I want to talk about some of the things that have been going on right now in the competitive marketplace of the NCAA. I call it a competitive marketplace because the number one products are the students and student-athletes. Right now we have a situation where a young man by the name of travels Hunter, who was the five-star number one player in the country gave a verbal commitment earlier in the year to Florida State, but then decided to go to Jackson State University. This has caused waves and reverberations in the internet sphere and the Twittersphere and the Facebook place.
There’s another player, Josh Griffis, who was also on the FSU team, who has also decided to transfer to Jackson State. I think we have two or three people in the NBA, who did not go to college, they went straight from high school to NBA, who is now playing golf at HBCUs. There is a shift that went on in the late 80s, early 90s, which is going on now again, some of that happened before during the Reagan era and we see it happening right now. Even though this still is the Trump era whether you believe it or not, and it’s a quality era. Just like the Reagan era was a quality era. I think we’ll look back on this particular era. Just like we look on that one and we don’t see it as negatively as we saw at the time. But what we’re beginning to find out is that the feelings that people have harbored internally are beginning to let ooze out.
So, if a young man chooses to go to a school if a young man chooses to go to Florida for the state, or Wyoming and they don’t choose to go to the Howard University of Mississippi Valley or Jackson State, we don’t get on the internet and spew hate and vitriol for the student, for their family about the other school. It seems that since this particular student has decided to go to Jackson State University, now you have people like Dabo Swinney saying that there’s recruitment tampering going on. Then now we need to start looking at the way that the open portal exists. See that this open Portal was not an issue or problem until Deion Sanders came in with his company and found out the hole in the game. He can level the playing field by leveraging his professional relationships as the PW eyes do to provide sponsorship opportunities to his students because now students can be sponsored. So back when I was playing in the 90s, there were schools (not going to mention the names) who used to send their students to car dealerships where they were signing them up for one cent a month lease agreements. That’s not illegal. The guy still paying for the car, but he’s paying for that one cent a month or $1 a month. They’ll set up the lease agreement and allow the person to drive a brand new car. Were they given the car? No. Are they paying for the car? Yes. Is it the lease agreement? Yes. Are they leverage in the relationships that they have, the professional relations to have? Yes. So you got donors who donate to the car dealership. The car dealership can then provide one cent and $1 leases to athletes and everything is legal. Why? Because of monetary resources. I’m aware of a few schools that used to do this. I’m not putting these schools out there. This is not what you do. But what I’m telling you is that these particular resources are now available for all persons.
These particular institutions have always been leveraging their relationships. When some of the athletes who have gone to the professional ranks like Eddie George and, and Deion Sanders, when they choose to come back, they come back and they go to the HBCUs. Now they can provide some of those same resources. This is where things get a little touchy. We have people who I’ve coached in the NFL with no football experience. They never played football a day in their lives. Not one. Not one. None of these people are black. These people who have never played football who coached in the NFL, all of them are white. I will challenge you to find me a person in any league. Who is black, who has never played the sport ever, Who has coaching at a high level? it’s not happening. You have people like Deion Sanders who have coached at a high level, who get told that have to prove themselves coaching before they get a coaching job at the same institutions that they played for and played against. Come on man. . The same people that played at the PW eyes, who then played in the NFL, cannot get the head coaching positions in the NFL, and then when they go coach at HBCUs and then leverage what they’ve done professionally and personally. Then you have people like Dabo Swinney saying that there is tampering going on.
Another coach said I hope that the kid gets the money that he was promised. At any given time during the game, there are 22 players on that football field. And those 22 players on that field are filling upstands from zero people in the stands to 100,000 people in the stands. If we look at this football field, it has color to it from New Jersey to the people. The major issue is, and everybody knows this, that the NFL college football, mimics the slave-trading bloc, it mimics it. We look at the players we find out who can do what and how we think they can run jump in and talk to the rock of the ball or shoot the pill or whatever. Then we put them in a stadium and then we make money off of them and the institution moves forward. But if the institution can’t make money off of these people, they will find some different people. The problem that they’re having right now is they never thought that the high-level talent would decide to go to HBCUs.
This is what is occurring, it already has been occurring. I was having a discussion with Bryan Fischer, about Tim Tebow. My freshman year I was starting as a 17-year-old and I was playing for Howard University and we played against Alcorn State. The two quarterbacks that were on the field. Jay Walker and Steve McNair were way better than Tim Tebow. Both of them. I’ve done athletic development, long term athletic development has been the headquarters of the Bahamas Judo Federation. I understand talent very clearly. I understand speed, talent, and leadership. Quality. I got it. I got it. I also understand what we call systemic and institutionalized racism. And it is across the board in the Organizations. There’s a reason why these institutions are set up the way that they are. And there’s a flow in them the way that they are. You can have systemic and institutional racism without people being racist. They don’t have to be any racist in that. It’s just how the numbers and the things fall. It’s like when you say, if you’ve never lined up and played in the SEC, you never line up and played in the SWAC. If you never learn how to play in the Myakka, you say, these players are better than those players, man, you don’t know that. How would you know? How would you know? Are you it’s like, it’s like you telling me that every player, every quarterback in the SEC is better than Sanders. It’s not true. Sanders is one of the best quarterbacks in the country, no matter what school he was at, it wouldn’t matter. The school that he was at wouldn’t matter. He’s just good. And he’s good no matter where he is. Now what happens is you have some students and some players who are good that you’ve never heard of, because institutionally, they are at schools that aren’t looked at as favorably as other schools. That happens to be an institutionalized system that is in place. If it falls along the color lines, it is called institutionalized racism. That doesn’t mean that the people there are racist. It just means based upon this particular system, when I drop in black balls and white balls when the balls come out of the bottom, the white balls come out and the black balls don’t come out because it doesn’t mean that the pegs inside of that system are racist.
I went to the Olympics, the people that played with were at such a phenomenal level it’s just unbelievable. Some of those people were better than the people that are in the NFL. For some reason, people think that all the people with the best grades get into Harvard. There are so many applications for people for Harvard. Everybody doesn’t get in, everybody doesn’t get to the seat. So how do they determine who gets the seat? They still pick and choose, the person with the highest GPA doesn’t always get in, the person with the lowest out of that pool doesn’t always get in, they pick and they choose. Some of it is a numbers game and some of it is if you do want to provide yourself with the best opportunity based upon how the system is running to go to the NFL, then some people will make that decision to go to a PWI because they think that that’s gonna allow them to get looked at.
I’ve sat in meetings with people from Yale, people from Harvard, people from Stanford. Whatever top school you have. I have sat in meetings with these people. I have been thoroughly impressed with people from MIT. I’ve sat in a room with people from MIT and I was thoroughly impressed. Some of these other schools. These people don’t know anything. They don’t know anything about black folks at all. There is institutionalized racism in K to 1. If you want to take AP classes, the AP classes that are offered in the united states are AP American history and AP One AP European History. Is there an AP African history course? No. Why not? Why isn’t there an AP African history course? Because of the AP European History course. People go through from kindergarten to 12th grade take to go to college for four or five years and they don’t take one class on black thought, one class on black feminist stuff. They haven’t read one book on African history, on African Americans, African diaspora, they don’t know anything.
There was a host of us from HBCUs that went down to a University of Miami over the summer We went to the University of Miami to do 707, It was the HBCUs versus the PW eyes Castle floor and Florida State University of Miami and we are the dog piss out of those dudes. They had no speed, it is like they were running in the mud. I felt I felt bad for them that they were out there getting done like that. This is a night and day difference. What usually happens is that there’s a huge difference man with the line. When we played against Marshall and Randy Mos, the receiver on our team at the time, McCarthy Johnson who also wants to league. He had a better game to Randy Moss.
So let’s be careful. I can tell you this. I encourage my kids to go to historically black colleges and universities because I want them to want to know about themselves. I want them to know about their history. I want them to be around people who respect them. I want them to be around people who love them. I want them to be around people who want them to be there and I want them to be around people who are not looking to just utilize them to fill up a stadium or look at what they can do for them. Because I tell you this if that guy from Florida State love Dion as much as he said he loved Dion, then he would want to be on to be successful where he is. He didn’t love the arm.
He loved Dion as long as Dion provided to Florida State as soon as Dion started being worried about Dion, he didn’t love him anymore, he burned Dion’s jersey. He loved the idea of what Deon can do for you. When Dion was checking in Jive and on the football field, shuffling the hour was okay. But when beyond took his money and his resources and learned the game that y’all taught him and implemented that game at Jackson State, Now you want to change the rules. Now you’re talking about people tampering and now some of you don’t love Deon anymore. I think you have a deep-seated and deep-rooted problem. You need to examine yourself. If you say that you love somebody that they love what they, even if they can’t do anything for you.
Visit www.coffeewithrhadi.com and get the book coffee with Rhadi today. If you already have the book, Buy a copy for somebody else. I appreciate it. This is Dr. Ferguson. Have a super fantastic day. Remember, I love you. God bless you best…
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