NORFOLK, Virginia -- Football matters to Dr. Dennis E. Thomas.
In fact, it would be fair to say that without football, Thomas likely wouldn’t be where he is: having enjoyed a successful career as a football player, coach and athletic administrator who for the past 16 years has served as Commissioner of the Mid-Eastern Athletic Conference (MEAC).
“Football is a transformative societal agent for progress and positive integration for all human beings,” Thomas said. “That’s been proven now through the decades. Even during the years of initial integration, football was that one thing that could bring a community together.”
Thomas said that aside from his parents, mother Marjorie and father Russell, football played the greatest role in shaping who he has become over the years. The game shaped his values and his work ethic, his belief in teamwork, perseverance and the belief that a dream, a vision, could be executed with hard work and a sound plan.
“The most important thing football actually taught me,” he said, “was that when you get your butt knocked down, you’ve got to get up and get after it again.”
Thomas began playing football when he was in middle school, splitting time between the offensive and defensive lines. In high school, Thomas was primarily on the offensive line, though he would move to the defensive line whenever the opposing team reached the redzone.
In his senior year of high school, Thomas said he had an epiphany.
“Maybe I was good enough to get a scholarship if I performed exceedingly well in football,” he said. “I didn’t have a choice academically. My mother was a fifth-grade teacher and my father made sure that everything centered around my grades. If you didn’t work hard to get good grades, then everything else was not happening.”
When Thomas graduated from high school at the age of 16 and arrived on Alcorn State’s campus, he was faced with a stark reality.
“There’s a lot of good players around here,” Thomas recalled. “And I ain’t one of them. I’m going to have to work really hard just to make the team.”
In his first preseason practice, Thomas noticed he was dealing with what he termed “full-grown men,” players who were 20, 21 and 22 years old. At 16, Thomas admitted he was not yet physically mature enough to handle his older teammates.
“That was a rude awakening for me,” Thomas said.
The Braves won the Southwestern Athletic Conference (SWAC) championship in 1970, Thomas’ freshman season. In 1973, he became the first offensive lineman to ever be named SWAC Offensive Player of the Year. He was also a two-time Pittsburgh Courier First Team All-American, a First Team Black Mutual Sports Network All-American and Outstanding College Athlete of America in 1974.
In 2014, Alcorn State ranked the 50 greatest football players in its history. Thomas was ranked No. 17.
“Football was a means to an end,” Thomas said. “And the means to an end was to get an education. When I left Alcorn, I didn’t have a bill. I didn’t have student loans. I left with a balance of zero, and that was because of football.”
Thomas admitted to briefly having thoughts of playing in the NFL … before coming across a football legend and having another epiphany.
“I ran across Ed ‘Too Tall’ Jones,” Thomas said, referring to the former Dallas Cowboys defensive end who was the NFL’s top draft pick in 1974 out of Tennessee State. “He and my homeboy and teammate Harold Terrell made me realize what was the next level, and I wasn’t the next level. They were.”
Thomas decided after that encounter that when he returned to Alcorn, he would not miss a day of class and do everything he could to earn his degree. He graduated in three and a half years, at which point, James Brooks – the coach who had recruited Thomas to Alcorn – gave him a letter from the University of Louisiana Monroe (then Northeast Louisiana University), which was looking for graduate assistants in its football program.
Thomas applied and got the position. After a year, a full-time position coaching the defensive line opened up at Louisiana Monroe. Thomas was hired, and that he said was when “I found out what the coaching profession was all about.”
“I got hired on July 1,” he recalled, “and we all got fired on December 1.”
Thomas returned to Alcorn after that, reuniting with head coach Marino “The Godfather” Casem. While Thomas was on staff, the Braves won SWAC championships in 1976, 1979 and 1984. South Carolina State hired Thomas to be its head football coach starting with the 1986 season, and again, the difference was stark.
“As an assistant, you wanted to make sure your segment was performing,” Thomas said. “Head coach, you’ve got everybody. You’ve got to relate to the media, you’ve got to relate to the alumni, to the institution, the campus and the mamas and the papas.”
After a three-year stint as head coach at South Carolina State, Thomas transitioned to athletic administration, serving as Director of Athletics at Hampton University.
“As a head coach, you deal with one sport,” Thomas said. “As the Director of Athletics, you might have 15, 16 sports. You have to make sure everyone understands the mission, the goals, the objectives. Just like a general leading his troops, you have to make sure everyone understands what the mission is.”
Still, Thomas was never far from the game of football.
Thomas’ tenure at Hampton, where he served as Director of Athletics for 12 years, saw the Pirates football program win a combined five conference championships – three in the CIAA (1992-94) and two in the MEAC (1997-98) after the athletic department completed its transition from Div. II to Div. I in 1995.
In 2001, Thomas served as chair of the NCAA Division I-AA (now FCS) Football Committee. In addition, he has served on the NCAA Division I Football Issues Committee and was on the Board of Directors for the National Football Foundation and College Football Hall of Fame.
In 2003, Thomas was inducted into the SWAC Hall of Fame. He was inducted into the Hampton University Athletics Hall of Fame in 2009, as part of its inaugural class, and Alcorn State inducted him into its Hall of Fame in 2010.
Having served as Commissioner of the MEAC since 2002, Thomas has been instrumental in the implementation of both the MEAC/SWAC Challenge and the Celebration Bowl, games which now bookend each college football season for HBCUs.
In fact, Thomas first brought up the idea of the Celebration Bowl – a postseason bowl game that pitted the MEAC champion against the SWAC champion – to ESPN in 2004, when the MEAC/SWAC Challenge was also being discussed. Though the Celebration Bowl wouldn’t come about for another decade, Thomas brought it up every year to the MEAC’s membership.
Ultimately, Thomas invited John Skipper, then ESPN’s president and chief executive officer, to speak to the MEAC’s presidents and chancellors at the conference basketball tournament in 2012. That meeting finally paved the way for the Celebration Bowl.
The 2018 season will culminate in the fourth annual Celebration Bowl, played in the new Mercedes Benz Stadium in Atlanta, Ga. on Dec. 15. The MEAC has won the game in two of its first three years, and this season, Atlanta will also be the site of this year’s MEAC/SWAC Challenge, pitting North Carolina Central against Prairie View A&M on Sept. 2.
Each of the past two seasons, the MEAC has named its Offensive and Defensive Players of the Year for football in New York City as part of the National Football Foundation and College Football Hall of Fame’s annual induction ceremony. This past season, North Carolina A&T State’s Lamar Raynard, the Offensive Player of the Year, and South Carolina State’s Darius Leonard, the Defensive Player of the Year, were recognized and spent two days in New York, mingling with a who’s-who of the game, including such names as Peyton Manning, Brian Urlacher, Archie Manning and Archie Griffin.
Still, Thomas is mindful of the current climate surrounding the game.
“I’m concerned,” Thomas said. “I’m concerned from a health standpoint, about concussions and paralysis and other debilitating injuries. … [The game] is under scrutiny from a media standpoint, because some of the media is pushing the narrative that this is a game that shouldn’t be played, that parents should not allow their kids to play.
“I think that National Football Foundation does an excellent job highlighting all the great attributes of football over the decades. Young men have gone on to be great students, great fathers and great husbands, pillars of their community, and football has played an integral part in the moral, ethical fiber of people and our country.
“I would like to commend Steve Hatchell [NFF President & CEO] and his leadership team for promoting all that is good about football, the greatest game of all.”
And even with the issues football faces today, Thomas sees a way forward.
“Technology will play a huge role [going forward],” he said. “As soon as the technology in terms of helmets develops to the point where it will, if not eliminate, significantly reduce concussions … I hope that all scientists and engineers that are working to develop the appropriate helmets and other kinds of equipment to reduce concussions and other non-concussion injuries succeed.
“I think that will go a long way in parents again feeling comfortable allowing their children to participate.”
By Jeff Cunningham
Assistant Director of Media Relations, Mid-Eastern Athletic Conference
