Are Black College Athletics Heading Down The Same Path As The Negro Leagues?

[#1wildcatfan]

  Are Black College Athletics Heading Down The Same Path As The Negro Leagues?
By Kendrick Marshall on August 23, 2011 in HBCUs

This was an interesting article, that I thought would be an interesting topic to post.

    The current state of historically black college athletics eerily mimics the final years of the Negro Leagues.

“Our troubles started after Jackie Robinson joined the Dodgers, said former Negro League Baseball owner Effa Manley.  “Black fans are stupid and gullible in believing that Branch Rickey has any interest in Negro players other than the clicking of his turnstiles.”

With Robinson and other great African-American baseball players signing Major League Baseball contracts in the late 1940s, 50s and thereafter, black baseball suffered.  The product just wasn’t as good. Attendance suffered.  The interest waned.  The league soon shutdown and was never to be heard of again.

A black institution died while a white one grew richer.  In the sport of baseball, this was the end of integration.

The last Negro League All-Star game was held in 1962, and by 1966 the Indianapolis Clowns were the last Negro League team still playing.  The Clowns continued to play exhibition games into the 1980s, but as a humorous sideshow rather than a competitive sport.

The troubles for HBCUs started when Sam Cunningham lined up for Southern California and ran through the University of Alabama defense on a steamy September night in 1970.

Coaches around the country now wanted this black talent that had never been available due to segregation.

African-Americans who had toiled at HBCUs could now perform on the national stage they craved.  It also allowed them to compete with and against the some of best white athletes in the country.  It also gave blacks the opportunity to prove themselves within an establishment and land that denied their ancestors for so long.

After being sold into slavery, after being told they were three-fifths of a person, after being told to drink out of that water fountain, after being told “you can’t eat at this restaurant” and “you have to sit in the back of the bus”, blacks seemed to have always wanted to measure up.

So instead of staying loyal to HBCUs, young black athletes of the 70s wanted to find out if they could measure up at predominately white colleges.

And since Cunningham, black athletes have measured up.  In many cases black athletes have been the crown jewels of southern institutions that also function as multimillion-dollar football and basketball factories.

Black athletes have certainly reaped the benefits of this partnership with white schools over the years as well.  They’ve managed to get everything from national TV exposure, postseason awards, $100 handshakes, after parties, bowl game swag and countless other extra benefits for them and their families.

That relationship has also resulted in Final Four appearances and national championships vacated, probation, reduction in scholarships and student-athlete suspensions.

This rambling brings me back to entertainer Luther Campbell.

Campbell, who has been known to drop a few dollars in the pockets of Miami football players, recently lamented about the slave-like conditions student-athletes are forced to function under the iron fist of the NCAA

“I’m to the point right now where HBCUs need to step up,” Campbell said on ESPN Radio’s “The Herd”.  “Take these African-American kids out of this slave mentality, plantation NCAA.”

Campbell, the former member of 2 Live Crew, and one the University of Miami’s biggest supporters suggested black colleges should secede from the NCAA in an effort to give black athletes more athletic freedom.

“HBCUs just need to go ahead and get out of the NCAA because they don’t give them no bowl game,” Campbell said. “They don’t do anything for them. Get our kids out of this slave plantation, slave mentality situation they are in.”

Sorry Luke, but the horse has already left the barn.  Black high school athletes are not going to all of a sudden consider black schools just because college kids and boosters are being punished for completing illegal benefit transactions.  In the eyes of many, the NCAA might be a plantation, but the student-athletes have not expressed that.

And it will continue to be that way until they refuse to take the field or the court without assurances of compensation other than a one-year scholarship.

That fundamental change has to start with the student-athletes.

But that task becomes even tougher when ESPN trades in its journalistic integrity for Hook ‘em Horns, or when Phil Knight can wave trinkets such as glow in the dark uniforms and 22nd century facilities in the faces of impressionable teenagers.

HBCUs can’t compete with that.  They can’t compete with schools in the Big Ten splitting more than $20 million each from its conference TV deal, which can be reinvested to strengthen each program.  Black colleges can’t deploy Nick Saban, Bob Stoops or John Calipari to attract elite talents on the recruiting trail.

Black schools need saving themselves before they can save black athletes from a corrupt system.  Some schools can barely keep their door opens.  Others are laying off dozens of employees and are severely understaffed.

Maybe if desegregation didn’t exist or a healthy number of black athletes considered HBCUs, athletic departments wouldn’t be headed for the same fate as the now defunct Negro Leagues.

I think we have to ask ourselves if history is repeating itself.

[scstatealum]

if schools continue to recycle ADs and promote coaches who have no business sense to be ADs then maybe.

we gotta stop hiring people who "understand how HBCUs work" and hire ADs who "understand who buisness and athletics work together"

[dragon601713]

True

[Jay_Thomas]

we gotta stop hiring people who "understand how HBCUs work"
and hire ADs who "understand how buisness and athletics work together"

Indeed!   

[ALMIGHTY]

This article is dumb.  Why is the author comparing HBCU's with FBS schools?  Hell, the same article could have written about pwc's in the FCS and D2.  With a few exceptions, most HBCU's operate within the same limitations as other schools in their respective divisions. 

[Decks]

Marshall, this was a very well written and thought provoking article. To answer your question, yes, we are headed down the same path as the Negro Leagues. The sad thing is I'm not sure there's anything we can do to stop it. Our only hope is to learn to manuever the legal system but we don't even have the resources to do that.   

[Devin]

This article is dumb.  Why is the author comparing HBCU's with FBS schools?  Hell, the same article could have written about pwc's in the FCS and D2.  With a few exceptions, most HBCU's operate within the same limitations as other schools in their respective divisions.  

Why did I compare HBCUs with FBS schools? Simple. At one time HBCUs, just like the Negro Leagues, featured the best black athletes in country.

MLB baseball is like the FBS. Once MLB was able to sign Jackie Robinson and other black players away from the Negro Leagues, the league slowly died because the best black players were going to the show.

Instead of being a strong league, it became a novelty at the end of its days.

Same with HBCU/FBS. Once desegregation came into play, the best black college football and basketball players began to overlook HBCUs, and still do to this day for the most part.

Ironically, the same thing is sort of happening to Japanese professional baseball. Some of their best baseball players like Hideki Matsui, Ichiro, Dice-K, Fukudome, Nomo and others have infiltrated Major League Baseball over the years.  It has really hurt interest, attendance and the bottom line.  

There is great concern that if Japan's best players continue pursuing their careers in America, it will be hard for the league over there to sustain themselves. MLB is talking about having a worldwide draft just like the NBA. And if that happens, even fewer Japanese players will actually play in Japan.

Sure, you can can say the same thing about PWCs in the FCS or at the Division II level, but those schools never once had the level of talent that HBCUs did back in the day.

[Golden Kitten]

if schools continue to recycle ADs and promote coaches who have no business sense to be ADs then maybe.

we gotta stop hiring people who "understand how HBCUs work" and hire ADs who "understand who buisness and athletics work together"

But first we've got to learn to give and support so that when an AD is hired who "understands how business and athletics work together", he/she will have something to work with. We want to pretend that we want the best but we don't do what we need to do to recruit, hire, maintain and retain these people...

[Bison 4 Life]

No.

Black athletes have ben going to major PWC's in large numbers for over forty years ( including the SEC). If it would have died it would have happened by now. The Negro Leagues by and large folded a year or two after Jackie Robinson left for the majors in 1947.

[WileECoyote06]

Hey white schools are getting their bands to play popular music too. . and a lot of R & B.  They are going to take that from us eventually as well.

[punchy]

No.

Black athletes have ben going to major PWC's in large numbers for over forty years ( including the SEC). If it would have died it would have happened by now. The Negro Leagues by and large folded a year or two after Jackie Robinson left for the majors in 1947.

I have to agree with B4L. 

[Conquero]

I for one think it is by far one of the most intelligent discussions I've seen on this site.  I feel that the article is a great cross analogy and makes very valid points.  I feel that the article really puts things into context.  To say this article is "dumb", is just indiotic, unintelligent, and plain silly, to say the least.  

The SEC has for years pimped and enslaved black athletes.  I cannot understand for the love of me, why is it that southern blacks, or blacks in general so embrace these institutions that through hell and high water tried to ensure that we could not even attend them.  I mean there are history books documenting and chronicling the southern institution's resistance to integration.  I have to agree with the author, and I have said it before on this board, that many of us still employ a slave like mentality when it come to such topics.  Because of that, we will always be behind as a race.  

GK,

I tend to agree with you more than not.  I think we for the most part think alike.  But to insinuate that giving at HBCU's is limited compared to PWI's is an understatement.  BUT UNDERSTANDABLY SO!  When your HBCU's were founded they were limited by southern whites in terms of what they could or could not offer in their curriculum.  By TU's own reckoning Booker T. preached relegating Tuskegee and Hampton to certain fields just to appease white philanthropist and white southerners (I know, I've done the research on it).  So if in the early days HBCU's, by in large, were relegated to producing teachers, nurses, and folks in agriculture, and/or techinical trades, while in contrast, majority white institutions in the south were producing Ph.D.'s, engineers, doctors, lawyers, etc., isn't it clear that the majority of the alum from the black institutions were barely making enough money to survive and actually live off of.  To expect that sector's giving to be on par, or even close with state funded white institutions that were producing top notch, highly paid professionals, would be irrational and fictitous.  

Please don't take this to mean that I am saying that we had no professional schools (clearly Howard and Meharry) were the exceptions, but the schools were few and far between and the number of proessionals produced were few and far between, as well.  

And when you analyze the public HBCU's in the South who all have had to fight (the progeny of Adams cases in 1978-2000 including the Knight v. Alabama case and the Mississippi Ayers case), and some are even fighting right now for equal funding (i.e. Maryland, and Georgia HBCU coalition) so that better facilities, professional offerings, etc. could  be extended to the public HBCU's.   I think that it would be insane to say HBCU graduates don't give back.  The fact is that HBCU graduates  who were mainly relegated in their education are not and especially in the past years, did not earn what their counterparts earned and was exposed to graduating from UGA, Auburn, Alabama, etc.  

[WileECoyote06]

The SEC has for years pimped and enslaved black athletes.  I cannot understand for the love of me, why is it that southern blacks, or blacks in general so embrace these institutions that through hell and high water tried to ensure that we could not even attend them.  I have to agree with the author, and I have said it before on this board, that many of us still employ a slave like mentality when it come to such topics.  Because of that, we will always be behind as a race. 

I will never understand why a black kid would go to LSU to play ball.

[Golden Kitten]

Conquero,

Don't disagree with you but at what point do we hold ourselves to the same standard as we try to hold others? We come here talking about how much spending power AAs have and yada, yada. We talk about establishing a culture of giving for our students from the time they set foot on campus. But we never talk about how much we give to our churches, our sororities/fraternities, other civic organizations, you name it. So why can't we do the same for our schools?

I understand from whence we've come - and at that time, when we were not as educated, when we didn't have 3-4 generations of college graduates in our families, we could make this argument. Quiet as it's kept, if you measure the giving back in the today and equate it to today's dollars, I'd bet that the giving was higher. At some point, we need to revisit how we got to this point and do something to improve our giving. Then we can make a better case to state/local govts re funding. We can't continue to ask for help if we're not willing to help ourselves. The govt is no different than you or I. Most of us aren't willing to help those who don't show they are trying to help themselves...

[Bison 4 Life]

The SEC has for years pimped and enslaved black athletes.  I cannot understand for the love of me, why is it that southern blacks, or blacks in general so embrace these institutions that through hell and high water tried to ensure that we could not even attend them.  I have to agree with the author, and I have said it before on this board, that many of us still employ a slave like mentality when it come to such topics.  Because of that, we will always be behind as a race. 

I will never understand why a black kid would go to LSU to play ball.