The start of the college football season is just weeks away.
But before Delaware State travels to Hawaii and former Mid-Eastern Athletic Conference foes face off at the MEAC/SWAC Challenge on Aug. 24, here are my headlines for the 2024 HBCU FCS season.
A&T’s Struggles
Oh, how the mighty have fallen.
In 2019, North Carolina A&T ended one of the greatest runs in Black College Football history with a combined record of 50-10 and winning four Celebration Bowls over five years. Fast-forward to 2023, and the Aggies would end their inaugural campaign in the Coastal Athletic Association with a substandard 1-10 record, struggling mightily in league play where they went winless under the new head coach Vincent Brown.
It was 13 years ago when the Aggies were last held to one victory, capping off a seven-year stretch where the Aggies had a combined record of 14-63.
Coach Brown will have his hands full trying to turn around one of the worst offenses in the nation last season, as the Aggies will face four preseason Top 25 opponents in Richmond, Elon, William & Mary, and Villanova, plus 2023 postseason participants Delaware and North Carolina Central.
Coaching Carousel
One-third of the 21 FCS HBCU programs will start this year with new head coaches.
James Colzie III (FAMU) and Cris Dishman (Texas Southern) have never held the title of head coach before while Trent Boykin (Hampton) still has the interim tag. Chennis Berry (SCSU) will look to bring his winning ways from Division II Benedict as he replaces the legendary Buddy Pough in Orangeburg. Terrence Graves (Southern) will have the distinct honor of coaching both Grambling AND Southern in his career. Former associate/interim Nebraska head coach Mickey Joseph will replace Hue Jackson at Grambling. Former Alcorn defensive coordinator Cedric Thomas will take over the reins in Lorman.
And not to be left out, former SWAC head coaches Eric Dooley and Fred McNair are now assistants for their divisional rivals, Grambling and Southern respectively.
Which new head coach will have the most impact or face the most pressure in their inaugural season at their respective helms?
Will Tennessee State Win Title?
Head Coach Eddie George is taking Tennessee State in the right direction. The Tigers finished 2023 with their most wins (6) in six seasons. However, TSU would fall short of winning a conference title for the second consecutive season, dropping their last three league games.
To take that next step, the defense will need a complete overhaul. Nine starters left a unit that ranked third or better in the Big South-OVC over the past two seasons, including the 2023 Buck Buchanan Award winner Terrell Allen. Last year’s Defensive Freshman of the Year Eriq George will be joined by transfers Keandre Booker (DL, SEMO), Tyler Jones (DB, Missouri), and Kierron Smith (DL, Georgia Southern). Former two-time All-SWAC selection Jalen Bell (MVSU) will return to the lineup after missing 2023 with an injury.
Offensively, new offensive coordinator Travis Partridge will have seven returning starters from a year ago, including running back Jordan Gant. The Freshman All-American became the first back to finish a season with double-digit rushing touchdowns in a season (10) in eleven years. Quarterback Draylen Ellis will be returning for his third season under center. However, he needs to improve his 155 passing yards per game while looking for ways to hold on to the ball for longer than 26:47 per contest.
TSU will be tested early in conference play this season, facing the teams that ended their 2023 on a three-game losing streak, Tennessee Tech, Charleston Southern, and Eastern Illinois.
Back-to-Back Rattlers?
The pressure to repeat as black college football national champions has been on Florida A&M since Dec. 16, 2023, at 3:56 p.m. However, the Rattlers’ quest to become the second team to repeat as Celebration Bowl champs won’t be easy.
Out goes last year’s SWAC Coach, Offensive and Defensive Players of the Year. Insert former Simmons assistant James Colzie III as the new head coach and 36 D1 Transfers (30 FBS, 6 FCS).
Preseason all-conference selections running back Kelvin Dean and wide receiver Jamari Gassett return from last year’s offense that averaged just under 31 points per game. Quarterback Junior Muratovic (138 passing yards in six games) is the longest-tenured signal-caller on the roster, but he’ll contend with FAU transfer Daniel Richardson as the team’s new starter.
Defensive backs Kendall Bohler and Deco Wilson, along with linemen James Ash and Allen Smith, are returning to the Dark Cloud Defense. Nonetheless, the Rattlers will need a few of their new faces to emerge if this group wants to return to their 2023 form where they finished the season as the second-best defense in the nation.
Bragg Memorial has been kind to FAMU, winning 15 straight at home. However, the Rattlers will play their toughest games of the season on the road, at Alabama State, Jackson State, and Prairie View.
New Rivalry In The MEAC?
If you were to ask NC Central head coach Trei Oliver, he would tell you it’s not a thing.
“I don’t think it’s a rivalry. Most times, rivalries are in-state or within close proximity [of one another],” said Oliver.
But recent actions would say the contrary, as it pertains to the last two MEAC champions.
It started at the 2023 MEAC Football Media Day when Oliver referred to Howard’s 2022 conference co-championship celebratory jewelry as “class rings.” Both teams would end the season tied atop the league standings, but the Eagles would go on to Atlanta as the MEAC representative after defeating the Bison 50-21 in 2022.
Fast-forward to Nov. 11, 2023, and the Bison would return the favor, defeating Central 50-20 en route to Howard’s first sole MEAC championship in three decades.
Bison head coach Larry Scott would later coach former NCCU quarterback Davius Richard in the 2024 Allstate HBCU Legacy Bowl. The dual-threat signal-caller would sustain a dislocated ankle on a touchdown run in the first quarter of the contest, leading Oliver to use coarse language in a social media post that has since been taken down.
“I promise he would not have played if I knew that those [expletive] coaches were going to run him! He should never have left the pocket, you want to run hand it off to those All-American backs. Make it make sense,”
The coach would later apologize not for his opinion, but for his language.
It’s safe to say that their Nov. 15 contest in Durham, which will air on ESPNU, will have postseason implications for the MEAC.
Celebration Bowl Date Change
Earlier this summer, ESPN announced that it would be moving the date of the Cricket Celebration Bowl up one week this year to Dec. 14 to avoid viewership competition with the first round of the College Football Playoff and two scheduled NFL matchups.
However, the move now places the de facto HBCU championship game between the MEAC and SWAC league champions one week after the SWAC plays its conference title game. Meanwhile, the MEAC does not play a championship game, giving its champion a three-week reprieve between its final regular-season game and its appearance in Atlanta.
This date change has drawn ire from some SWAC faithful, including its commissioner Dr. Charles McClelland. The following statement was released by the SWAC on the change:
“From a Southwestern Athletic Conference perspective, participating in the Celebration Bowl the week following our championship game will pose additional challenges for our championship team to be at their optimal capacity to perform at the highest level for such a prestigious event. However, we will look to see what, if any, adjustments the Conference Office can make to help our representative have the best opportunity to be successful on the new date and time.”
These sentiments come almost a year after McClelland shared his theory as to why the MEAC has been so dominant in the postseason showcase.
“Our not being able to win the Celebration Bowl is a product of our regular season,” McClelland said of the 12-team league where eight games are played per team (five in divisional play, three non-division games) at last year’s SWAC Media Day. “There are no weeks off, you can’t look ahead, you can’t study who that MEAC winner was because you have to concentrate on the next week, the conference championship game, then you concentrate on the Celebration Bowl.”
“It’s very important, but I think the audience needs to understand the gauntlet that it takes to get to the Celebration Bowl,” he continued. “It’s week in and week out. Our [conference] championship game is really, really, really significant to our schools, and some of the things we’ve seen, a championship in the SWAC is a more important feat than a win for the Celebration Bowl.”
Nevertheless, the current and former head coaches at Florida A&M feel differently about the perceived disadvantages of the conference.
“We could have played the game [a day earlier] if that meant we could play [in the Celebration Bowl] …which team that prepares the best will be the one that wins,” said Willie Simmons after the Rattlers’ 30-26 victory over Howard this past December.
This past July, Coach Colzie would say that the time between the two championship games does not matter if his team is healthy.
