Reclaiming Athletic Dominance at HBCU’s is only an Adjustment away! 🏈🏀⚾
If Black schools in America are going to return to the days of Glory that were once powerful enough to Empower Gigantic corporations such as the NFL, MLB, NBA, the NCAA, and a few others; then we must first understand how we’ve been deceived. We have allowed recruiters and systemic racism to rewrite a narrative that has held Black kids to a lofty and unfair standard of expectation. We have allowed an unfair system to come into our communities for profit, taking their picks at high school talents, while being granted the authority to rank talent based on the very minimal time that the recruiter has for observation. Many times these rankings are solely based upon which kids have the financial means or connections to be able to participate in multiple preparation/evaluation camps all across the nation. So what if your kid doesn’t have the money to market himself or has yet to develop into superstar form by the age of 16? Does that mean that he/she isn’t worthy of such high accolades, simply because he/she wasn’t born to privileged parents? Systemic Racism is the reason that we can go to almost any youth league football game in America and witness gifted kids scoring 2,3,4, and sometimes more touchdowns a game. We have to question what happens to this exceptional skill as the kid gets older. Does his skillset instantly deteriorate or does his peers do an unbelievable job of catching up? I do not believe that our answer would be found in either of the above. However I do believe that as our superstar youth get older, they are taught a system that is unfavorable to exploiting their talents, yet one that is supportive of a larger system of revenue. Please allow me to explain.
In youth league football, there are no major requirements that would restrict Black Coaches from coaching Black Youth and therefore the full arsenal of the kids' talents are vividly displayed during his/her youth. In most cases, youth league coaches play the best talent with genuine intentions of winning the game. The coaches for the most part aren’t pressured and therefore most coach as if they have nothing to lose, while placing all cards on the table pursuing victory. Once the talented kid develops and gets older the raw skill set that initially afforded him recognition is slowly becoming vanished and his new arsenal is a much tamer or a watered down version of his former self. Black Americans have always been taught team and agenda first. This is why it seems so selfish of great players when playmakers ask for more touches. Most coaches feel as if the player is going outside of the agenda or scheme, when the he/she seeks more of a role or playing time . This system equalizes the talent and urges the talented player to become more mechanical and rely less on his/her raw talents. This is a result of a system that was inherited and collectively taught by coaches as our kids rise through the levels of amateur sports. By the time our talented kids reach High School, some coaches can no longer identify the talent that they were responsible for identifying, elevating, and then introducing to the world.
In most Instances all the valuable lessons and endless fundamentals are Initially taught by coaches from the community and as the kid rises, all things that made him great becomes almost unrecognizable. This system unfairly eradicates much of what initially made our youth successful and slowly and conforms our kids to a much more accepted brand of sports. It is when our youth refuse to endorse a system that urges them to take back seats to talents that are far less dynamic than their very own, that they are then cast out and considered troubled. This is another reason that you can witness some of the greatest basketball legends that you’ve never heard about balling on basketball courts in several inner-city pickup games. These players in some instances never got a solid chance and were given up on. Some simply lacked adequate support and were unable to put themselves in position to win.
Black coaches must shoulder some of the responsibility for playing their role in this manipulation and also for allowing black kids to be unfairly judged at a very young age. Why are there less than a handful of Black coaches in the NFL, when this league has relentlessly recruited Black Star Power that has kept the National Football League in a very comfortable Financial position. We have allowed our Black kids to be influenced by a system that only allows for the Black coaches at the youth level to identify athletic abilities and then our kids are trained for the system of the NFL that has arguably been discriminatory towards the hiring of Black Coaches. An advanced system that no longer focuses on our kids athletic gift, but more so on the mission of the coaching staff. Therefore when some high-profile talents reach the NFL, they are given authority to verbally express or recommend candidates for coaching hires. This recommendation is respected and highly considered and because the Black coaches teachings and handling of the high profile athlete have become a distant memory, the player then only recommends the system and face that he is familiar with; as a candidate for hire. Unfortunately for the Black coach, that leaves him on the outside looking in. This is despite all of his hard work and dedication that has been personally committed to the building of a prospect.
Another very important question that needs to be addressed is, Why our popular coaches and players come into programs feeling as if they must be a strict disciplinarian and at the same time they feel responsible for uniting the fanbase. Their major focus has now become withdrawn from winning games and their efforts are redirected towards All phases of rebuilding. Most times when Black coaches are offered opportunities at Major College Programs (because of systematic racism), it’s only after a decade or more of the program declining. However, the Black coach is immediately expected to step in and repair years of questionable coaching hire/fires, community relations, academic failures, maintain competitive recruitment, and also win games among so many other important coaching duties. The New Black coaching hire doesn’t have much time to devote to electrifying the fanbase on Gameday, but he/she feels as though it is mandatory in order to validate their hire. Years of Oppression and lack of Opportunity has left many Black coaches (at larger Institutions) feeling as though they must instantly save their new schools, despite these programs already experiencing years of failure. The pressure is enormous and is unfairly rooted in outdated Jim Crow era unwritten ideology which was a belief that Black people weren’t allowed to lead, enroll, and even were prohibited from playing certain high profile positions in sports that required thought. This is the deceptive story that was told to Black people because the positions that required thought, were mainly positions of leadership such as the Quarterback & Point Guard positions. These positions were initially denied to Black athletes and therefore these roles had been traditionally off-limits.
We have allowed our minds to become strategically manipulated and therefore we are tricked out of very valuable talent. We have given up on our kids in many ways based on his/her character that hasn’t even had enough time to develop, yet we have allowed kids to be eliminated from opportunity because of a random early mistake and therefore they are then labeled troublesome. This misconception has caused many of our most talented Black children to become disenfranchised and their dreams are unjustly ended well before they ever have a chance. We have been totally unfair to our youth, asking them to be more responsible in most cases than their parents have so far displayed. The same system that has no mercy, empathy, or care as to what life throws at our kids after they are removed from college campuses.
We have subconsciously cut off our own sources and pipelines of success by allowing those who have found clever discriminatory methods of eliminating certain people from society, to manipulate our minds and make us believe that our children 18 years and under bear the same responsibility of maintaining morals, standards, beliefs, and conduct as a responsible adult who has had the opportunity to experience life and grow. In most cases, Student-athletes have yet to reach their full mental capabilities whenever they begin Campus life. Many of the Black students come from single-parent homes and some are void of active fathers in their lives. The results of Oppression have broken up many homes in Black America and therefore proper guidance and leadership is absent early on in most African American homes. Generational hardships that have been unaddressed in Black America have left some high schoolers physically and mentally unprepared and this is the reason that many FIVE star talents arrive on University campuses with huge expectations that are soon deflated. Fortunately for the university coaching staff, they have an abundance of talent and are able to sit certain superstar talents out for a year, in order to prep them for a new system that coaches deem that some superstars are unprepared for. The Red-shirt option is also used to sideline talents who are unable to come in and immediately fit into their new scheme. One of the most common uses for the Redshirt option is when a school has an excess of talent at a certain position and the school chooses to initially restrict the playing time of the athlete in order to grant him/her another full year of eligibility after their Red-shirt year. Although this option limits the playing time for the athlete, it can also being used medically to reserve one year of eligibility for an injured athlete. This brings me to my next point, if a 5-star talent with great character and background aren’t ready to make productive decisions on game day and therefore is red-shirted, then what makes a recruiter think that a kid who hasn’t had the same opportunities or proper preparation should be able to be held to a somewhat higher standard in life. Why is it that coaches will take chances on our most troubled youth with Superior talent but then convince us that less talented individuals are a much greater risk? Have we contemplated the fact that some of our kids have truly been neglected by the system and therefore affected ones sometimes show very little desire to succeed.
How can we continue to penalize innocent kids who are born victims to situations in which they have no authority? Despite society’s unfair labeling, we have to remember that we are dealing with children who have inherited bad situations. One that he/she never had the opportunity to gain control of. A situation that is a result of the Childs parents' decisions. Why should a kid be punished or penalized for the conditions that he was born into? How can we continue to allow our kids to be judged by the very same standards as other kids who are born to much more favorable conditions? This has caused us to eliminate or exclude kids that could have easily been a success story, had someone effectively reached them.
We hear stories all the time about college coaches at some of the most successful college programs in the country bragging about the success rate and the great character of the kids that are a part of their programs. Through successful recruitment, many coaches at large Institutions have the opportunity to assemble an assortment of some of the most talented players from all across the nation. Therefore they are able to grab the attractive superstar kid that doesn’t have a negative juvenile background and one that excels inside the classroom without the problems of the average student. Why does this cause our Black coaches/Coaches of color to follow the very same Blueprint that has already substantially minimized their own success rate? We must relearn that the majority of our Black Children due to poverty, won’t be coming from neighborhoods of traditional success, but sometimes from areas of high crime rates and extremely disadvantaged districts. These Black Children are Warriors waiting for fair Opportunity and If we are able to effectively maximize the extraordinary abilities of these children, then we must first eliminate the unfair judgment and assessment of their early lives by ones who have only taken and profited off of Our children. This has caused only one or two from each of our communities to sneak through while leaving back more than a few. We have to do something about this issue and The M.O.C.H.A. Foundation wishes to inspire your thoughts of Change.
WE HAVE THE POWER TO REWRITE THIS VERY UNFAIR NARRATIVE. IT IS OUR OBLIGATION TO ENSURE THAT OUR KIDS ARE TREATED MUCH BETTER THAN WE HAVE ALLOWED OURSELVES TO BE MISHANDLED.