![]() ![]() (Damola Akintunde for The Assembly) The North Carolina A&T Blue & Gold Marching Machine prepare to perform during the pre-game show for the Duke’s Mayo Classic. (Damola Akintunde for The Assembly) North Carolina A&T’s mascot, Aggie Dog, celebrates. A&T makes the first touchdown of the game during the Duke’s Mayo Classic football game against North Carolina Central University on Saturday, September 3, 2022. That game featured A&T and North Carolina Central University at Charlotte’s Bank of America Stadium. This invitation-only, pre-game gathering of some of A&T’s most significant athletic financial supporters took place in a private club, just a few hours before the renewal of the Aggie-Eagle Classic. The euphonious sound of Maze, featuring Frankie Beverly, poured out of the speakers as revelers, clad in gold and Aggie blue, partook in tailgating fare and the post-pandemic simple joy of being together on Labor Day weekend. When A&T announced it was leaving the historically Black conference, Cohen, the 5-foot-6-inch bolt of lightning who went on to play for the NFL’s Chicago Bears, tweeted, “A&T hurt the culture with that move.” “The ties with other Black schools, including the ones in their own state, won’t necessarily be severed, but they will be stretched.” ![]() “All of that won’t necessarily translate with their brethren, and the culture clash will be noticeable, in the stands, at tailgates and elsewhere,” wrote David Steele, who has written two books about activism by Black athletes. When A&T bolted the MEAC, the website Andscape, which covers Black colleges, noted the university’s deep roots in HBCU sports and culture. The move by A&T illustrates what can be gained and lost when an historically Black institution merges into the broader, whiter world. It’d be difficult to find two universities more culturally different. 29, A&T will play Campbell, the Baptist university in rural Buies Creek, North Carolina. To play in a new conference, A&T has dropped many of its HBCU football rivals, such as Delaware State, Howard, and Morgan State.Ī&T’s homecoming, known to alums as The Greatest Homecoming on Earth, has long been a huge social event, bringing $10 million in economic impact to the city of Greensboro as the Aggies took on another Black college. “Our student-athletes can compete at a higher level, and we can continue our pursuit of R1 status.”īut in this calculated play for the big time, some alums feel the university is turning its back on its Black college past. “The Colonial league has several of the doctoral research universities with R1,” Hilda Pinnix-Ragland, the A&T grad and corporate executive who chairs the university’s Board of Trustees, told The Assembly. ![]() Colonial members include Elon, William & Mary, Delaware, and UNC Wilmington. A&T isn’t just trying to play in a higher sports league it wants to compete in a higher academic league. The university is currently a Research 2, or R2, school-a reflection of factors like doctoral degrees conferred and research spending. Sports are just part of A&T’s motivation. Hampton University, a private HBCU in Virginia, joined the Colonial Athletic Association in July. Then in February, A&T said it would join the Colonial Athletic Association, another conference of predominantly white schools that ranks higher in the pecking order of college sports. Last year, the university left the Mid-Eastern Athletic Conference, an association of historically Black schools that it helped create more than 50 years ago, to join the Big South, a conference of historically white schools. Since the landmark 2015 victory, A&T’s ambitions have risen. Sports could be a useful plank in advancing A&T’s plan to reach a higher academic station. More student applications gave them a deeper reservoir of prospects. The leaders of A&T, the largest HBCU in the country with 13,500 students, quickly realized the academic benefits of sports success. Applications to A&T have doubled since 2015 to more than 30,000 this year. Winning that inaugural Celebration Bowl, and in the process claiming the Black College Football National Championship, sent applications to A&T soaring the following year, a trend that continued as the Aggies won three more Black national titles in football. In December 2015, a crowd of 35,000 in the Georgia Dome and a national television audience watched as a diminutive North Carolina A&T State University football player named Tarik Cohen ran for three long touchdowns against Alcorn State, including the game-winner as the clock wound down. ![]()
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |