A Path Towards the Impossible: Cutting HBCU Football
Today, the Mid-Eastern Atheltic Conference became the first historically black NCAA Division I athletic league to cancel fall competition for its member institutions, and the third behind the Division II Central Intercollegiate Athletic Association and the Southern Intercollegiate Athletic Conference.
The announcement comes as the NCAA released new guidelines for fall sports participation; in essence, a list of standards that every school would find virtually impossible to uphold, and even more difficult to ensure in cooperation from opposing schools. From ESPN:
While the NCAA made testing a major part of its most recent guidelines, the onus is still on the individual schools to provide the tests, and the document stated, “schools should plan to secure the resources necessary to both perform the tests and to manage the details related to any positive results.” If PCR testing cannot be performed within 72 hours of competition, then the competition should be postponed or canceled, or an alternative plan for testing should be developed and agreed upon.
The NCAA guidelines state that any individuals with “a high risk of exposure” should be placed in quarantine for 14 days — and that includes opposing team members following competition. In some cases, the document states, that could mean an entire team.
The NCAA also gave guidelines for travel, stating when feasible, “schools should aim to travel and play the same day to avoid overnight stays,” a scenario that’s unlikely for college football season. If overnight stays are necessary, the NCAA recommends travel protocol includes universal masking and social distancing for individuals traveling with others by private car, van, chartered bus or chartered plane. It also suggests “prepackaged meals or room service should be considered.”
Two leagues remain with plans intact, for now, for fall competition — the Southwestern Athletic Conference and the NAIA’s Gulf Coast Athletic Conference. With the exception of departing Edward Waters College, the GCAC does not compete in football and plans to open its fall season on time with a social distancing infrastructure in place for all member schools.
As cases continue to increase nationwide, science and common sense tell the same tale; a sport that counts blocking and tackling as the most basic fundamentals for winning cannot, and probably will not, be played in the midst of a pandemic fueled by an airborne virus.
Because football plays a central role in attracting the student athletic fees, sponsorships, and auxiliary revenues which help to finance a full complement of sports over the course of an academic year, it makes sense for the leagues to take an all-in approach to reach the moral high ground on athlete and campus safety. As an unintended bonus, HBCUs suspending fall sports is putting the entire college sports industry on notice to make a choice; play this fall and endanger the lives of black athletes and diminish the prospects of recruiting more of them in the future, or don’t play and face a gamut of political and financial risk.
The nation now finds itself in a good position to ask sensible questions based on what little we know about this virus. What if the terror of COVID-19 and the best practice of not playing football for Fall 2020 extend into Spring 2021 or beyond? What if a vaccine is not produced? What if a vaccine is ready, but deploying of the medicine proves to be tougher based upon geography, politics, and healthcare costs?
The answer to all of those questions is “no one knows.” But what if those aren’t the right questions? What if HBCUs looked for more bold opportunities to make the most of a crisis?
What if the pandemic is the gateway to do the culturally-treasonous within the HBCU sector — cutting football?
In more private, confidential conversations, most HBCU presidents and chancellors would tell you that the benefits of football —enrollment, alumni engagement, auxiliary revenue — frequently do not outweigh the costs of the same in personnel, recruiting and competition travel, athletic and academic support infrastructure, and compliance maintenance.
Everyone gets the importance of football, but if financial stability ruled the day, most institutions would prefer for men’s and women’s basketball to be the centerpiece of their sports programs. If basketball is the only revenue-bearing sport black colleges can play in the best-case scenario for the 2020-21 academic year, and in the worst-case, the only sport possible to field for the next three to five years, would campuses phasing out football in the next two years be a dramatically worse choice than annually slow-walking towards canceled football seasons for the next half-decade?
Is continuing to pay coaches and staff and funding full athletic scholarships for athletes to avoid a sport that could breed rampant respiratory infection and mandatory 14-day quarantines our best approach — for now, or for the future?
Stanford University with an endowment in excess of $27 billion cut 11 varsity sports earlier this month in the name of safety and financial austerity — but it is an instant non-starter for HBCUs on the sport most likely to spread coronavirus?
There would be much to work out for what it means for NCAA divisional membership, for sponsorships, and focus grouping for alumni, community members, and obviously, the student body. And there’s every reason to believe that if some schools cut football and the world miraculously recalibrates in such a way that every person is vaccinated and restores his confidence in going to a football game in a crowded stadium, that HBCUs could bring the sport back online.
In March we heard that the virus would be beaten back enough by mid-summer to possibly envision vacations, a scaled reopening of economies and schools. And then we found out that a sizable portion of the country took Future literally. If all is made well in the back half of 2020, then the idea is all for naught.
But what if it is not all well at the end of this year, or halfway into next year? HBCUs would be wise to take the opportunity to broaden conversations today on ‘what if’ before nature forces the dialog to lead off with ‘regretfully and with few other options.’
Middle States Accrediting Body to Accept Applicants Beyond the Middle States
The Middle States Commission on Higher Education announced last week that it would begin accepting applications from colleges and universities beyond its geographic borders stretching from New York to Pennsylvania.
The decision to consider institutions outside of a defined region is one that the Commission did not take lightly. It resulted from the exploration of the changing landscape of higher education, the important role we serve in supporting that change, and the Commission’s unwavering commitment to its mission and values no matter where we do business. While this positioning may have been prompted by the new regulatory environment, this decision about the Commission’s future was not driven by it. We are not changing the name under which we do business, and we are not changing the rigor we expect of institutions that carry our accreditation.
The decision comes after the U.S. Department of Education announced that it would no longer hold institutions to membership in a geographically determined accrediting body, but would consider all bodies equally. For black colleges, particularly those which may be currently or soon facing sanctions from their accreditor, the announcement is like manna from heaven.
But those institutions seeking to jump ship may want to slow up on their sprint towards the edge of the diving board. While accreditation and HBCUs have had a complicated relationship for the better part of a generation, much of the complexity has stemmed from changes in the higher education industry, changing demographics, and ego-driven panic from board-level leadership at the most vulnerable institutions.
Shifting accreditors may help some institutions, but as the agencies largely share similar standards of operation and financial stability for members, there’s little room to believe that one agency would be kinder to a struggling school than would be another.
What would be different, however, would be the number of peer institutions that would be available for a prospective pool of reaffirmation site visitors or a sanction review panel. Currently, most of the nation’s HBCUs are members of the Southern Association of Colleges and Schools’ Commission on Colleges (SACSCOC). Those member schools’ presidents, chancellors, and other executives, by the benefit of their membership, have the opportunity to be tapped for service on panels and advisory committees for peer institutions facing possible sanction or removal.
That means that schools that may be facing trouble three years from now may have the chance to fairly, and perhaps positively, impact outcomes for a school that may be in trouble today and on the other side of the clipboard when it comes to their own assessment.
If we’ve learned anything in the last two years, its that all accreditors do not have an interest in destroying HBCUs. SACSCOC is known for removing Bennett College for Women for membership but isn’t heralded for reaffirming Saint Augustine’s University — much in the same way that Middle States spared Cheyney University last November, or the Higher Learning Commission’s extension of probation for Wilberforce University in April.
Greener grass doesn’t take the place of relationships within the membership and a number of reliable votes on a panel. While regulations may change on Capitol Hill, friendly faces and owed favors rarely do in this business.
