Two of the HBCU community’s most renowned institutions made headlines last week for controversial reasons.
Howard University announced a policy that forbids the school’s sports teams from kneeling during the national anthem, while first-year Florida A&M men’s basketball coach Charlie Ward sat in on that scam of a college sports roundtable hosted by President Donald Trump.
As much as we’ve seen that Trump and his cronies do not care about the plight of anyone less fortunate or different, it’s insanely short-sighted for institutions to continue to capitulate to a person who has more mentions in the Jeffrey Epstein files than DJ Khaled has on his own songs.
Howard’s stance was misguided
When Howard’s women’s basketball team kneeled for the national anthem before a game with Army this season, the outrage (fake as it is) must have reached the HU administration. The school later installed a “stand or go back in the locker room” policy.
Why?
Because the university was given a $90-million-dollar grant by the Air Force to serve as a University Affiliated Research Center. If the Army is upset and a major chunk of your money comes from another branch, well, there you go.
Ward, in the middle of leading Florida A&M to a No. 2 seed in the SWAC basketball tournament, made time to fly to D.C. and sit in a room with chronic whiners like Nick Saban. He quit coaching college football rather than allow players autonomy. Trump himself — the Complainer-in-Chief — swears he will write an executive order that can fix college sports.
Ward then appeared on Fox News — FOX NEWS — to say that the money from Power 4 schools should trickle down to the rest of the NCAA’s member institutions.
Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis: “This is out of whack.”
He then cites players asking coaches for more money and threatening to transfer as issues in the sports. pic.twitter.com/0JXuU9qjPY
— Ross Dellenger (@RossDellenger) March 6, 2026
If we’ve learned anything from the United States in the last 250 years, at minimum, not a damn thing is trickling down anywhere. As the son of FAMU Rattlers, Ward should understand that the struggles his parents faced back in the day have not changed for HBCUs or Black people in general.
This is not what HBCU leaders should be doing
Fair as the point may be that plenty of HBCUs’ hands are tied because of local, state, and federal funding, there’s still something poignantly depressing about how quickly our schools and PWIs are rolling over.
The basis of this country’s birth is revolution. Colonists tripped out over the price of tea and declared independence.
When are we going to realize we’ve been taxed far too much for far too long and do something about it?
I can tell you this: making your kids stand up for an anthem that was never meant for them, or having a coach attend a meeting that his school will never benefit from, is not what HBCUs should be doing.
