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Tallahassee, FL - A portion of one side of its walls is ripped out with steel rods dangling all around as a demolition has its way with the 25-meter pool that for years sat abandoned behind Gaither Gymnasium.
Within three to four months the face-lift is expected to be completed, marking a high-water mark for the Florida A&M swim teams. For the first time in more than five years the Rattlers will have a home pool. Meanwhile, they've been working out at Florida State's pool.
They've been waiting for work to begin on the pool, too. For more than a year, there have been...
Columbia, SC - Benedict College will kick off the 2011 season Saturday, September 3, when it hosts Virginia Union in the 10th annual Palmetto Capital City Classic.
Kickoff is set for 5:00 p.m. at Charlie W. Johnson Stadium.
Benedict is coming off a 5-6 season, but the Tigers rallied to that finish after starting off the year 0-4. Head coach Stan Conner says a win to start off the new year would be tangible evidence that the team's hot finish to 2010 had carried over into 2011.
The events leading up to the game include a golf tournament, high school band challenge, pre-game parade featuring high school and college bands, a gospel concert and a game-day concert.
LITTLE ROCK — Arkansas-Pine Bluff has been invited to play in the 2011 Dick's Sporting Goods NIT Season Tip-Off, one of the tournaments that serves as a kickoff to the college basketball season.
The Golden Lions will take on Oklahoma State in Stillwater, Okla. in the Midwest Region of the bracket. The Cowboys are a no.2-seed against the unseeded Golden Lions.
Oral Roberts and Texas-San Antonio round out the four-team pod in Stillwater. Dates and times will be determined in the coming weeks.
The 14-team field also includes Virginia Tech, George Mason and Stanford. The four teams to advance out of their regionals will play at Madison Square Garden in New York City November 23-25.
BIRMINGHAM, Ala. - Wearing a purple necktie to go with his dapper gray suit, Prairie View’s Heishma Northern, flanked by two players, strolled into a ballroom at the Sheraton Hotel on Tuesday morning, making his big debut as a head football coach.
Northern, the former Glen Oaks standout and Southern safety, took a seat and took in the scene at the annual Southwestern Athletic Conference media day.
This, he thought to himself, is really something else.
Directly across the room, there sat the one and only Doug Williams, back for his second stint at Grambling. Northern used to work for Williams - first at Morehouse, then at Grambling.
Next to Williams was the man in shades, Melvin Spears, who’s now at Alcorn State. Spears and Northern worked together at Grambling, and Spears was head coach there from 2004-06, after Williams left.
Fort Valley, GA - Sometimes ignorance really is bliss. Take the case, for instance, of undrafted free-agent wide receiver Ricardo Lockette of Fort Valley State.
Generally regarded as one of the most attractive players who went unselected in the NFL lottery nearly three months ago, and likely to be a so-called priority free agent when teams begin to sign players next week, Lockette acknowledged this week that he has "really no idea at all" what confronts him once summer training camp begins. Nonetheless, the speedy wide receiver is ecstatic about the prospect of being able to play football again after several months in free agent limbo.
"Since I haven't been through it before," said Lockette of training camp, "it's hard for me to say what it will be like. I do know, though, that it will be hard. And I know that, without any of the other [offseason] stuff, I'm going to have to learn everything a lot faster than I normally might."
To Lockette's advantage, faster -- and sometimes fastest -- is the manner in which he is most accustomed to operating.
DURHAM, N.C. - Bill Dooley says this event is the biggest of its kind in the South.
And there’s no reason to doubt the Ol’ Trench Fighter, the legendary former coach at UNC, Wake Forest and Virginia Tech on that one.
Over 300 college football fans were on hand for a fancy lunch, a few jokes and plenty of information about the upcoming season on Thursday, at the Ninth Annual Pigskin Preview by the Bill Dooley Triangle/East Chapter of the National Football Foundation & College Hall of Fame.
Five Division I coaches — UNC’s Butch Davis, Duke’s David Cutcliffe, N.C. State’s Tom O’Brien, East Carolina’s Ruffin McNeill and N.C. Central’s Henry Frazier III — were on hand to swap stories and answers to sometimes off-the-wall questions and generally be loose for one of the last times until fall practice starts in earnest.
Savannah, GA - A point of pride for Savannah State University over the past year has been its acceptance into the Mid-Eastern Athletic Conference.
When Cheryl Dozier arrived as interim president on May 9, she found that acceptance in jeopardy. Reports had been written but not implemented, and she wasn’t sure where she and the university stood.
So she turned to former University of Georgia athletics director Damon Evans to find answers.
“I knew that I needed to move us forward in the MEAC, and I decided to hire a consultant,” Dozier said. “I knew he had been doing some consulting at institutions. I gave him a call, and he said he would be willing to do that. I can’t think of a more professional and knowledgeable person that I know who would be able to do a better job than Damon Evans.”
The legendary Bernard Griffith developed
current New Jersey Nets head coach Avery Johnson and served as an assistant coach with the Dallas Mavericks.
New Orleans - Dillard University’s search for a new men’s basketball coach began and ended inside of its own zip code with the hiring of former Saint Augustine coaching legend Bernard Griffith.
Griffith, 63, spent the past school year serving as basketball coach and athletic director at L.B. Landry High School in Algiers, but recently resigned from that position to accept the Dillard job, Dillard Athletic Director Kiki Baker Barnes and Landry Principal Lee Green said Thursday.
Griffith replaces Dale Brown, who resigned from Dillard to take the men’s basketball coaching position at Clark Atlanta University, a NCAA Division II school in Atlanta.
“He is a phenomenal coach, absolutely phenomenal,’’ Barnes said in confirming Griffith’s selection. “That’s my word for him.’’
Dillard has scheduled a press conference to announce Griffith’s hiring for next Thursday at its Gentilly campus, Barnes said. Griffith could not be reached for comment, but his move places him almost within walking distance (less than two miles) of Dillard from his Gentilly home.
Birmingham, AL — New coach Melvin Spears' recipe for Alcorn State football success: Something old (Marino Casem's old-school fundamentals) and something new (Brandon Bridge, Alcorn's 18-year-old sophomore quarterback).
Spears talked about both Casem and Bridge at length here Tuesday during SWAC Football Media Day in downtown Birmingham. Spears played for Casem, known as The Godfather of the SWAC, from 1978 to 1982. During that time, Alcorn won one SWAC championship and had four winning seasons.
"We played Alcorn football, Godfather football," Spears said. "We were fundamentally sound. We played hard and practiced hard Monday through Thursday and then Saturday took care of itself. That's what we want to bring back."
But Spears, a wide receiver at Alcorn, never played with a teammate with the skills of Bridge, the Canadian who is nicknamed Air Canada. Bridge threw for more than 2,600 yards and 26 touchdowns as a freshman when Alcorn finished 5-6.
Grambling, LA - Ask Grambling football coach Doug Williams about how it feels in his second stint as the Tigers head coach, and he'll tell you that he thinks the program is in better shape than it was for his first time around.
Ask him how his quarterback situation is shaping out, and he'll tell you that it's a spirited competition between two untested players — sophomore Frank Rivers and freshman D.J. Williams.
No mention, however, of last year's quarterback — Anthony Carrothers — who threw for 1,443 yards on the 2010 season and 115 yards in April's Black and Gold game. The 5-foot-10 Carrothers has transferred out of Grambling.
That, said Williams at the SWAC Media Day at the Birmingham-Jefferson Convention Complex on Tuesday, leaves Rivers and his own son, D.J.
"If you've only got two eggs to put in the cornbread, you have to put them in there," said Williams, who returned to the school in February after Rod Broadway left for North Carolina A&T."
Los Angeles, CA - Golf's storied history in the US has long been criticized for its lack of diversity, but the PGA has taken steps to improve minority participation and exposure to the game. Minority participation has increased with the popularity and success of Tiger Woods, and continues today with targeted efforts, say the authors of "Increasing Minority Golf Participation Through PGA Education Initiatives" in the open access journal SAGE Open.
One important step in the process included one of the Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs) being awarded the coveted PGA Professional Golf Management Program accreditation. University of Maryland, Eastern Shore was the first—and currently only—HBCU of the 20 universities that currently offer the program.
"UMES provides an excellent example of how the program was implemented at a historically and predominantly Black college," wrote the authors. "The university was successful in obtaining the coveted accreditation due to several reasons."
The authors, who include Jill Fjelstul, Leonard A. Jackson, and Dana V. Tesone, point to the support of the school's administration and willingness to provide resources to ensure success. Additionally both the school and the PGA have set up scholarships and recruitment to help pique minority students' interest.
But, the authors note, "increasing minority participation in golf requires initiatives and organizations designed to expose members of minority populations to golf at an early age." The PGA has also established the "First Tee" program aimed at minority golfers ages eight to 18. "Since its inception," write the authors. "more than 3 million children from minority groups have participated in the program."
The Bill Dickey Golf Scholarship Association also serves minorities by affording them the chance to play golf with financial assistance and golf club participation. This helps those selected overcome two continually noted challenges of minority golf participation: the cost to play the game and access to golf courses.
TAZEWELL, Va. — Brandon Tatenever expected to play college football. Basketball was his game.
At least that is what he thought. Rick Trickett, who was West Virginia’s offensive line coach at the time, begged to differ. Trickett, who is now in the same position at Florida State, was at a Macon, Miss., high school to recruit a pair of athletes who wound up at Mississippi State.
“I originally thought I would be a basketball player and that changed toward the latter part of my high school career,” Tate said. “He was recruiting those two guys and we had a basketball game. “He was there to see them and he just happened to see me on the basketball court with them.” That was good fortune for both. Tate, a four-sport athlete, caught Trickett’s eye.
“He said, ‘Hey, if you can run and jump like that on a basketball court, I am pretty sure you can do it on the football field’ and he offered me a scholarship right there on the spot,” said Tate, the new head football coach at Tazewell.
Washington, D.C. - A dozen historically black colleges and universities (HBCUs) have formed a consortium to help rebuild the earthquake-damaged State University of Haiti, the Caribbean country’s largest institution of higher education.
Led by Florida A&M University, the consortium hopes to raise $12 million to construct a classroom building equipped to receive telecourses taught by the faculty from the black colleges.
The group also plans to raise money so the State University of Haiti can hire replacements for professors who died in the earthquake last year and to provide scholarships to 1,000 Haitian students to attend the public university, which has reopened despite extensive damage to its buildings in Port-au-Prince, the capital.
In the shorter term, the consortium intends to share faculty expertise to boost the university’s academic programs in agriculture and entrepreneurship, and research into renewable energy and alternative medicine. Administrators from the black colleges will help establish a campus office to generate donations from prosperous alumni.
“It was thought that black colleges have the resources and talent and were advanced enough in their own right they could offer assistance to higher education, particularly the State University of Haiti, to help them get back on their feet,” saysFrederick Humphries, former president of Florida A&M and the consortium’s coordinator.
While most of the dozen black colleges participating are public universities, including South Carolina State and Morgan State, federally-supported Howard University and private Miles College are also members. READ MORE MEMBERS OF HBCU CONSORTIUM: Florida A&M University, South Carolina State University, Morgan State University, Howard University, Miles College, University of Arkansas at Pine Bluff, Central State University (Ohio), Virginia State University, North Carolina A&T State University, Fort Valley State University, Tennessee State University and Jackson State University.
Houston, TX - After months of waiting, Texas Southern interim football coach Kevin Ramsey knows closure is near.
Regardless of the outcome of an NCAA investigation, Ramsey is ready for a fresh start as the Tigers prepare to open defense of their Southwestern Athletic Conference title Sept. 10 against Prairie View A&M. TSU is coming off the first SWAC title in school history.
"We're looking forward ... we're not looking ahead," Ramsey said Tuesday during the SWAC football media tour. "We know we cannot change the path that was set before. But one thing we do know is we can run it with perseverance and endurance."
The NCAA is expected to release its findings of an investigation into the TSU football and men's basketball programs. TSU athletic director Charles McClelland, who was unavailable for comment Tuesday, has said he anticipates "major NCAA violations toward our football program with regard to recruiting, unethical conduct and academic inconsistencies."
Birmingham, AL — Colorful jerseys hung prominently on all 10 of the team tables at the Southwestern Athletic Conference's football media day on Tuesday.
If all the optimistic talk of offenses, defenses and special teams weren't enough, the jerseys of some of the prominent programs in black college football history, and all of college football, reminded how the coaches and players will soon be back on the field preparing for the 2011 season.
And no FCS conference is looking forward to footballs flying, and putting the offseason behind it, more than the SWAC.
Head coaching defections, the firing of last year's SWAC championship-winning head coach and NCAA academic sanctions have rocked the conference since Texas Southern won the 2010 title over Alabama State just seven months ago in December.
They were talking football again - more so than declining national prominence or Academic Progress Rate (APR) penalties - when Jackson State and Grambling State were installed as the SWAC's preseason favorites in the East and West divisions, respectively, and Jackson State quarterback Casey Therriault was named the preseason offensive player of the year and Prairie View A&M senior cornerback Moses Ellis the preseason defensive player of the year.
Tallahassee, FL - The use of social networks has changed a lot of routines.
Coaching is no exception, at least that's the feeling of Tony Trifonov who suggested that his Florida A&M volleyball players might have paid a little too much attention to what they saw on the Internet heading into the postseason last year.
All over Facebook and Twitter much was being made of the Rattlers' chances of winning their 10th MEAC championship in 12 seasons. What was being written on the social sites might have influenced the performance of his players, said Trifonov, adding that the Internet has added a new wrinkle for coaches and how they address the psyche of their athletes.
His players didn't get on track and were eliminated in the semifinals of the conference championship tournament, a first since 1998.
NEW ORLEANS — Two in-state guards — Renard Smith of New Orleans and Nick Haywood of Monroe — have signed men's basketball scholarships with Xavier University of Louisiana.
Both will be juniors at XU during the 2011-12 season.
Smith, 6-feet-3 and 180 pounds, averaged 15.4 points for Delgado Community College in New Orleans this past season and was All-Miss-Lou Conference. Although not a starter during the first half of the season, Smith finished the year as the Dolphins' No. 2 scorer.
Smith was All-District 10-4A in basketball and baseball (right-handed pitcher) his senior year at McDonogh 35 High School.
He helped the Roneagles reach the Class 4A state playoffs each of three varsity basketball seasons, and as a baseball senior he ranked among the metro New Orleans leaders with a 1.17 ERA.
As a freshman at Arcadia University in Glenside, Pa., Smith started 22 of 24 games and averaged 11.2 points, 3.3 rebounds, 1.5 assists and 1.5 steals and made 29 3-pointers.
Haywood, 6 feet and 175 pounds, is transferring to Xavier from NCAA Division I member Houston, where he averaged 1.6 points and 9.1 minutes in 50 games with two starts during the past two seasons. He was chosen Class 5A Player of the Year by the Louisiana Sports Writers Association and the Louisiana Association of Basketball Coaches as a senior at Ouachita High School. That season Haywood averaged 19.3 points, 5.1 assists, 3.2 rebounds and 2.7 steals and led the Lions to a 39-4 record and the 5A state championship. He also earned Academic All-State honorable mention from the Louisiana High School Athletic Association.
Haywood was a four-year member of Ouachita's varsity and started the final three years. The Lions reached the state quarterfinals in each of Haywood's four seasons and were the 4A runner-up his freshman year. In the 2009 5A championship game, a 70-53 victory over Hahnville, Haywood scored a game-high 21 points and made five 3-pointers.
At Xavier Smith will major in business administration, and Haywood will major in computer information systems.
"Renard and Nick will give our program an immediate boost," ninth-year Xavier coach Dannton Jackson said. "They're great basketball players, great students and great people. They both will bring a deep shooting presence, a defensive presence and leadership to our team. They come from two of the best high-school programs in Louisiana."
Smith and Haywood are the first two signees of the year for Xavier, which was 27-6 in 2010-11, ranked 17th in the final NAIA Division I poll and qualified for the Buffalo Funds-NAIA Division I National Championship for the fifth time in seven seasons.
Wetumpka, AL - Wetumpka High graduate and current Alabama State University standout Kejuan Riley has become a player to watch in the Football Championship Subdivision.
Over the course of the week, Riley - who finished the 2010 season with seven interceptions, one behind FCS leader Moses Ellis (Prairie View A&M) tied for second in the nation - has been awarded a host of preseason honors.
"It's a great accomplishment," said Riley, a junior defensive back for the Alabama State Hornets. "I put god first and I always want to thank Him. I accomplished this because of my teammates. They really helped me, along with (defensive coordinator) Cedric Thornton, to put me in a position to make plays."
Riley also extended thanks to ASU head coach Reggie Barlow for "allowing me to be a Hornet." At Southwestern Athletic Conference media days to start the week, Riley was one of seven Hornets named Preseason All-SWAC.
Jackson, MS - The timing would be impeccable if Jackson State senior quarterback Casey Therriault wins the 2011 Walter Payton Award.
This season marks the 25th anniversary of the most prestigious award in the FCS - the Heisman Trophy of the division which is presented by The Sports Network and sponsored by Fathead.com.
The legendary Payton, of course, played at Jackson State, which this season is celebrating its 100th year of football. Of course, the Casey Therriault story isn't ordinary regardless.
It was just over two years ago that Therriault was released from jail, having served a six-month sentence for his minor part in a January 2008 incident in his hometown of Grand Rapids, Mich., in which a 21-year-old man was killed at a bar and restaurant. At the time of the altercation, Therriault was home from junior college.
The man, who was intoxicated with a blood-alcohol level of 0.27, harassed one of Therriault's friends before the incident escalated to ...
Orangeburg, S.C. - There was a time in the mid-1980s and '90s when Claflin and South Carolina State battled annually for on-court hoops supremacy in Orangeburg.
For a 10-year period, the Garden City Classic featured an evening of hard-fought men's and women's basketball. Whether at Smith-Hammond-Middleton Memorial Center or the Jonas T. Kennedy Center, the games saw passions raised to a fever pitch for the two Orangeburg fan bases which in turn produced funds to cover scholarships.
"I thought it was great," said Claflin athletics director Tim Autry, who served in the same position at S.C. State at the time of the final Garden City Classic in 1996.
A mandate by then-Mid-Eastern Athletic Conference commissioner...
ETTRICK, VA - Even though Virginia State reached the CIAA championship game last season — the Trojans lost 14-7 to Shaw — VSU is ranked sixth in the conference preseason poll, which was released Thursday at the CIAA kickoff press conference at Virginia State University.
"I thought we'd get a little bit better recognition," said VSU coach Andrew Faison, who was named CIAA coach of the year after guiding the Trojans to an 8-3 record.
But VSU was predicted to finish eighth last year, so exceeding expectations is nothing new to Faison or the Trojans. He said he'll just use the preseason ranking as motivation for his players, just as he did a year ago.
"It's preseason," Faison said. "It's no big deal."
The top four teams in the preseason poll — defending champion Shaw, Winston-Salem State, Saint Augustine's and Fayetteville State — come from the Southern Division. Even though VSU is predicted to finish sixth overall, the team is ranked second in the Northern Division.
Fayetteville, N.C. - Perhaps it was unintentional. But Fayetteville State football coach Kenny Phillipsstole a page right out of Yogi Berra's book.
Thursday during CIAA Media Day festivities at Virginia State. Asked about the upcoming season, with his Broncos pegged in the preseason poll to finish fourth in the league's Southern Division, Phillips delivered a calm, if somewhat confusing, aphorism.
"If the prediction goes as the predictions go, they never do," he said.
Phillips has recent firsthand experience with the unreliability of preseason polls. Last season, for example, his Broncos were picked to win the CIAA, yet they sputtered to a disappointing 5-5 season and a fourth-place finish in their division.
"Where you're picked at is where you start," Phillips said. "But it's where you finish at (that matters)." So will FSU exceed expectations this season?
BIRMINGHAM, Ala. - Southern football coach Stump Mitchell on Monday confirmed the loss of nine full scholarships spread among 19 players - the result, he said, of NCAA penalties brought forth because of SU’s substandard score in the Academic Progress Rate. Mitchell, however, said the team had yet to lose any players because of the predicament.
The blow was announced on the eve of this year’s Southwestern Athletic Conference media day and less than two weeks before his team starts practice, Aug. 4. Southern was susceptible to harsh penalties because its football team had a history of substandard APR scores.
The APR is a rolling four-year system that measures classroom performance of student-athletes on every Division I team. Teams scoring below 925 can face penalties, and teams scoring below 900 are subject to “severe” penalties.
BIRMINGHAM, Ala. - Asked why he returned to coach football at his alma mater, Alabama’s Bear Bryant is famously supposed to have replied: “Mama called.” For Doug Williams, his whirlwind return to Grambling was for similar reasons.
“I always feel responsible for Grambling because Grambling was good to me,” Williams said as he faced a barrage of interviews Tuesday at SWAC football media day. “I hope that by coming back I’m giving back.”
The Zachary native was set to take a front office job with the Washington Redskins - the franchise he led to victory in Super Bowl XXII with a virtuoso MVP performance - when former Grambling coach Rod Broadway abruptly resigned on Feb. 3 to become head coach at North Carolina A&T.
Almost immediately, Williams said, his phone started ringing. At the other end of the line were ... READ MORE
Tallahassee, FL - A portion of one side of its walls is ripped out with steel rods dangling all around as a demolition has its way with the 25-meter pool that for years sat abandoned behind Gaither Gymnasium.
