Now that Prairie View A&M’s head coach, Tremaine Jackson, has been mentioned as a possible candidate for the vacant head coaching job at UAB, some may be celebrating the news as progress. On the surface, it feels like validation, a sign that the work being done inside HBCU football is finally being noticed beyond its own borders.
But if you’ve followed this game long enough, you know better. What Jackson’s situation really highlights is a pattern that’s been in motion for decades: PWIs are comfortable hiring Black coaches, just not directly from HBCUs.
The unwritten rule is simple.
If you’ve proven yourself at an HBCU, that’s nice. But before a Power Four or Group of Five athletic director will hand you a whistle, you need to spend a little time inside their system, as a head coach or as an assistant, to show you can play by their rules.
In other words, you have to be validated by them before they’ll believe you’re ready to lead them.
Tremaine Jackson and the Double Standard
None of this is to diminish Tremaine Jackson or question what he’s earned. His coaching resume stands on its own.
Before taking over at Prairie View, he was a head coach at Division II programs Colorado Mesa and Valdosta State, building his reputation as an authoritarian, detail-oriented leader. At Prairie View, he’s quietly turned the Panthers into a legitimate SWAC contender, blending a disciplined defensive identity with an ability to recruit players who buy into something bigger than themselves.
So the fact that Jackson’s name is now circulating for FBS opportunities — possibly at UAB — is understandable and, frankly, well deserved. His success speaks to what can happen when opportunity meets preparation.
But even as we celebrate that progress, his situation also exposes a frustrating reality: for every Tremaine Jackson being considered, there are several other HBCU coaches who have accomplished just as much, if not more, and can’t even get a courtesy call.
This pattern isn’t about wins and losses. It’s about where those wins happen and who the gatekeepers believe is qualified to lead at the next level.
The Overlooked Winners
Take Chennis Berry, now the head coach at South Carolina State. Before landing there in 2024, Berry completely transformed Benedict College, a Division II program that had long been an afterthought.
Under Berry’s leadership, Benedict became a national playoff team in 2022 and 2023. His success earned him the job at South Carolina State, where in his first year, he led the Bulldogs to the 2024 Celebration Bowl before losing to Jackson State.
That kind of turnaround should place a coach squarely on the national radar. However, as it stands, no major FBS program seems eager to offer Berry an opportunity.
Then there’s Trei Oliver at North Carolina Central. Since taking over in Durham, Oliver has built a model of consistency. He led NCCU to the Celebration Bowl championship in 2022, posted an 8–3 record in 2024, and has his team positioned once again as a contender for the MEAC crown this season. He wins, he develops, and he graduates his players. But his phone isn’t ringing either.
And of course, there’s T.C. Taylor at Jackson State. When Deion Sanders left for Colorado, many assumed the Tigers would fall off the national map. Instead, Taylor has kept the program steady and respected. He’s won games, maintained order, and proven that JSU’s success wasn’t just a celebrity-driven phenomenon. Still, no FBS programs are beating down his door either.
It needs to be understood that Deion Sanders doesn’t even fit this conversation. His name recognition and NFL pedigree made him an outlier, not a precedent. The opportunities that come from celebrity exposure aren’t the same as those earned through years of grinding inside a system that often overlooks you.
The same applies to Eddie George, who left Tennessee State for the head-coaching job at Bowling Green. Like Sanders, George’s Hall-of-Fame resume and national profile gave him access that most coaches simply don’t have. His time at Tennessee State showed growth and results, but his move wasn’t about the system changing; it was about the system making room for another name it already knew.
Both Sanders and George deserve credit for what they accomplished. However, their stories also remind us that the path from HBCU to PWI remains open only to those who already have celebrity-level credibility or to those who are not Black. Former Alcorn State head coach Jay Hopson, who is white, left the school in 2016 to become the head football coach at Southern Miss, where he coached for 4 seasons.
For the everyday coach — the Chennis Berrys, Trei Olivers, or T.C. Taylors of the world — the doors still don’t open the same way. The issue here isn’t personality. It’s perception.
Receipts: The Pattern Nobody Wants to Admit
To understand how systemic this is, consider what a couple of coaches who did make it to FBS head coaching jobs had to endure.
Jerry Mack built a winner at North Carolina Central. Under his leadership, NCCU became a force in the MEAC and earned a berth in the 2016 Celebration Bowl before losing to Grambling State.
By any standard, that’s success. But it wasn’t enough. Mack couldn’t jump directly from HBCU head coach to FBS head coach. Instead, he had to leave NCCU as its head coach to become an assistant at Rice and then as a running backs coach at Tennessee, before he became the running backs coach for the Jacksonville Jaguars of the NFL.
It was only after passing through those PWI and NFL checkpoints that he finally earned the opportunity to lead Kennesaw State, where, ironically, he’s now proving the same thing he’d already proven years ago: He’s a winning coach. Kennesaw State is currently 4-2 and riding a 4-game winning streak.
The same thing happened with Willie Simmons. He turned Prairie View A&M into a SWAC contender, then took Florida A&M to a conference title and a Celebration Bowl victory in 2023. Yet no major PWI saw him as ready to lead. Simmons left FAMU and accepted an assistant role at Duke for a season before he got the nod to become head coach at FIU.
The Invisible Rulebook
There’s an invisible rulebook at play in college football hiring.
It’s not written anywhere, but you can see it in how athletic directors talk behind closed doors. They use words like “readiness” and “fit” — terms that sound objective but function as filters.
When a PWI athletic director says, “We’re looking for someone who’s coached at this level,” what they’re really saying is, “We need someone we already know.” It’s comfort over courage.
Meanwhile, HBCU coaches operate in the exact kind of adversity that big-money programs claim to admire — winning despite limited budgets, old facilities, and scarce resources.
The irony is that what HBCU coaches do daily — motivate, innovate, and overachieve — is precisely what struggling FBS programs say they’re looking for. But when the time comes to make a move, the thought of considering an HBCU coach suddenly needs a second opinion.
The problem isn’t talent. The problem is trust.
There’s an unspoken but deeply ingrained belief that the HBCU level is a step below, not just in funding or exposure, but in legitimacy.
PWIs will recruit Black players from HBCUs through the transfer portal, hire HBCU assistants to diversify their staff, and even praise HBCU culture during homecoming season. But when it’s time to hand over the keys to the program, they suddenly get selective about “experience.”
What they’re really saying is that success achieved in a Black-led space doesn’t count the same.
And that’s the heart of the issue.
A Call for Courage
College athletics loves to celebrate diversity when it’s convenient. But real diversity isn’t just about who’s on the field. It’s about who’s making the decisions on the sideline and in the athletic director’s suite.
If a Power Four or Group of Five athletic department truly wants to demonstrate inclusion, it needs to start where the real accountability lies: in hiring. Stop waiting for HBCU coaches to “prove themselves” by serving as assistants in your system. Stop pretending that a year in a PWI locker room somehow outweighs years of building men, programs, and communities at HBCUs.
If you can win with less, you can win with more.
If you can build culture without a million-dollar budget, you can manage one with it.
And if you can command respect in an environment built on legacy and expectation, you can lead anywhere.
What’s missing isn’t talent, it’s courage.
Until PWIs are willing to trust the excellence already proven at HBCUs, we’ll keep mistaking proximity for progress. And every time another coach has to step backward to move forward, we’ll be reminded that this game, as proud as it is, still has a long way to go.
That is good if whenever any coach can get a nice pay raise for doing a good job, but would be very nice to where going to a PWI i step down rather than a step up. What I mean it would be nice if we focus on making HBCU the very best, where we get business to invest in BCU, we get players to buy into attending HBCU. Where we have nice facilities and top tier athletes instead of feeling like we have to validate by PWI.