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For Paying College Athletes? Yes, Then Cut The High School Athletes A Check Too

Posted on August 22, 2025 by | Leave a comment

By William A. Foster, IV

“When hypocrisy is a character trait, it also affects one’s thinking, because it consists in the negation of all the aspects of reality that one finds disagreeable, irrational or repugnant.” – Octavio Paz

My freshman year of high school was nerve wracking and exciting. As far as academics were concerned I did fairly well that first year, but the football field was where I was most excited. I had a good year and heard rumblings that the varsity head coach had me in consideration for varsity my coming sophomore year. I fit his system of defense. I was small, but I had good football IQ and did not mind taking or giving a hit. All of that changed though when he got fired at the end of my freshman year for using an ineligible player during the year and having to forfeit almost all of the school’s games. In his place came a coach I was familiar with because the year before me and father went to see Jack Yates High School, the high school I grew up watching my father coach play in the state playoffs take on Temple High School and the offensive coordinator would then become our school’s head coach. I was excited, but nervous. They ran a different brand of football. We had been a predominantly running team and our talent fit that style. Instead, he ran an early version of the spread that was not very popular throughout. We were built for ground and pound and he wanted an air attack. I was switched positions from defense to offense and scored the first touchdown of the new regime, and from there it was all down hill.

By my junior year, I was deep into my academics and this was becoming a problem unbeknownst to me for my coaches. It would come to a head when I asked for more time before practice to get tutoring and one of my coaches said to me, “Son, you need to choose between them books and this team.” I would never forget that moment. I was shocked. I had parents who were college professors. Choose? Is he serious? Not only was he, but it would escalate. After our game that week, which I did not have a particularly good one and little did I know it was really the end of my football career. As we sat and watched game film the next week a play that I missed came up. The coach stopped the film, flipped on the lights, and looked dead at me and said to the team, “We have some players who are not committed to this team.” Being the hot tempered teenager I was at the time, I calmly put my head down as if I was rubbing it with one finger. I will let you guess which one. From that point on, I was in the dog house and at the end of the season was told to turn my equipment in. My father would talk me back onto the team for my senior year, but quite honestly it was hell and part of me wish I had never gone through it. I loved football growing up, playing in the street, watching my father coach, going to the state championship, and thought one day that would be me. Little did I understand, the “business” I was walking into.

Texas high school football is different. There is no doubt about that and Friday NIght Lights probably left more than a few things out that would traumatize people. I for one recall getting pulled over one night after drinking and in no condition to be behind a wheel, but once the police found out I played for the local high school team they were more interested in telling me about them playing for the police football team. Ultimately, they let me go with a minor in possession and let me drive myself home. On my high school football team we had some of everything going on from the drug dealers, drug users, massive illiteracy, and more than a few things I have blocked from my memory for good reason.

You see most of them were not just playing football for the love of the game. They were playing because they saw it as their only way out. Many of my teammates came from impoverished backgrounds, with few educational opportunities and even fewer economic ones. For them, football was not just a pastime it was a potential career. And yet, despite the immense pressure placed on high school athletes to perform, there is virtually no financial compensation for their efforts. If we are going to argue that college athletes deserve to be paid for their labor, then high school athletes who also generate millions of dollars in revenue deserve the same consideration.

The financial power of high school football, especially in states like Texas, is undeniable. According to a 2019 report by the Texas Education Agency, the state spent over $500 million on high school football stadiums between 2008 and 2018. Some stadiums rival those of small colleges in both size and amenities, with the most expensive high school stadium in the country, Legacy Stadium in Katy, Texas costing $72 million to build. These stadiums are packed on Friday nights, bringing in millions of dollars in ticket sales, sponsorships, and media rights.

Despite this, the players on the field, the ones drawing the crowds see none of this revenue. While their coaches earn six-figure salaries (the highest-paid high school coach in Texas makes $158,000 per year), the athletes themselves play for free, risking injury and sacrificing their time and education in the hopes of making it to the next level.

The physical toll on high school athletes is just as severe as it is for college players. According to a study by the National Federation of State High School Associations (NFHS), there are approximately 1.1 million high school football players in the U.S., and every year, an estimated 300,000 sports-related concussions occur among high school athletes. The risk of serious, long-term injury is real, yet these players receive no compensation for putting their bodies on the line.

Consider this: the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) has been pressured to provide financial assistance for athletes suffering from chronic traumatic encephalopathy (CTE), a brain disease caused by repeated head trauma. If college athletes deserve compensation for these risks, shouldn’t high school athletes who are just as vulnerable also receive financial protection?

Some may argue that high school sports do not generate as much money as college athletics. While it is true that high schools do not have billion-dollar TV contracts like the NCAA, local revenue generation is still significant. The Texas University Interscholastic League (UIL) collects millions of dollars in revenue from the state football championships, including ticket sales, sponsorships, and broadcasting rights. ESPN, Fox Sports, and other major networks regularly feature high school games, and Nike and Adidas have begun sponsoring elite high school programs.

In 2021, Alabama’s Hoover High School reported earning over $2 million annually from its football program. Southlake Carroll High School in Texas made nearly $1.5 million in a single season from ticket sales, donations, and sponsorships. The bottom line? High school football is not just a game it is a business. And in any other business, the labor force gets paid.

The NCAA’s decision to allow Name, Image, and Likeness (NIL) deals for college athletes has already set a precedent. High school athletes in several states including Texas, California, and Florida are now allowed to profit from their NIL rights. Players like Jaden Rashada, a high school quarterback in California, reportedly signed a $9.5 million NIL deal before ever playing a college snap. This demonstrates that high school athletes do, in fact, have market value.

But what about the majority of players who will never receive NIL deals? They are still sacrificing their time, bodies, and educational opportunities for the sport. If coaches, administrators, and organizations profit from their efforts, then why should the athletes themselves be excluded? A stipend, medical coverage, or even a trust fund for players who complete their high school careers would be a step in the right direction.

Critics argue that paying high school athletes could open the door to corruption, recruiting scandals, and financial mismanagement. However, these problems already exist in amateur sports. Boosters have been caught illegally paying recruits for decades, and schools have been sanctioned for bending the rules to secure top talent. If anything, formalizing a compensation structure would bring transparency to a system that already operates in the shadows.

Others worry about the financial burden on school districts. However, if schools can afford multi-million-dollar stadiums and six-figure coaching salaries, then they can find ways to fairly compensate athletes. The money is already there but the question is who gets to benefit from it.

The reality is that high school football is more than just a game. It is an industry, one that generates millions of dollars while placing tremendous physical and mental demands on young athletes. If we accept the argument that college athletes should be paid because of the revenue they generate, then we must apply that same logic to high school athletes.

High school athletes do more than just entertain. They fill stadiums, drive merchandise sales, and fuel an economy that benefits everyone except them. It is time to acknowledge their worth and compensate them accordingly. Whether through stipends, medical coverage, or NIL opportunities, high school athletes deserve to see a share of the wealth they help create. Otherwise, we continue to exploit their labor under the guise of “amateurism.” The system is broken, and until high school athletes get a piece of the pie, it will remain unfairly rigged against them.

 Disclaimer: This article was assisted by ChatGPT.

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Do The Math: HBCUs Owning Their Own Tournaments Can Pay Better Than Hoping To Be Cinderellas Against PWIs In Theirs

Posted on March 21, 2023 by | 2 comments

“Take the fast road and get robbed then. Do you want to be famous or do you want to be rich? Because there is a likeliness that you might not be able to be both in this game. At a certain point you have to decide, do you want to be seen and known and look like you got bread and have everybody assume you got bread? Or do you really want to have bread and have people just assume you broke and not really getting it?” – Bun B

Jackie Robinson’s foray into Major League Baseball. Sam “Bam” Cunningham’s foray into PWI football. Texas Western’s championship in 1966 in PWI basketball. These are pivotal moments when an individual’s action would start the demolition of the institutions of African American institutional athletic power along with collapse of the infrastructure and ecosystems that made them such valuable assets to the African American community. In both instances, it would precipitate a talent and economic drain of African American institutions. 

The Negro Leagues would ultimately fold, ownership, executives, managers, hundreds if not thousands of jobs that were the byproduct of the Negro League wiped away to the sands of time. In 1947, there were zero African American owners in Major League Baseball. In 2023, there are zero African American owners in Major League Baseball. “Virtually all of the initial (Negro League) ownership was Black”, says Garrick Kebede, a Houston-based financial adviser and Negro League Baseball historian. In fact, across all major professional sports leagues (121 teams), there is only one African American principal owner – Michael Jordan, owner of the Charlotte Hornets and rumors are he is on the verge of selling the team almost eight decades after Branch Rickey poached Jackie Robinson. On the labor side, Major League Baseball reached its African American apex of players in 1981 with 18.7 percent of the players being African American. In 2023, that number has seen a precipitous decline down to 6.7 percent – a number not seen since 1957, a decade after Jackie Robinson entered the majors. Jackie Robinson’s move to the MLB did not just set the stage for the demise of the Negro Leagues, it would set the seed for HBCUs athletic demise just a few decades later.

A little over two decades later in 1966, Texas Western University (now, University of Texas El-Paso) would win the NCAA basketball championship with the first all-black starting lineup at a PWI and a few years later in 1970, Sam “Bam” Cunningham would take USC’s offense and run all over the all-white University of Alabama. Jerry Claiborne, an assistant to Head Coach Bear Bryant at the University of Alabama, famously said, “Sam Cunningham did more to integrate Alabama in 60 minutes than Martin Luther King Jr. did in 20 years.” But he did not integrate anything. Both instances simply convinced PWIs that Black athletes were the future of their programs and taking that talent from HBCUs could financially benefit them immensely among their STILL predominantly white fan bases and boosters. The fans and boosters just want to win. And while a decrease in European American players happened, the coaches, boosters, trustees, school bodies, and ownership in all the places that matter would still be what it has always been. Before enslaved Africans were brought to America, indentured servants who were the poor of Europe would be the labor pool of early America. This was to be no different of a transition. And ownership is ultimately the rub of where all of this lies for African America and HBCUs. 

The money behind the playoffs for football, the NCAA and NIT tournament for basketball, and the World Series for baseball and softball is dare we say – complicated. This in part is due to the way payouts are structured for each playoff/tournament and how schools and conferences choose to deal with the funds they receive for participating. For instance, in the NCAA tournament, “The NCAA urges the conference to distribute the earnings equally to the schools, but it is not a requirement. Typically, the bigger conferences will divide the money and send it to its member schools. The smaller ones, however, need the money to cover their own expenses, and then will send what’s left to its member schools.”, according to AS’s Jennifer Bubel. On the other hand, the NCAA’s ownership of the NIT operates a bit differently. “The NCAA has a complex way of rewarding teams for participating in March Madness. For the NIT, it’s much simpler. In addition to having travel, hotel and other expenses comped, each school in the NIT is given $4,000 for every game it plays. It’s a total payout pool of $128,000 this year.” says Sportico’s Eben Nvoy-Williams. Yet, Nvoy-Williams also points out that the NIT’s profitability to the NCAA while being lesser known is extremely profitable, “Though it’s nowhere near the commercial entity of March Madness, the National Invitation Tournament, or NIT, is a very profitable business for the NCAA. In 2019, the last year the event was held, it turned a $2.1 million profit on $3.3 million in expenses, according to financial documents. In 2018, the numbers were similar.” For football, “Each conference receives $6 million from the College Football Playoff for each team selected for a semifinal game and $4 million for each team that plays in a non-playoff bowl under the College Football Playoff.” reports Business of College Sports. Last but not least there is baseball, “In 2011, the NCAA included the College World Series as part of a $500 million television deal with ESPN for 24 sports championships through 2023-2024.” according to Huddle Up’s Joe Pompliano. Have we lost everyone yet? To sum it up, the finances of college athletics are extremely complicated. Adding to that complication is the fact that these playoffs and tournaments are all owned by the NCAA. But that ownership is now under threat as the Power 5 members realizing their own outsized power within the NCAA are vying to form their own entity. CBS Sports reports, “Majority of Power Five schools favor breaking away” and they primarily are looking to do so because they recognize they are a disproportionate contributor to NCAA events and more ownership would allow to share less and keep more within their conferences. Whether or not they determine that ownership is within the NCAA or a separate athletic association of their own is to be determined. Given their outsize influence in the NCAA though it may end up being a debate over how you pronounce tomato or potato. 

Many HBCU athletic supporters believe it is better that HBCUs fight for the respect and equality of their PWI counterparts in the NCAA as opposed to taking ownership of the HBCU Power Five (SWAC, MEAC, SIAC, CIAA, and GCAC) and forming the HBCU Athletic Association. This despite not having the alumni bases, boosters, or economic weight to be anything more than what we are in the NCAA’s ecosystem. In some respects, it harkens to the playing field of hip-hop where many artists finally started realizing that it was far better financially to be an independent artist than sign to a major label where an advance (also known as a loan) would keep the artist indebted to the label forever. A continued belief is that all we need to do is get the best athletes to come back to HBCUs and that resolves everything. Something no one seems to actually have an answer on how to accomplish or recognition in just how much that would cost – again, while not having the financial resources to accomplish it. Many think abandoning HBCU conferences and moving into PWI conferences is the answer despite multiple schools having tried and failing. HBCUs weakening HBCU conferences for PWI conferences is no different than African American athletes abandoning HBCUs for PWIs. It does not help us scale institutional power or circulate institutional capital. 

As it stands right now, the NCAA tournament is worth approximately $340,000 per win and with only the SWAC and MEAC participating (FBS schools only), even with a miraculous run it would workout to only $220,250 per school between the two conferences should they BOTH make it all the way to the Final Four. The secret to a conference actually making a lot of money in the NCAA tournament is having multiple teams from the conference get into the tournament. The SWAC/MEAC always only get one each and that is the automatic bid from winning their conference tournament. Money that a team earns in the tournament is usually (not required) split evenly among all of the members of the conference. Not always the case with smaller schools like HBCUs whose individual programs usually need every single penny. Given that every SWAC/MEAC athletic programs runs in the red and their 2019-2020 combined losses were to the tune of $161M it is hard to say whether the basketball programs that make it will share or can even afford to share.

The harsh reality of the probability for a deep run for HBCU men’s basketball is reflected in the SWAC/MEAC’s win-loss record in the tournament. Without comment, it is 4-55 all-time and we think that speaks for itself. It means that the SWAC/MEAC earned usually earn no more than the one unit times two teams for making it and this year that works out to a total of approximately $680,000 combined and $34,000 per school in the conferences if it is evenly divided. Can HBCUs create their own HBCU basketball tournament that would earn each school more than $34,000 per year? That is essentially the question that must be answered in considering creating our own tournament versus continuing to play in the NCAA tournament. If you included all 57 members of the HBCU Five, then that would need to be a tournament that produced a profit of $1.94M. Based on the NIT’s numbers, that would mean expenses of $3.1M or $55,000 per school approximately and revenues of approximately $5M or $87,700 per school. Again, this is a profit of almost $2M for the HBCU Five. The difference in this case is that of course the conferences would have an asset they could actually put on their financial statements that would be held in trust among their member institutions. Quite an enticing carrot in trying to recruit independent HBCUs to join the conference like Tennessee State University or PBIs like Chicago State University. The HBCU Five should be able to leverage a television contract for at least the cost of the tournament with everything else being profit thereafter. This could be repeated with football, baseball, and other sports.

Continued delusion around HBCU athletics competing with PWI athletic programs that have budgets ten times their size, a roster of boosters who write million dollar checks annually, corporate relationships with executives who also are PWI alumni and owned by PWI shareholders is a one-way train ticket to Diasasterville with the brake lines cut. You can not do what your competitor is doing when your resources socially, economically, and politically are as obtuse as HBCU reality. There are no HBCU boosters writing million dollar checks annually, there are no companies with HBCU executives and owned by HBCU shareholders who can provide multimillion corporate sponsorships, and there are reasons we all know and only say in private about why many African American high school athletes and their families overwhelmingly choose PWIs. We have to do different, think different, be creative, and solve the Rubik’s Cube that is not only the athletic conundrum we are facing but the lack of ownership crisis that continues to have a chokehold on African American institutionalism since 1947.

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The $6 Billion Delusion Of Grandeur: HBCU Alumni Refuse To Accept The Harsh Financial Reality Of HBCU Athletics

Posted on July 4, 2019 by | 2 comments

“Every day is a new opportunity. You can build on yesterday’s success or put its failures behind and start over again. That’s the way life is, with a new game every day, and that’s the way baseball is.” – Bob Feller

It sometimes feels like there is no more irrational sector of HBCUs than athletics when it comes to HBCU alumni bases and administrations. We want to buy the Empire State Building, but barely have money for a night at Motel 6. If you have watched ESPN’s 30 for 30: The Pony Express and The U, then you probably do not need to go further in this article. For those who have not watched either, please do so immediately and continue to read. If cheap shots on the field bother you, then you are not at all ready for the brutality of what happens outside the lines and behind closed doors. College athletics is a contact sport, a dirty business, not for the faint of heart, and the cost associated with it remind us just how huge the institutional wealth gap is between HBCUs and our counterparts.

In 2014, HBCU Money produced an article that showed the SWAC/MEAC conferences were losing a combined $130 million in their member athletic programs. Two years later, that number had skyrocketed to $147 million. The members of the two conferences had combined expenses of approximately $194.1 million while revenues without subsidies were a meager $47 million. Of course most alumni have no idea that the subsidies that we speak of are primarily student fees. These subsidies accounted for a staggering $142.5 million or 75 percent of the athletic revenues that the SWAC/MEAC generated if you can call it such a thing. Subsidies or allocated as defined by the NCAA and others consider student fees, direct and indirect institutional support and state money “allocated,” or everything not generated by the department’s athletics functions. It is not clear however by the NCAA definition if booster giving is considered a subsidy or athletic functions. However at 75 percent of revenues what is clear is that it is not ticket sales, sponsorships, merchandise sales, media deals, etc., but primarily student fees driving HBCU athletic revenue.

For the majority of our students, that means additional cost onto their cost of attendance which is largely financed through – you guessed it – student loans. Essentially what rabid HBCU alumni and administrations have done is asked students to take out a loan for sports. A predatory payday loan at that. The irony is that even with the subsidies the two conferences still were losing money, approximately $5 million, meaning HBCU boosters were not even giving enough to breakeven. Many HBCU alumni hold dear to the belief that if you build it they will come (eventually), they being the abundance of riches that African American athletes pour into our white counterparts and if they return to HBCUs the power will tilt and so will the finances of sports back into our favor making our programs profitable and financially abundant. Never mind the harsh reality those mega television contracts we read about to the Power 5 have little to do with the athletes on the field and more about the fans in the seats and audience nationwide. Outside of the Bayou Classic, there is not one HBCU football or basketball game that could bring over 70,000 (Superdome’s capacity) to it and millions of viewers on television. The latter mainly due to it being a Thanksgiving weekend game and the game itself almost became something of a staple to watch in many African American households. Fan bases care about having the best players because they care about beating their rivals. Coaches care about having the best players because they want to keep their job. The fact that they are African Americans is a byproduct of a game played almost 50 years ago when USC beat Alabama with a young African American kid named Sam “Bam” Cunningham who “Bear” Bryant’s all-white team had no answer for so in true fashion they went out and got a few of their own. And the rest as they say is history, but the past echoing into the present is very real and the present’s echo into the future is also very real.

The question is as educated and critically thinking capable alumni, why are we not able to examine this subject in a rational and objective manner? Why are we not able to devise an actual plan that does not involve breaking the backs of our students? African Americans are already the poorest group by median income ($40,258 vs. $61,372 for all races) and median wealth ($11,030 vs. $134,230 for European Americans) in America and we want to make it that much harder for our graduates to become financially stable and wealthy in exchange for sports? Primarily, this accusation is lobbed at football and men’s basketball and the black financial holes that they are to the majority of the nation’s colleges. By far, they are the two costliest sports on any college campus, black or white.

Schools like the SWAC’s Prairie View A&M built a $60 million stadium and new athletic complex (uncertainty as to whether the school’s current renovation of their basketball arena is included or not) and Jackson State University at one point even had the gall to suggest a $200 million domed stadium complex. Yet, without subsidies Prairie View’s program lost $13.1 million in 2016-2017 and Jackson State lost $5.4 million. Meanwhile, Spelman College scrapped its athletic program six years ago. The former president, Dr. Beverly Tatum, “When considering our options, I learned that we only had 80 student-athletes and the cost of our program was approaching $1 million per year.” This against a reality of serving a college of African American women and as an ESPN article noted, “49 percent of African-American women over the age of 20 had heart diseases, and were twice as likely to develop Type 2 diabetes as non-Hispanic white women. The health issues that black women faced, including those at Spelman, were very much linked to diet and a lack of physical activity.” Spelman and its leadership wanted alumni to be healthy now and for the future. Health builds wealth is not just a saying but a real reality. Less days missed at work means more income earned, more money saved and invested, more wealth created, and more opportunity to give back to your alma mater. This is not even getting into the costs that many African Americans suffer from later in life because of poor lifestyle and diet which becomes so costly that there is little left at the end of life to even leave behind to their HBCU. Is Spelman sacrificing their athletic program today so that they can have wealthier alumni tomorrow who would be able to bring back the program and truly have it be sustainable? How much of a donation would it take to endow the $1 million annually to bring back their athletic program? Approximately $15-25 million.

Are we suggesting that all HBCUs follow Spleman’s lead? No, certainly not. There can be a happy medium, but first HBCU alumni need to truly understand the cost associated with major college sports, primarily football and men’s basketball. The harsh reality is that these are the only two sports at the college level that currently generate any significant revenue for colleges and unfortunately the cost to recruit in these two sports starts far before an athlete even gets to college. Recruiting for prized college basketball players for many college coaches starts in AAU middle school. Coaches from the basketball Power 5 conferences are constantly traveling year round and scouting talent that will not be college ready for four to five years in many instances. To say it is costly to follow an 8th grader around is an understatement, but if you do not do it, then you have almost no chance at seriously recruiting them (or their family) later on. HBCU alumni are not sponsoring or even mildly impacting the AAU financial machine, which can cost a family upwards of $5,000 for summer play and often times those costs are absorbed by a benefactor who maybe more akin to the Godfather and wants you to remember the favor he did for you later. Google AAU bribes and Google almost has a heart attack returning the amount of searches on the subject. When it comes to football, the situation has become just as complicated with the advent of the 7 on 7 leagues that have popped up all over the country. The cost spent on developing and “steering” young black boys as athletes begins early and costs tens of of millions annually – and we have not even gotten to the programs themselves yet. There is an enormous amount of dark money that is spent by athletic companies like Nike, Reebok, Adidas, etc. to ensure that the pup stars in both sports go to schools where they can maximize the exposure of the next superstar wearing their apparel. Of course, high school and AAU coaches receive perks for being the “voice of reason” to help influence many young men and advise their families on where would be best for them. Again, HBCU alumni and boosters barely have money to give to their own athletic programs, let alone “lobbying” to high school coaches with no guarantee of payoffs, but mandatory if you want to even be in the conversation. Then there are the facilities.

While Prairie View A&M spent $60 million on a stadium and athletic complex a few years ago, the University of Oregon was spending $68 million on a football performance center. Yes, Oregon built a building dedicated entirely to their football program and the state of Oregon changed the laws to accommodate the building that ran afoul of building codes because of the influence of Phil Knight, the founder and largest shareholder of Nike and the University of Oregon’s biggest booster. According to Oregon Live it includes, “offices, team video theaters, offensive and defensive strategy rooms, a coaching conference suite, a video editing center, a dining hall and a weight room.” Again, just for football. The Darth Vader to Prairie View A&M University’s Luke Skywalker for good measure, Texas A&M University, spent $450 million on a stadium renovation or eight times what the entirety of Prairie View’s athletic complex cost for a renovation to its stadium and now seats over 102,000 people. It has taken some HBCUs over 30 years to raise the money for even moderate renovations to their HBCU athletic facilities. Many are still waiting and some tired of waiting, increased student fees to redirect toward athletics. Colleges have to have the latest and greatest to attract the best athletes who are being treated as deities before even stepping foot on a college campus. College athletics has become an arms race of new facilities, high-paid coaches, under the table bags of money to recruits and so much more that spiral the cost beyond many of our wildest dreams. The rabbit hole is deep.

A few names and numbers:

Al Dunlap – $15 million. Paul Bryant, Jr. – $20 million. Phil Knight – $300 million. Christy Gaylord Everest – $18 million. Drayton McLane – $200 million. Herb Kohl – $25 million. Jack Vanier – $20 million. These are just six boosters that Mother Jones reported were major college boosters in an article in 2014. The six donations account for almost $600 million, an amount that is four times the size of the losses the SWAC/MEAC losses account for just a few years prior. Need even more perspective on how big these donations are? Aside from Prairie View A&M’s $17.9 million in expenses, those donations could cover the expenses of any SWAC or MEAC school in their singular. Phil Knight’s giving to the University of Oregon (since 2014 he has given another $200 million to Oregon) or Drayton McLane’s giving to Baylor University could cover the cost of every school in the SWAC and MEAC ($194.1 million) with money left over in the bank – by themselves. In comparison, HBCU Gameday recently reported that Winston-Salem State University was in the midst of a $250,000 athletic capital campaign with major donors coming from ESPN and WSSU alumnus, Stephen A. Smith, with a gift of $50,000 and Chris Paul, an NBA player whose 2018 salary was $25 million, giving a gift of $25,000. Large donations in HBCU athletic circles indeed, but making HBCUs competitive in recruitment among blue chips – not so much.

Unfortunately, there is no real repository of data on booster giving among colleges. Most of the information on the aforementioned boosters is from press clippings where donations to Power 5 conferences make headlines. In fact, a lot of giving becomes very opaque if we factor in boosters who provide jobs to athletes’ family members (remember Reggie Bush?) and the like. For the HBCU 5 conferences, there are not even press clippings, although if HBCU athletic and development departments wanted to disclose how much in donations were directed toward athletic programs from alumni it would be acutely helpful or create a database that sites like HBCU Money could use to give a fair analysis of the giving that is happening in HBCU athletic programs it would be greatly appreciated. However, again when 75 percent of the revenues come from student fees, it is not hard to know those numbers would be embarrassing and minuscule at best. And that brings us back to our problem of HBCU alumni who seem to be delusional about the true cost for building the type of athletic programs that can be self-sustaining and not breaking the back of students who in the future will not be able to give like they could and creating a vicious cycle of under giving to the institutions as a whole – all for the sake of sports.

The HBCU 5 athletic programs based on the SWAC and MEAC’s numbers, being Division 1 programs makes them inherently more expensive, brings all five conferences (SWAC, MEAC, CIAA, SIAC, & GCAC) total expenses to around an estimated $300 million annually. There are only two HBCUs with endowments above $300 million and we are possibly still a decade away from Howard University becoming the first HBCU to a $1 billion endowment. There are over 100 HWCUs with endowments over $1 billion. Around 90 percent of HBCUs do not even have endowments of $50 million. A startling statistic when you have schools trying to run athletic programs that cost $10 million plus annually. If HBCU alumni who truly cared about sports wanted to endow HBCU athletic programs with enough to generate the $300 million annually they would need to raise between $4 to $6 billion and hope they can find returns of almost 10 percent annually in an economic environment that is giving out low to mid single digit returns far more commonly. At 5 percent annual return, it would take $6 billion for HBCUs to get HBCU athletic programs off the backs and out of the pockets of its students and help reduce student debt loads. Almost 9 out of 10 HBCU graduates will finish with debt, 32 percent higher than the national average and a median debt load that is 40 percent higher than their counterparts at Top 50 endowed HWCUs. Is it worth it is a question any HBCU alumni and athletic boosters must ask themselves who cares about our institutions and the students who matriculate through them.

Wayne Gretzky is famously quoted as saying he was great because he skated where the puck was going not where it has been. HBCU alumni are bent on doing the exact opposite when it comes to athletics. Even if HBCU alumni could raise the $6 billion, it would be a fools’ decision to spend it on sports, mainly again football and men’s basketball. So why is an HBCU like Florida Memorial University selling $100 t-shirts to bring back its football program? Is it pressure from alumni? Is it an administration that wants it to be part of their legacy? The long-term implications of fielding a football program when Florida Memorial was moving towards a future of profitable athletic sports is baffling to say the least.

Little League sports statistics show that soccer is the future in this country, baseball is seeing a resurgence, and women’s sports is just scratching the surface of its potential globally. David Beckham, an international soccer megastar in his day and now the owner of the Miami MLS franchise, spent time at Florida Memorial just five years ago. Beckham’s is a relationship that should be leaned into and nurtured to put it mildly. Meanwhile, the pipeline for football is dwindling rapidly due to society’s fears over health concerns and yet, less than twenty HBCUs have soccer teams. HBCUs have all but abandoned baseball despite its resurgence in America and globally. Again, where the puck is and where is it going. This is to say nothing of the infancy that Esports is in, an industry that is estimated to breach a value of $1 billion in the next year according to the World Economic Forum coupled with prize money as high as $1 million for gamers in some tournaments and what feels like an exponential growth in sponsorships and endorsements. Esports is picking up so much steam it is being introduced in high school athletic programs and even some colleges are starting to offer Esports scholarships. There is not one of us who is over the age of 35 and under the age of 50 that does not remember a Madden tournament in the dorms of our HBCUs. We were early as we usually are, but completely missing the opportunity to leverage and be ahead of the curve.

HBCU alumni and athletic boosters need to have tougher conversations with themselves and with administrations. Read your HBCU’s financial reports for starters. A lot of this is poor financial literacy in that we do not know the cost of running our institutions, growing endowments, and sustaining an athletic program. We simply can not afford to buy high and sell low with HBCU athletics anymore. There is a happy medium and we need to have a honest conversation about it. Alumni and boosters need to understand the true cost of running our programs (something administrations need to be more transparent about) and not continue with the pie in the sky hope that African American high school athletes are just going to miraculously pick us. Zion Williamson, who had two parents attend Livingstone College still chose Duke University. There is a moat around football and men’s basketball and we need to accept that, but those two sports will not be the fountain of prosperity forever. Malcolm X said the future belongs to those who prepare for it today and it is time for us to start preparing like we need to cram for a final exam in the morning and our graduation depends on it.

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