ESPNU to air SWAC football games

Coach Rod Broadway Grambling Tigers has two ESPNU or ESPN2 HD dates--Sept. 6 vs. SCSU and Nov. 12 vs. Texas Southern.

The Southwestern Athletic Conference will have four football games aired live on Thursday nights on ESPNU during the fall. Alcorn State will kick off the schedule with a road game at Arkansas-Pine Bluff on Oct. 1. The game time has not been set.

Prairie View A&M at Southern will be featured Oct. 22 with kickoff yet to be determined.Texas Southern will travel to defending conference and black college national champion Grambling State on Nov. 12. Start time is lotted for 8 p.m.The 86th Turkey Day Classic between Alabama State and Tuskegee will shown Nov. 26 at 3 p.m.


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Bethune Cookman's Chaney part of 'Black Magic'

"BLACK MAGIC" IS ON ESPN AT 9 PM EDT TONIGHT AND MONDAY NIGHT.

John Chaney knows what it's like to be poor.

"People don't really understand poor," says the Hall of Fame basketball coach. "It doesn't mean you have something. It means you have nothing. You're working to make ends meet at all times, and yet there's always someone worse off."

Chaney knows what it's like to be a second-class citizen.

"In the South, when I was growing up, blacks were being arrested for vagrancy if they didn't have money in their pocket," he says. "So my mother always made sure I had a quarter on me."

Chaney knows what it's like to be slighted.

"In 1951, I was the best basketball player in Philadelphia, but I had no scholarship offers," he says. "There were only two schools in the city that had black athletes at the time -- La Salle and Temple. The others had no black basketball players on their teams."

Chaney's story is one of the threads that ties together Dan Klores' four-hour documentary, "Black Magic," which ESPN will air in two parts Sunday and Monday nights without commercial interruption.

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Macalester's Hudson: The first, but forgotten until now

ST. PAUL , Minn. -- On Dec. 21, 1971, Don Hudson was named head football coach at tiny, academically elite Macalester College in St. Paul. He made history. It should have been headline-news type of history: He was the first black head football coach at a predominantly white college.

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A 'Magic' project: New documentary explores historic effect of black colleges on basketball, the NBA

DURHAM, N.C. – Full Frame Documentary Film Festival (www.fullframefest.org), has announced that it will host the world premiere of the theatrical cut of “Black Magic”, a documentary directed by award-winning filmmaker Dan Klores.

The premiere will be held Monday, Feb. 11 at 7:30 p.m. at the Carolina Theatre, located at 309 W. Morgan St. in Durham. “Black Magic,” which will air in its entirety as a four-hour, two-part commercial-free series on ESPN in March 16-17, 2008, features two prominent North Carolina basketball legends, Winston-Salem State University graduate, Earl Monroe and North Carolina A&T State University graduate, Al Attles.

Klores, director of “Black Magic” and the 2007 critically acclaimed film festival hit “Crazy Love”, will join Attles and Monroe for a panel discussion following the screening to discuss the history that inspired the film. “Black Magic” tells the story of the injustice that defined the Civil Rights Movement in America through the lives of basketball players and coaches who attended historically black colleges and universities. The film features interviews with Basketball Hall of Fame honoree Willis Reed; Earl Lloyd, the first black athlete to ever play in an NBA game, as well as John Chaney, retired basketball coach of Temple University. Other notable interviewees include Ben Wallace, Charles Oakley and Avery Johnson.

Individual tickets for the “Black Magic” World Premiere and panel discussion are $12 and may be purchased at the event or by visiting the Box Office at www.fullframefest.org. Tickets for both the pre-screening party and film are available to Full Frame members for $35 and $50 for non-members. The 2008 Festival Preview Benefit — "Black Magic" world premiere is sponsored by Duke University Office of the Provost, the Visiting Artist Fund of the Department of Art, Art History and Visual Studies at Duke University, North Carolina Central University and the City of Durham.

About Black Magic:

Directed by award-winning director Dan Klores and in collaboration with ESPN Original Entertainment and Shoot the Moon Productions, “Black Magic” is a new four-hour, two-part film scheduled to air commercial-free on ESPN in March 2008. The film will make its world premiere at the Full Frame Documentary Film Festival on Monday, Feb 11. “Black Magic” is a story of the injustice that defines the Civil Rights Movement in America, told through the lives of basketball players and coaches who attended historically black colleges and universities.

The film is produced by basketball legend and Winston-Salem State University graduate, Earl Monroe, and narrated by Wynton Marsalis, Samuel L. Jackson and Chris Paul.

Feature interviews include Willis Reed, Avery Johnson, Ben Wallace, John Chaney, Bob Love, Al Attles, Pee Wee Kirkland, Earl Lloyd, Dick Barnett, Woody Sauldsberry, Cleo Hill, Bob Dandridge, Sonny Hill, Perry Wallace, Dave Robbins, Harold Hunter, Charles Oakley, Donnie Walsh, Bobby Cremins, Howie Evens, the widows of coaches Clarence “Big House” Gaines and John McLendon, and historians Skip Gates, Cleveland Sellers and Milton Katz.

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ESPN focuses on UD, DSU

By KRISTIAN POPE and KEVIN TRESOLINI, The News Journal

Failure to meet in football examined

The ESPN show "Outside the Lines" will feature an upcoming segment on the lack of a Delaware-Delaware State football rivalry.

Producers from the show were in Dover on Tuesday to tape interviews with representatives from DSU. They are scheduled to meet with University of Delaware officials in Newark today.

A telecast date has not been announced.

Delaware and Delaware State, two NCAA Division I-AA programs, have never met in a football game. But, as of now, both teams are in contention for a I-AA playoff berth and, under NCAA guidelines, the two could meet in a first-round game Nov. 24 at Delaware Stadium.

Hornets coach Al Lavan said Tuesday he was to be interviewed for the ESPN show with DSU athletic director Rick Costello and senior linebacker Russell Reeves. The network also is planning to tape footage of DSU's game Saturday against Morgan State at Alumni Stadium. Crews shot footage of Delaware's win over Northeastern last Saturday.

"It's good exposure for us," Lavan said. "It is what it is. They are just doing some followup to the recent stories."

The story received national attention when Delaware graduate and former Sports Illustrated reporter Jeff Pearlman wrote a column for ESPN.com that lambasted UD for not scheduling a game with DSU.

DSU (5-1, 4-0) shares the lead in the Mid-Eastern Athletic Conference; the champion earns an automatic NCAA bid.

Delaware (6-1, 4-1) is second in the CAA's South Division, but in the running for an at-large bid. The overall conference winner earns the CAA's automatic bid.

The 16-team I-AA field will be announced Nov. 18.

The NCAA handbook reads as follows:

1. The teams awarded the top four seeds are placed in the appropriate positions in the bracket (Nos. 1 and 4 in the upper half, and Nos. 2 and 3 in the lower half), and will be paired with teams that are in closest geographic proximity;

2. The remaining teams will be paired according to geographic proximity and placed in the bracket according to geographic proximity of the four pairings previously placed in the bracket.

The four seeded teams are given a chance to host a game if they can meet the I-AA tournament's minimum financial guarantee requirements: $30,000 for the first round, $40,000 for quarterfinals and $50,000 for semifinals. After that, the NCAA's first three criteria for selecting a host site are "quality of facility," "revenue potential" and "attendance history and potential."

While 22,000-seat Delaware Stadium routinely is filled to capacity during the regular season, playoff crowds always are smaller, in part because students have to pay for tickets and most aren't on campus Thanksgiving weekend.

Delaware's State's 6,800-seat Alumni Stadium would not, therefore, be considered for a Hens-Hornets playoff game.