The Howard Bison college basketball program has been pretty darn successful under head coach Kenny Blakeney. That included earning a trip to the NCAA Tournament a season ago.
This is no minor accomplishment for the small-school HBCU program.
Unfortunately, the economics of today’s amateur sports world under the guise of Name, Image, Likeness (NIL) makes it nearly impossible for the MEAC program to be successful at a national level.
Recruits and transfers getting six-figure deals. Big-time programs creating super conferences as a way to impact their bottom line. Meanwhile, the small schools are left out.
Blakeney and the Howard Bison are now looking to do something about this. It could change the dynamics of college athletics as we now it.
Related: Baylor Bears Troll College Football Purists With ‘We Pay Players’ T-Shirts
Howard Bison Selling Part Of Program To Equity Firm For $100 Million
Blakeney spoke to The Washington Post just recently about this eye-opening new plan. The explanation actually made some sense.
“College athletics is full-fledged business now. The whole idea is to not get left behind. It’s, ‘How do we include ourselves in this?’ I don’t want to have a two-tiered system where we’re not able to compete for the NCAA tournament or the national championship,” Blakeney said.
“And from what I’m hearing right now, that is a real possibility, that there’s going to be an NCAA tournament that isn’t going to include everyone else, it’s just going to include those Power Four [conference] universities and maybe the Big East. That’s not what I signed up for.”
As other big-time programs use boosters and other means to fund themselves, Howard simply is not in the same situation. As a small-school and an historically black college, the boosters are not necessarily there at the same level as programs such as Duke and North Carolina.
For Blakeney, this could be all about the survival of the program.
“The main thrust, though, is that Blakeney needs that initial $100 million to upgrade Howard’s arena and roster,” Jesse Dougherty of The Post writes. “From there, he would want Howard to go independent, allowing it to find its own television deal (think Notre Dame) or join a bigger conference as an affiliate school (think the Big East, which Blakeney mentions throughout his written proposal).”
Welcome to the new “amateur athletics.” It’s not what it used to be. It’s now about money and survival of the fittest. This new idea adds a completely different layer to the debate.
But who can blame Howard at this point? Not us.