Edward Waters University President A. Zachary Faison Jr. said the school will no longer schedule Division I football opponents unless the financial and competitive terms make sense for the Tigers.
Faison made the announcement hours after Edward Waters suffered a 66-14 loss to Jackson State on Saturday night in Jackson, Mississippi.
Despite the lopsided defeat, Faison praised Edward Waters’ players for continuing to compete against the defending HBCU power.
“I am proud of you. You fought. You did not quit,” Faison wrote in a statement posted to X. “That resolve reflects what our coaches and athletics leadership have built here, and I saw it clearly.”
Faison also congratulated Jackson State coach T.C. Taylor and the Tigers, acknowledging that Jackson State was the better team.
But he said the responsibility for putting Edward Waters in that position belongs to him.
“I owe you an apology, because the position we placed you in Saturday was not your doing and it was not your coaches’,” Faison wrote. “The decision was mine, and I own it.”
According to Faison, Edward Waters received a $65,000 guarantee for the game, while travel and related expenses totaled approximately $30,000 to $35,000. That left the university with roughly $30,000.
Faison said that return was not enough to justify the demands of playing an FCS opponent.
“The economics do not work,” he wrote.
He also pointed to the scholarship disparity between the programs. Edward Waters had 29 funded scholarships, according to Faison, compared with the NCAA FCS limit of 63. Division II programs have a maximum of 36 football scholarships.
To Our Student Athletes, Coaches, Athletics Administrators, and Supporters of Edward Waters University Athletics:
First, to the young men who took the field Saturday afternoon at Jackson State: I am proud of you. You fought. You did not quit. Down after down, in a setting built…
— A. Zachary Faison, Jr. (@MillennialPrez1) September 6, 2026
“When we put 29 funded scholarships on the field against an FCS limit of 63, we are not being measured. We are being mismeasured,” Faison wrote.
Faison said large losses can also create challenges during recruiting, when prospective players may interpret a scoreboard as evidence that a Division I program is superior to a Division II program.
“It is not superior. It is different,” he wrote. “Superior and different are not synonyms.”
Faison contrasted Edward Waters’ $65,000 guarantee with the substantially larger payments received by HBCU Division I programs for games against Power Four opponents. He cited reported 2026 guarantees including $740,000 for Florida A&M at Miami, $600,000 for Morgan State at Arizona State and $600,000 for Tennessee State at Georgia.
Moving forward, Faison established a minimum financial standard. Edward Waters will not consider a Division I game that nets less than $100,000 after travel and related expenses.
Faison said the Tigers will focus on Division II competition, including programs from the CIAA, SIAC, Conference Carolinas and Gulf South Conference.
“We will schedule where we belong and where we can win,” he wrote.
Faison acknowledged that he supported the Jackson State game when it was scheduled two years ago. He now accepts responsibility for changing the approach.
“Saturday it was arguably diminished by an administrative decision I made, and I am not going to keep making it,” he wrote.
