whether the Bulldogs will continue as a viable Division-1 member or will go the way of Savannah State and drop down to D-II because it’s the only option that will make long term sense financially given the ever rising costs incurred to maintain a D-1 program.
It has been suggested that even if Pough is given a new contract that he may decide to opt out of his own accord if a drop down in classification is recommended. These decisions will be tough ones since Pough has put in 16 years at SCSU and is the school’s all-time winningest coach with 6 MEAC titles to his credit. Unfortunately, there is a “what have you done for me lately” atmosphere in college athletics and with three losing seasons in a row, it would not be a shock to the system if a change is made.
Stay tuned in to this story because the ramifications would be enormous if either one of those decisions ends up going against the current status quo.
*************************************************************************
If you’re a diehard A&T supporter like I am, you’ll probably will be following the SWAC championship this weekend as Alcorn State will try to upset heavily favored Grambling down in Houston. After seeing both of these teams in action at least a couple of times this year, Grambling has to be the odds on favorite to win its second straight SWAC title but that was also back in 2015 when the Braves knocked off the Tigers to gain a berth in the first Celebration Bowl.
Can they do it again? Grambling hasn’t been the juggernaut they were a year ago when they ran over and through the SWAC and nearly pulled off what would have been a huge upset of Arizona. They Tigers have been playing to the level of competition this year and is not nearly as explosive offensively but are better defensively this season. Alcorn hasn’t been a world beater but they will scrap and claw on every down so this could end up being a real defensive struggle that could favor the Braves.
Is an upset possible? Sure. Will it happen? Not very likely. I like the Tigers by 8.
By Craig R. Turner
Bluedeathvalley.com
Now that most of the euphoria around N. C. A&T’s completion of a perfect 11-0 regular season has somewhat leveled off, most public attention now turns to the developing news within the MEAC. After 22 years of membership, Hampton University wasted very little time in making a couple of big moves last week. The Pirates announced that they will leave the MEAC at the conclusion of their 2018-19 competition and will join the newly revamped and still unsettled Big South Conference.
Hampton president Dr. William Harvey stated that Hampton’s move was dictated by a desire to cut the costs associated with travel of its athletic teams in the MEAC which stretches southward from west Florida to all the way up the eastern seaboard north to Delaware. He also stated that by joining the Big South there would be reduced travel distances which in turn would improve the academic performance of Hampton’s student athletes because of less time missed from classes.
So Hampton is moving for economic reasons that make sense to them. That is a true statement but the argument that they presented to the public was purely a smoke screen and here’s why.
At first glance that reasoning that was offered up made sense in the initial hours following the decision but upon closer examination, the theory presented by Hampton administration began to take on water. Besides Hampton, the Big South has also added Upstate South Carolina and North Alabama as new members. Now Hampton will be playing in a conference that will now run even further west than the MEAC from Alabama to even farther north to New Jersey (Monmouth). It was a nice try at changing the conversation but no right minded person is buying that story anymore.
The forces that drove Hampton to bolt from the MEAC are varied so I’ll give you my take on what precipitated their move. Hampton came to the realization that they could not and did not want to engage in an arms race against the larger state universities in the MEAC. Public schools like A&T, NCCU, Morgan State and Delaware State, while not rolling in cash, still have considerably better resources because of their recent and demonstrative enrollment growth and increases in alumni support.
When you examine the makeup of the Big South, who will see that the many of the members have a profile very similar to Hampton which is that of small, students private, and endowment rich universities like Gardner-Webb, High Point, Charleston southern, and Monmouth with smaller athletic budget foot prints.
A second consideration is competition. Hampton has had a degree of success with its basketball programs in the MEAC over the last decade or so. However they haven’t made any noise on football front after the surprise dismissal of Joe Taylor back in 2007. With the advent of the Celebration Bowl in 2015, the MEAC no longer has an automatic bid for tis champion to the FCS playoffs which they had enjoyed since 1996.
The decision to forego the playoffs for an independent bowl severely hampered the chances for an at-large bid for quality teams who did not win the championship although A&T earned one last year under that very scenario. Let’s be real. The Big South should not be as nearly difficult to navigate for Hampton on the football front. The once big conference powers like Coastal Carolina and Liberty have either made or are making a move to the FBS. Kennesaw State and to a lesser extent Monmouth are the bullies now and there just isn’t much of anything there to speak of after those two.
In past years the Big South has sent as many as four teams to the playoffs so the logic that is being used is that an affiliation with a playoff dedicated conference should provide them more postseason opportunities – theoretically.
Hampton is joining a conference that has its own streaming network which is a huge plus when it comes to recruiting and gaining exposure for the Big South. However, the small fan bases and the dwindling attendance figures from the just concluded football system raises concerns over its effectiveness outside of its immediate membership. And while there has been some strong basketball played there, the Big South, with a couple of rare exception years, is still a one bid conference just like the MEAC, when it comes to March Madness.
Another factor is that has been brought up and has created very sharp public debate in social media circles is one of Identity politics. Some have suggested that Harvey, a known conservative Republican, sought to ditch the confines of an HBCU label and be viewed in more favorable light in the larger arena of public perception. Well maybe yes to part of that question and then maybe no on some of the rest of it.
Whenever anyone brought up Hampton University in a conversation, the first thing that came to my mind was Booker T. Washington and his laissez faire education approach vs direct civil disobedience as a means of fighting Jim Crow.
Rightly or wrongly, from my childhood days, I had often heard from adults, and still to this day from some older folk, that Hampton had the reputation that only the so-called elite of black society need apply for admission. That only the sons and daughters of educators, doctors, and black professionals were welcomed on its campus.
Obviously those practices no longer exist at Hampton but there is a real perception out there, imagined or not, that Harvey, who has headed the school for over 40 years, was a product of that by gone history and by chance a tiny bit of those old boogey elitist views just might have made its way into making this final decision.
In any event, the trigger has been pulled and there’s no turning back at this point. I suspect that Hampton will continue to play many of its traditional rivals that remain in the MEAC because it makes good economic sense and to keep its core fan base appeased because I can guarantee from here on out there will be a lot more empty seats than normal in Armstrong Stadium when there’s not an HBCU on the weekend schedule.
************************************************************************
There are three immediate openings in the MEAC after Hampton, Delaware State, and Florida A&M have gave their head football coaches the big “See Ya Later” a couple of weeks ago. Now a fourth one just might be in the offing as S.C. State has a couple of huge decisions to make in the next few days not only about the future of longtime head coach Buddy Pough but about the future of its athletic program as that school continues to try to work its way back to sound fiscal ground.
For those of you who aren’t real familiar or keep up with the goings-on in Orangeburg, there are serious discussions underway within the administration as to whether the Bulldogs will continue as a viable Division-1 member or will go the way of Savannah State and drop down to D-II because it’s the only option that will make long term sense financially given the ever rising costs incurred to maintain a D-1 program.
It has been suggested that even if Pough is given a new contract that he may decide to opt out of his own accord if a drop down in classification is recommended. These decisions will be tough ones since Pough has put in 16 years at SCSU and is the school’s all-time winningest coach with 6 MEAC titles to his credit. Unfortunately, there is a “what have you done for me lately” atmosphere in college athletics and with three losing seasons in a row, it would not be a shock to the system if a change is made.
Stay tuned in to this story because the ramifications would be enormous if either one of those decisions ends up going against the current status quo.
*************************************************************************
If you’re a diehard A&T supporter like I am, you’ll probably will be following the SWAC championship this weekend as Alcorn State will try to upset heavily favored Grambling down in Houston. After seeing both of these teams in action at least a couple of times this year, Grambling has to be the odds on favorite to win its second straight SWAC title but that was also back in 2015 when the Braves knocked off the Tigers to gain a berth in the first Celebration Bowl.
Can they do it again? Grambling hasn’t been the juggernaut they were a year ago when they ran over and through the SWAC and nearly pulled off what would have been a huge upset of Arizona. They Tigers have been playing to the level of competition this year and is not nearly as explosive offensively but are better defensively this season. Alcorn hasn’t been a world beater but they will scrap and claw on every down so this could end up being a real defensive struggle that could favor the Braves.
Is an upset possible? Sure. Will it happen? Not very likely. I like the Tigers by 8.
