By KEVIN TRESOLINI and KRISTIAN POPE, The News JournalDelaware won't elaborate on refusal to play Hornets
Omar Cuff is concerned only with whom the University of Delaware does play in football, not the teams it doesn't play. But when the Blue Hens' All-American tailback was informed last week that UD and Delaware State had never met in a football game, his expression turned curious.
"They never did?" said Cuff, a Landover, Md., resident whose mother has lived in Wilmington for several years. "I do find that kind of strange. They're so close. They're I-AA, just like us?"
Yes, Delaware and Delaware State are both members of NCAA Division I-AA and are located less than an hour apart.
They have never played because UD has been unwilling to schedule the game. As the more established of the two academically and in football, Delaware has less to gain from a UD-DSU matchup than Delaware State, while DSU has craved a game for many years.
The latest overture was made Tuesday, when Delaware State athletic director Rick Costello contacted UD athletic director Edgar Johnson to discuss the possibility of setting up a game.
Johnson told him he was not interested, but both parties agreed to talk further when the football season is over. If the NCAA does not add a 12th game for Division I-AA, there appears to be an opening on UD's schedule in 2012.
Historically, Delaware State schedules its football games no further than one or two years out. That started to change under former AD Chuck Bell, but the Hornets have many dates open in the next few years, unlike UD, which schedules many years in advance.
"I talked to Edgar, and they are not interested at this point," Costello said. "So, we agreed to wait until the season is over. Right now, the best chance is 2012.
"If they're not interested, then we'll just move on."
Costello's predecessors, Bell and former DSU assistant AD Tripp Keister, made overtures to Johnson in 2004 and 2005. They were rebuffed. Bell believed after talking to Johnson that the game never would be played.
Costello remains optimistic.
"Everyone mentioned it to me when I took this job," said Costello, who was hired in June. "I'm hoping, with Delaware's new leadership [president Patrick Harker], it will get done. Unfortunately, the athletic director [Johnson] doesn't want it.
"I'm going to devote time and energy into the things we can control. If they don't want to play us, then we won't play."
Costello said when he does meet with Johnson after the season regarding a matchup, the Hornets won't settle for a one-game deal. He said DSU would be interested only in a contract for a home-and-home series against Delaware, which means the Blue Hens would have to play at Alumni Stadium, which seats just 6,800.
"We'll play anywhere, any place and anytime," Costello said. "But it would have to be a fair and equitable situation."
After DSU's victory over Hampton (ranked No. 13 in I-AA) Saturday, Costello believes this controversy might be canceled out should the Hens and Hornets make the Division I-AA playoffs.
"We feel like we have a lot to offer. ... It would be great for the kids and great for the state," Costello said. "We'd love to play them. We just beat the No. 13-ranked team in the nation. This was a huge win over a top-ranked opponent. Let's savor the moment. If we met in the playoffs ... it would be great."
Johnson said "it's way too premature" to elaborate on the discussions with Costello and that it's his policy not to "kiss and tell."
Cuff said he isn't interested in the politics of the great First State divide. He also doesn't consider it, as some do, a racial issue, especially when he looks around and sees that nearly half of Delaware's football players, such as Cuff, are black.
DSU is a historically black college created late in the 19th Century because of Delaware's segregated education system, which existed until the 1950s.
It's about football, Cuff said. And the more he thought about it, the more logical a football matchup seemed.
"Next year, let's take West Chester [an annual Division II foe] off the schedule and play them [the Hornets]," Cuff said. "... It would be good for the morale of the whole state."
Escaping from UD's shadow
The Hornets have long existed in the Blue Hens' giant football shadow, and a game against them is one way to emerge from it.
Delaware has won six national championships, has had just eight losing seasons since 1940 and has been to the NCAA playoffs 18 times since the format was introduced in 1973.
Delaware State never has made the NCAA postseason.
DSU junior fullback Adam Shrewsbury, a Middletown High graduate who has several friends attending UD, was raised around a line of thinking that claims the Hornets are lower class and unworthy of playing the Hens.
"I guess their reason why [the game isn't played] is, they have nothing to gain from it," Shrewsbury said of UD. "And if we were to go to their house or wherever, all our fans would be there, and they have respect to lose. Like people wouldn't look at them the same, you know what I'm saying? That's just because people look so down on us, like we're not as good of a team and we can't roll with the big boys."
He wonders why people believe the Hornets would be the underdog in a game against the Hens.
"Anybody is beatable on any given day, just like what happened at Michigan [in its loss to I-AA Appalachian State]," Shrewsbury said. "It would definitely be an emotional game. Football's an emotional game. It would be a great game, a very good game to watch. It would be a championship game."
A UD-DSU matchup could occur in the playoffs, since the NCAA intentionally matches teams that are geographically close.
"That would be cool," said UD linebacker J.T. Laws, a Delaware native and William Penn High graduate. "I think it could be good for the state. But, you know, it's not something that is really a big thing to me. It's never been. I wish Delaware State would play Delaware, or the other way around. ... I always thought if they were meant to play, they would play."
Hornets senior defensive lineman Kelly Rouse said he recently has paid close attention to the topic. Looking at each team's current schedule, Rouse wonders why UD seems to believe it is in a different class.
"Personally, I've been reading the comments saying racism still exists here and 'when UD beats Delaware State,' " Rouse said. "They played a Division II school [West Chester] and we played a Division I-A school [Kent State]. They're not playing anybody that we're not playing or who we can't beat. We played a Top 25 team [Coastal Carolina] and a I-A. All they played was a Division II school and a conference opponent [Towson] who almost lost to Morgan State [DSU's Mid-Eastern Athletic Conference rival].
"We're putting our time in, and we'll meet them in the playoffs."
Delaware sophomore receiver Mark Duncan said he's received many e-mails and read numerous stories about the UD-DSU standoff and also would relish seeing it resolved.
"Let's get this whole, big, Delaware thing off our backs and show who's the better team," the Rockville, Md., resident said. "It's something that's getting a lot of attention. Let's settle it on the field."
As for an uncomfortable racial undertone, Duncan doesn't buy it.
"I don't think it's a race thing," he said. "I think Delaware being a predominantly white school and DelState being a predominantly black school, maybe some people are going to feel we're not going to play them because of that. It's easy to say that's what's going on. Maybe that would have been the case when we would have played them in soft helmets, but I know that's not the case now."
Coaches' input
Now in his fourth season as DSU's coach, Al Lavan said he's constantly reminded of his predecessors' failure to make the game a reality.
He isn't certain why former DSU coach Bill Collick and former UD coach Tubby Raymond never brought the two programs together.
Collick, a UD graduate, was coach and athletic director at DSU and had a friendly relationship with Raymond, who never pushed for a Hens-Hornets get-together during his reign from 1966 through 2001. Collick made periodic overtures and was rebuffed, but knew he had more important missions.
"We're all proud people," said Collick, now dean of students and football coach at Sussex Tech High. "You want to go to the dance with someone who wants to go with you. I never put a lot of time and effort into [pursuing a game] because I knew better.
"Was it right?" he said of UD's resistance. "I didn't think so. But I knew better. ... There were a lot of positive things we were doing that measured our success."
Lavan said the game could move a step closer to fruition if he and Hens coach K.C. Keeler met.
The two coaches never have been introduced. Perhaps they could set the example, Lavan said.
"Let me put it this way: Students and players will follow leadership," Lavan said. "That's why I've said it's so simple. ... We make it whatever it is, we make it as difficult as it is. It's not complicated. You do what you want to do."
Keeler had been forbidden by higher-ups to comment publicly on the DSU controversy, an example of how sensitive the topic is at UD.
But on Monday he broke that silence and said that DSU fits into his scheduling philosophy of playing more games at 22,000-seat Delaware Stadium.
"If that means Delaware State," Keeler said, "I think it would be great for the state."
Keeler said coaches often get acquainted through recruiting but that Delaware and Delaware State recruit an entirely different set of players. He agreed, however, that he and Lavan could become catalysts in breaking the logjam and setting up a game.
"He's done a great job down there, and I have a lot of respect for what they're doing," Keeler said. "Because of the uniqueness of Delaware, there's a lot of interest in a game."
Lavan said that around 1992 he was asked by a Sports Illustrated reporter his opinion on the lack of black coaches in the NFL. He said the question is similar in tone to the question of why UD won't schedule a game against DSU.
"I said, 'You're really asking the question to the wrong person,' " Lavan said. "Me, I can give you a good answer, but then, so what? What you need to do is ask the guy who's in the decision-making position.
"If I was in the decision-making position, I could give you an answer in three seconds. After that, it's not totally useless but it's insignificant because, in three years, you're going to be asking the same question, until someone wants to get real and not just give you the answer you know is coming even before you ask."
Easy enough to do
Edgar Johnson makes the Blue Hens football schedules. His explanations have followed the same pattern for more than 20 years: The UD schedule is full and Delaware would rather play other schools than DSU. He continues to say Delaware will play Delaware State eventually, but won't say when or why UD has been disinclined so far.
In 2004, when Delaware scheduled conference rival New Hampshire, which it was not required to play that year, in a nonconference game, Johnson said, "We like to play New Hampshire." Likewise, in 2006, UD played league cohort Hofstra in a nonconference game.
Lavan said he believes the national attention brought by a Sept. 20 ESPN.com column, in which UD's resistance was viewed as racially motivated by author and UD graduate Jeff Pearlman, might cause change.
Some wonder, however, if the latest backlash will make UD dig in its heels even more so it isn't perceived as caving in, and thereby agreeing with, the criticism. Johnson isn't saying.
Harker, the new UD president, has pledged to give the issue close scrutiny, with some suggesting his arrival may signal a new way of thinking.
"It sounds complex, but it's not complex," Lavan said. "Just schedule the game."
By JOSEPH SCHIEFELBEIN, Advocate sportswriter
