Just
five months into her tenure with Florida A&M’s women’s bowling team, Capri
Howard must hope the worst is behind her. The beginning couldn’t be much
rockier for a first-year head coach.
Howard
replaced former coach Karen Brown, who retired last year after 11 seasons with the Rattlers. The
program was rocked last month when former FAMU bowler Shamoria Johnson said she
was kicked off
the team for prioritizing her final exams over a scheduled practice. Three
other bowlers left the team in protest of Howard’s decision, which was backed
by athletic director Tiffani-Dawn Sykes.
“In December 2023, Coach Howard dismissed a student-athlete from the bowling team for reasons supported by NCAA Bylaws,” Sykes said in a statement. “Though it’s always challenging to see our student-athletes dismissed, I support the decision by Coach Howard as the proper procedures were taken before the dismissal.”
Scott McKenzie just expected to be recognized for longevity during
a Juniata College event last April.
“I showed because my 20th anniversary was during the
pandemic and they didn’t have the celebration then,” says McKenzie, Juniata’s associate
athletic director for athletic operations since July 2000. “They started
talking about Joanne Krugh and then President Troha put my name and picture on
the screen.
“My first thought was: What the hell am I doing up there?”
With only 32 teams in the NFL, aspiring front-office
professionals can’t be choosy when an opportunity arises. That’s especially true
for Black job seekers, who often only get a shot with fixer-upper franchises like the Detroit Lions.
But when you graduate from an HBCU and work the counter at
Enterprise Rent-A-Car while trying to launch your career, the prospect of shepherding
a perennial loser doesn’t faze you. If all that’s required for a turnaround is
smarts, hard work and a little good fortune, you like your chances. Where do we
sign?
A laughingstock in 2021, the Lions chose Brad Holmes as their executive vice-president and general manager. He became the league’s third Black GM at the time, rewarded for 18 years of service with the St. Louis/Los Angeles Rams. Three years into the job, with Detroit on the brink of its first Super Bowl, it’s safe to say Holmes is crushing it.
Howard
basketball players Seth Towns and Joshua Strong don’t have much in common at
first glance.
Towns
is a 6-foot-9 forward who was a highly recruited prep player out of Columbus,
Ohio. He first attended Harvard, where as a sophomore he was Ivy League Player of
the Year and AP All-America honorable mention.
Strong, from Brooklyn Park, Minnesota, is a 6-foot guard who wound up at Division II Minnesota-Duluth. He was sixth man as a freshman before starting 14 of 36 games as a sophomore, when his team advanced to the NCAA Elite 8.
Like clockwork and without fail, as surely sunset follows
sunrise, each Martin Luther King Day features mass misappropriation from disingenuous
or ignorant white folks.
They cherry-pick his message to find the most palatable, most
nonthreatening quotes and post them on social media like Oklahoma Gov. Kevin
Still, who was kicked off the Tulsa Race Massacre commission in 2021 for signing
a bill that outlawed teaching “critical race theory” in public schools.
“Dr. King’s dream was the American Dream – we’re one nation, under God, with liberty and justice for all,” Stitt tweeted Monday. “He knew that greatness was determined by the content of our character and merit, not skin color or background. MLK’s legacy is forever engraved in history.”
Miami University in Oxford, Ohio, is nicknamed the “Cradle of Coaches” for producing legends like Woody
Hayes, Bo Schembechler, Paul Brown, and other highly successful football
coaches.
Now it’s apparent that the NFL’s Houston Oilers were a crib
for future HBCU coaches.
Texas Southern ended a long, circuitous search on Friday when it named Cris Dishman as its new head football coach. He’ll see two familiar faces at the next coaches’ meeting in the Southwestern Athletic Conference: Prairie View A&M’s Bubba McDowell and Alabama State’s Eddie Robinson Jr.
Having quarterbacked the Baltimore Ravens to 13 wins in 16
games and homefield advantage throughout the NFL playoffs, Lamar Jackson rested
his case, sitting out Sunday’s season finale against Pittsburgh.
Baltimore had nothing to gain as the AFC’s top seed and
Jackson had nothing to lose as the league’s presumptive Most Valuable Player. If
voters were uncertain before his last game, against Miami, he nailed the closing argument, throwing for 321 yards and five
touchdowns with a perfect passer rating.
Jackson turned 27 on Sunday, but validation never gets old.
Entering
Saturday’s doubleheader at Lee E. Williams Athletics and Assembly Center, the Jackson
State men’s and women’s basketball teams hadn’t experienced home games on the same
day since Feb. 27, when each squad knocked off Arkansas-Pine Bluff.
Finally
playing back-to-back games on campus after that long hiatus, the Tigers registered
another pair of victories, this time against Alcorn State’s men’s and women’s
teams.
JSU’s women’s team was coming off eight consecutive road games – the last five defeats against No. 11 Kansas State, Oregon State, Mississippi State, Miami and No. 10 Texas. But the Tigers had no problem in opening Southwestern Athletic Conference play, beginning pursuit of a fifth straight league title by routing the Braves, 74-46, on HBCU GO
Drill sergeants and football coaches have enjoyed license to
address their charges in a manner that’s unprofessional and unacceptable outside
the military and sports.
Soldiers might risk an insubordination charge if they respond
with the same tone and tenor, and perhaps follow with lefts and rights. But NFL
quarterbacks with multiple Super Bowls and Pro Bowls to their credit have no
excuse for holding fire if a coach berates them during games while the camera
rolls. Heat-of-the-moment arguments in competitive sports don’t have to be
one-sided shouting matches, and respect should run in both directions between
labor and management.
That wasn’t the case three weeks ago when Denver Broncos coach Sean Payton got in the face of quarterback Russell Wilson during a blowout loss against Detroit. The 13-second video of Payton yelling and gesticulating – while Wilson stands passively with hands on hips – told us everything we need to know about their shotgun relationship.
A young, gifted and talented Black professional has left one
of our own institutions to work at a predominantly white one. The big story
last year was Deion “Coach Prime” Sanders relocating from Jackson State to
Colorado. Florida A&M experienced a similar loss on Monday when head
football coach Willie Simmons resigned to join the staff at Duke.
Simmons enjoyed tremendous success in his six years at FAMU, where he posted a 45-13 record that was capped this season with the Southwestern Athletic Conference championship and the HBCU national title via a Celebration Bowl victory. He proved himself previously by going 21-11 during three years at Prairie View A&M. Clearly among the nation’s best young coaches, he could’ve run FAMU program for decades and seen his statue erected, becoming a legendary lifer like Grambling State’s Eddie Robinson (56 years) and FAMU’s Jake Gaither (25 years).
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