As the NCAA is now a free-agent market, all college athletics programs are adjusting to the change, and HBCU football is no different.
At Tuesday’s SWAC Media Day event in Birmingham, Alabama, several coaches provided insights on how Name Image and Likeness (NIL) rules and the transfer portal have changed their recruiting approaches or not changed them at all.
“I’m old school, but understand how to adjust to change,” Southern head coach Terence Graves explained. “We’re always going to recruit the best high school players, then junior college players, and we’ll use the transfer portal as a plug-and-play deal. Your foundation’s always got to be HS/JC/Transfer. That’s always been the formula for FCS anyway, so it’s not a big transition.”
Coaches like Florida A&M’s James Colzie and Jackson State’s T.C. Taylor say their respective programs’ success speaks for itself.
“It was a little bit easier to recruit when you go 12-1 and winning the championships we’ve won,” Colzie said of the defending Celebration Bowl champion Rattlers’ strategy. “Our brand, the FAMU brand, we’ve had some battles with some other universities, but we’ve won most of them because of the success we’ve had in the past and what we’re looking to build in the future.”
Taylor, heading into his second season at Jackson State, says, “When we recruit these young men, we tell them you have to sell yourself as well, and you do that by going out and playing good football. It’s up to our coaches to go out here and sell the program as well. We recruit the parents also. We want them to know we’ll do our best job to get their young man that degree and get them to the next level as well.”
First-year Alcorn State head coach Cedric Thomas is confident in the school’s NIL collective but plans to take care of home first.
“For us, you’ve got to earn it. I don’t want to give kids financial gains if they haven’t done anything for the program,” Thomas said. “I want to take care of the guys in-house, guys who’ve paved the way for four years. We’re going to recruit transfer portal guys who are the right fit for us.”
Alabama A&M’s Connell Maynor has a pragmatic thought when it comes to the big business of college sports, one that is likely shared by more than a few coaches at various sports at all collegiate levels.
“It’s problematic because the guys who are good enough to go play at the Power 5s, they’re getting paid,” Maynor said. “If we’re competing for one of those guys, they’re going to ask ‘what can you give us?’ We don’t have the NIL deals. We don’t have the collectives. They’re only interested in teams that can pay them. I can’t blame them – it’s free agency. Everybody’s free, so of course, they’re going to try to get as much as they can for themselves and their families. It’s tough, but it is what it is.”
