Jackson State Better Off After Sanders Departure
Deion Sanders went from Jackson State’s “Thee I love” to Colorado’s “Me I love.”
The thing about a spotlight is that it illuminates all of the great things about you but it also puts a glare on all of your blemishes. For the past two years, Jackson State University has reaped the benefits of being in the national spotlight due to the hiring of NFL Hall of Famer Deion Sanders and his “Prime Time” personality that rubs some people the wrong way as head football coach. When Sanders announced he was leaving JSU for the job at the University of Colorado this past weekend, that same spotlight JSU enjoyed was turned on to show what they didn’t have to keep Sanders in the fold.
The initial reactions to the news in the Black community was one of shock to many, no surprise to others and a huge chunk of ignorant speculation about Sanders and what he had done during his tenure at JSU. When Sanders got to Jackson State, the team didn’t have a practice field worth a damn. When it rained hard, the field was useless. The locker room was awful, the training facilities were subpar and most importantly, the football team was less popular than the band (Sonic Boom of the South). JSU is no different than many other HBCU’s for that matter, who for a variety of reasons are struggling to properly fund their athletic departments. HBCU’s must make up their minds: are you going to continue to treat your athletics as an afterthought and care more about halftime as being showtime? Or are you going to use D-I college athletics like every other school; to fund the needs of your university, increase student and alumni morale and market your school?
There is no excuse for the current state of athletics at D-1 HBCU’s. However there are several acute reasons for the sad state of affairs, which can be fixed. They are as follows:
1. Incompetent administrators
2. Lack of financial contributions to endowments.
3. A culture where athletics doesn’t matter.
4. Individual state’s historical racist practices of underfunding HBCU’s on purpose.
The latter will be the toughest thing to change, the first the easiest. Several public HBCU’s in recent years have found success by suing individual states for monies owed to them going back decades. One of the more recent prominent cases involved Morgan State, Bowie State, Coppin State and University of Maryland Eastern Shore, who in 2021 received $577 million as a result of a settlement from a years-long legal battle with the State of Maryland over underfunding the four HBCU schools. Earlier this year, students at Florida A&M filed suit against the state for underfunding their school. In 2001, Jackson State, Alcorn State and Mississippi Valley State won a $500 million settlement from the state for decades of discrimination in funding. JSU spent the monies, some $141.8 million to open an engineering school, a public health school, a college of public service, and to establish the “Provost’s Library and Scholarship Pool,” according to an article last year in Mississippi Today. None of the money went to its athletic programs or to improve sports infrastructure.
HBCU administrators must realize the importance of athletics for the financial well-being to their campuses. Too often administrators focus on academics and completely ignore athletics in a sign of the ignorance to the role sports plays at a D-1 school. Alabama is not the best academic institution in the country by far, ranked 137th by U.S. World Report. However, their athletic programs, led by their football team, is funding infrastructure, scholarships and salaries like you could not imagine. Texas A&M, another SEC southern school, who mostly has Black students enrolled just to play in their money generating sports, has a football stadium that seats over 100,000 and has a campus that rivals a small city. Add to those revenue streams sales of school athletic paraphernalia and you got yourself a golden goose that keeps on giving every year.
HBCU’s are not even close to being on par when it comes to endowments. A recent article by journalist Denise Clay-Murray published on BET.com, shows a ratio of $100 to $1 as the gap between endowment funds at Primary White Institution’s (PWI) to HBCU’s. Go on social media and you will see Black people all the time showing pride in their HBCU’s, as they should. Ask them privately how much money they have given back since they graduated and its crickets. According to JSU President Thomas K. Hudson, only 13% of JSU alums have given back to the school. We have to stop just TAKING from our institutions and not GIVING to them. You don’t have to be a millionaire to be a donor. Everyday regular graduates, who work as teachers, electricians, scientists, accountants or in any other field can be donors and make a huge difference. Monetary gifts of say $100 from 1,000 alumni equals $100,000. In the last 20 years, JSU has had an average enrollment around 7,000 students per year. That is 140,000 alumni who if they all gave a yearly gift of $100 you would have $14 million per year going to endowment fund. Throw in contributions by big-time donors, corporations, TV contracts, advertising and other marketing endeavors and you got yourself a legit D-1 program.
Through sheer will power, his own money, personal connections and the backing of those at JSU “who get it,” Sanders was able to elevate Jackson State to the national conversation. Last month, ESPN’s Gameday broadcasted live from Jackson State, the first time in history an HBCU campus had been featured on the premiere college football show. Just Sanders being there had a $30 million economic impact on the city of Jackson. Sanders also brought national attention to the water crisis Jackson, Mississippi is currently experiencing. He called for a no-violence weekend when JSU was playing against a rival and has consistently called out the mayor of Jackson and the governor of Mississippi on issues crucial to the city’s majority Black residents. That wasn’t in his contract to do but he did it anyway.
“Everybody knows me. I ride around the hood, and I know all the OG’s in the city. I have talked to them, and I’ve spoken to many of them, and we really need to make a valued effort to stop the violence in Jackson,” said Sanders during a press conference last October after there were several shootings in Jackson.
Sanders was the primer. What JSU and other HBCU’s do after his departure is now the waters that must be navigated in which we are currently deployed. HBCU’s must make up their minds: are you going to continue to treat your athletics as an afterthought and care more about halftime as being showtime? Or are you going to use Division I college athletics like every other school, to fund the needs of your university? It is a cultural mindset that must change in order for progress to be made.
Alabama’s Crimson Tide generate $61 million a year from its football program alone, according to Sports Illustrated. The Jackson State University total endowment is only $60 million, according to the school.
The top ranked academic HBCU in the nation is Howard University coming in at 89th overall, according to U.S. News and World Report. That is higher than Alabama. It is no coincidence that Howard is also the HBCU with the largest endowment coming it at whopping $795 million.
So then one must ask the question why is Howard’s academic and athletic facilities in such horrible conditions. Last year, students at Howard had several organized protests to bring light to conditions at the school, where dorms were infested with rodents and roaches and there was mold growing in some places, making some students ill.
Why is a school like Howard, who has a top-notch law and medical school not investing more in its athletic programs or hell the infrastructure itself apparently with the money they do have? Investing in athletic infrastructure gets you the best coaches, and best recruits, so you can make it to bowl games and the NCAA tournament in basketball where you can generate vast amounts of revenue for your institution.
The #5 money generating NCAA sport is track and field, according to Yahoo Finance. The #2 university in the country in track and field in terms of money generating is Howard at over $4 million a year, according to collegefactual.com . North Carolina A&T also has a very strong track and field program and similar to Howard, offers academic programs where their graduates will be making six figure salaries right out of school in fields like engineering and technology. Even if their athletic programs are currently in the red a bit, according to collegefactual.com, A&T is on the right path with its recent move to the Colonial Athletic Association conference along with fellow HBCU Hampton. If A&T invests more in its athletics it has a change to breakout of the pack of HBCU’s to compete with PWI’s in both the academic and athletic genres.
Some people have incorrectly labeled Sanders as an opportunist. Sanders donated half of his own salary towards the facilities upgrades at Jackson State. How many of you would donate a portion of your salary towards your employer’s facilities? I didn’t think so. The man did all he could do with what he was working with and has every right to better his life financially and career wise.
Did Sanders behave like an A-hole in his final hours at JSU? Absolutely. He ghosted the media, something he has done before. During the SWAC awards presentation on the field, he can be seen on video posted on Facebook trying to rush the process so he could get on a jet and fly to Colorado. Is going into your new job and telling young men they should “enter the transfer portal,” because you are bringing in some other players like he did at Colorado the right way to start a relationship? Again, absolutely not. It wreaks of arrogance, which is the opposite of humility, which according to Christianity, something Sanders proclaims daily, probably shouldn’t be done. The current Colorado players didn’t deserve that, but this is Coach Prime’s style like it or not. Did Sanders pimp the Black culture and religion during his time at JSU? Yes, he did in my opinion. And this makes him different from a military recruiter or big-time college football coach in what way exactly? They do and say whatever they need to do to close the deal. I have a friend whose brother was being recruited by a big time school. When my friend was hospitalized, guess who showed up to “check on her?” Yep, the coach who was recruiting her brother. When her brother chose another school, the coach mysteriously stopped coming by to “check on her.”
Sanders banned a local reporter in Jackson from covering the team because he didn’t like a line of questioning. He preferred the national media as opposed to local reporters, who were going to ask him tough questions. It was unprofessional and much of that blame should also go towards JSU administrators for allowing him to do it.
So, how are people shocked by Sanders behavior and decision at this point is something that still boggles the mind. This is what you get when you hire someone like Coach Prime. This is big time college athletics where few of the characters are likeable creatures. However, they bring “the pork back home.” JSU has a lot to be grateful for the past two years. Thank you Coach Prime for putting your money where your mouth is…or should I say was. I hope you can continue to inspire and teach young Black men wherever your contract, or in your words, “where God wants you to be.”