Since the inception of the college football playoffs in 2013, there has been much debate about college playoff systems and their implementation in other regions of the game, such as the HBCU football conferences.
When you think about the current HBCU-league format it was made for an era of a wild west, any given Saturday-type of atmosphere.
In 2018, the emphasis on analytics and statistics has demanded a more sure-fire and unquestionable championship determinator.
HBCU football is separated into four conferences, including our own SWAC, the MEAC, the CIAA, and the SIAC. With many HBCUs in these different conferences being thrown around the three division classes in the NCAA, the Division 1 College Football Playoff is an impossibility for many schools who many share the same conference as a potential playoff teams but don’t have the student population or funding to compete on a higher-Division level.
With the postseason being constructed the way that it is now, many of the historically bad schools have lost motivation to even attempt to work towards the postseason.
If you aren’t undeniably great or if you don’t have a big name, such as the Southern Universities of the world, then you are eliminated from playoff contention all together. This culture has to stop.
It is no secret that many people of color have went on to become some of the greatest athletes to ever play almost any sport in existence.
To that point, HBCUs have historically presented the world of sports with some of the best athletes in the world who get little recognition for their talent because of the lack of opportunity that comes with playing for a smaller market university.
A college football playoff system is something that takes many different people with many different backgrounds working in synch to create.
Even in the upper-echelon known as the FBS, it took decades in order for the college football leadership to come together and come to the general consensus to fix the game. In the case of HBCUs, this fact is even more prevalent when you consider the lack of funds and resources available to HBCUs and their individual sports programs.
All of this being said, the world of college football owes this change to their student-athletes if no one else.
The student athlete puts his body at risk year in and year out working towards the goal of college football immortality.
To have a format where some of the best athletes in the world don’t even get the opportunity to showcase their talents in what they are best at it is a shortsighted flaw in the college football system.
The four aforementioned conferences that represent HBCU sports also have some of the greatest athletes in the world developing and dominating with not a single camera on them.
Those kids who attend HBCUs work hard every summer to have the chance to call themselves the best.
In the current postseason format, HBCU football conferences are working with, however, the aspect of a true, undisputed champion is a pipe dream.
If the leadership of the NCAA, along with these four conferences coming together however, the idea of a true, undisputed champion can in fact be a genuine possibility one day in the world of HBCU football.
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Is an HBCU Playoff feasible?
March 20, 2018
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