Student-athlete ideal? Black college football seems to fit Bill
Bill Cosby -- yes, that Bill Cosby -- wants to take you back in time. Come along. It'll only take a minute.
It's the 1940s in Washington. The owner of the Redskins, George Preston Marshall, doesn't allow blacks on the team. So some instead choose to follow black college football, and every Thanksgiving Day focus on a historic rivalry: Howard University versus Lincoln University.
|
|
| Cosby played five sports in high school, earned a track scholarship to Temple and played college football. (US Presswire) |
"The town belonged to the graduates from Howard and Lincoln," Cosby said in a telephone interview. "It was the game. It was a rivalry but there was no hatred. There was respect for the schools, the tradition, and each other."
Fast forward to now, specifically, Sept. 10, when Howard University will play Morehouse College in the inaugural AT&T Nation's Football Classic. Howard and Morehouse have been playing each other in football for 88 years. For people like Cosby and many others -- young and old, wealthy and blue collar -- this game has deep meaning, just as Howard and Lincoln once did.
To Cosby, Howard and Morehouse are examples of what's right with college athletics, and how historically black colleges and universities, unlike many of the top football factories, are actually closer to the ideal of what a student-athlete is supposed to be. The model these programs (called, as a group, HBCUs) set isn't without its own flaws and scandals, but they seem to have gotten a better grip on what has become a shamelessly corrupt system.
"The Ohio State stuff is out there and it sort of makes my point," Cosby said. "The problem with the kids who go to these schools that emphasize football over education is that the kids don't make the school fulfill its end of the contract.
"Player and school basically have a contractual agreement. Playing football pays for the degree, but guys on that level aren't getting the degree. They don't take from the school but the school takes from them."
The money that has both elevated and hurt major college football never came into play with black college football. Thus the HBCUs, free of the massive cash taint, were able to stick to their original mission.
In effect the HBCUs -- and many of the lower-tier football programs -- are actually doing what the NCAA intends.
|
|
| To Cosby, HBCU's like Southern University and Tennessee State (pictured above) are closer to the student-athlete ideal. (US Presswire) |
Again, it's not a perfect system, but look around major college football, and the abundance of scandals is frightening. The latest being the miserable skullduggery at Miami.
The HBCUs know they can't compete with the big-time football programs but they really don't care. "Can one of those schools like Howard beat Oklahoma?" Cosby asked. "No." Then he paused: "But our band would tear them apart." Laughter.
Cosby remains one of the most recognizable and intelligent personalities in a generation. His doctoral research for the University of Massachusetts was a dissertation called, "An Integration of the Visual Media Via Fat Albert And The Cosby Kids Into the Elementary School Curriculum as a Teaching Aid and Vehicle to Achieve Increased Learning." He has been an actor, activist and social critic, but one of his biggest loves has always been sports.
In high school, Cosby played five sports. He earned a track scholarship to Temple and also played football. Since then, Cosby has spoken extensively about college athletics and has studied many aspects of how the machinery works.
"I'm not saying some of the guys who play at Howard or other HBCUs won't go into the pros," Cosby said. "They will and have done that. What I'm saying is they will have had a college experience where they got the most out of their school."
Cosby was asked for his final thought on the game between Howard and Morehouse. He brought it back to Griffith Stadium and the rivalry that's talked about to this day.
"This is what people need to know," he said. "In this time of budget cuts, sadness, people scapegoating, hating, you go to this game and you'll feel the spirit. The spirit of those people inside Griffith Stadium. It will have you smiling."
