Dearth of HBCU Players

by Donal Ware
boxtorow.com

Another year of the NFL Draft and yet another disappointing outcome for HBCU players. For the second time in four years, not one single HBCU player was drafted. Zero. Zilch. Nada. The teams can draft who they want and it’s not a matter of just drafting players because they played at an HBCU. There is some real talent. The issue is that the players at our schools have now been relegated to the UDFA (undrafted free agent) tracker regularly, yet so much is made of them prior to the draft. There’s the Legacy Bowl, a combine and all-star game for HBCU players. There are all kinds of profiles, specials, and vignettes done on these players. Yet, not a one gets drafted? Three years ago, zero players were drafted. Two years ago, four players were drafted and Troy Vincent, executive vice president of football operations for the NFL, wrote a piece for the Fayetteville Observer, almost bragging about four players being drafted. Then last year, there were just two players drafted. I want to see what Mr. Vincent will write this year. If anything.

And further, the problem is while HBCU players are not being drafted, they are making teams as free agents. In any given year over the last 5-7 years, 30-40 percent of HBCU players that make opening day rosters, were undrafted free agents. As to why players make the team? Call it extra motivation from the players. Call it teams getting a second look. Call it what you want. I call it a travesty.

Look, at this point, we’re beyond writing about the lack of players being drafted. And unlike when Toni Braxton sang, It’s Another Sad Long Song, this will not be another column on the lack of HBCU players being drafted. It’s the same old story. You can read my columns from 2023, 2022, 2021, 2020, etc., etc.

In fairness to the league, it has put some measures in place to generate awareness to HBCU. But this is bigger than HBCU players not being drafted. Did you know that not one play-by-play radio broadcaster for a respective team is an HBCU alum? When I looked at an opening for one of the teams in the league, one of the prerequisites was that you had to have broadcast at a “big school.” Excuse me, but how does one get that kind of experience, when the so-called big schools aren’t hiring us either? Not one of those play-by-play broadcasters is Black either I might add. Very unfortunate. There are no head coaches that are HBCU alums either. Heck, very few if any with HBCU experiences at all. As a matter of fact, the last coach that was an HBCU grad was Leslie Frazier (Alcorn State). While it didn’t end well in Minnesota, he did have some success there and he did an excellent job as a defensive coordinator, more recently with the Buffalo Bills. Other coaches that didn’t do nearly as well as Frazier have since gotten a “second chance.” Let’s not forget that Frazier experienced years of being interviewed just to help satisfy the league’s Rooney Rule. And don’t even get me started on what has happened to Steve Wilks, the former Cardinals and interim Panthers head coach, who had previous HBCU coaching experience.

We do have one general manager in Brad Holmes of the Lions, a North Carolina A&T grad. Since Holmes has come aboard, the Lions, once an abysmal organization, have turned into one of the up and coming franchises. The Lions’ ascent began with Holmes and what was perceived at the time as an unpopular trade, in trading the player that meant everything to the franchise, Matthew Stafford, to the Rams for Jared Goff and a lot of draft capital.

HBCU alums, if given the opportunity, will be successful.

Did you know that the NFL has an “HBCU policy” as part of its operations called NFL and HBCUs? Yet the league doesn’t promote it. In almost 19 years of BOXTOROW, not one executive from the league office has ever been on this program. And in 2010, after three years of BOXTOROW broadcasting from Radio Row and covering the Super Bowl, BOXTOROW was disinvited from covering the Big Game, for reasons that still have not been explained to us even to this day. How many mediums that place an emphasis on HBCUs does it invite or allow to cover the Big Game? The NFL HBCU policy is hollow. It is in fact not a partnership as is advertised. The league has just simply weaseled its way in and attached its name to HBCUs, just like the NBA has with its NBA HBCU Classic (notice NBA is before HBCU instead of perhaps calling the game the HBCU Classic presented by the NBA), and what Major League Baseball has tried to with its HBCU Swingman Classic (at least MLB puts HBCU first in the name).

At the end of the day, these events, which are one-offs, while providing some level of in-the-moment exposure, aren’t really successful in the long-term. It may show to the general public that these leagues are doing something to elevate HBCUs. To me, an HBCU product, a product of HBCU alums, and one who is in this space, it shows virtually nothing.

If the league wants to show that it’s really doing something that is sustaining, make donations to our schools. Endow scholarships. (As Falcons owner Arthur Blank and his foundation have done as well as others. This column is speaking on the league as a whole). Help to upgrade stadiums/facilities.

Otherwise, I’m good with the PR pushes that show real HBCU folks that your efforts are just PR. And the NFL Draft and the lack of HBCU players being drafted, show as much.

Donal Ware has covered HBCU football for over 25 years is the host of the nationally syndicated sports talk radio program BOXTOROW, airing in close to 30 markets across the country and on SiriusXM College Sports Radio and on SiriusXM Channel 142, HBCU.

Dearth of HBCU Players.

Dearth of HBCU Players.