Bring in an undermanned team from a historically black school so we can kick the shit out of them, and pay them for the privilege?
I'm not crazy about that setup. That's some tokenist shit right there.
Quite frankly better than patting ourselves on the back, the effort would be better spent on working with the local SB community and issues that our own students have.
Most recently
2012-13: Mississippi Valley State, Delaware State
2014-15: Grambling
2016-17: North Carolina A&T
2018-19: Central State
2019-20: Howard
I'll add that many ND students already are engaged with the local community, way more than when I was in schiil.
which would work much better in basketball than in football for multiple reasons, including the severe competitive imbalance in football.
ND is going to be playing at Howard next season. It was supposed to be this season, but the game was postponed a year so Howard would have the opportunity to have a quality crowd at the game.
Reference to this a couple posts down.
Is this a return game for their visit last year? Is it a home-and-home? Or a 2-for-1?
Any idea what the catalyst is for the visit to Howard?
And how do you find out about these games pre-announcement?
Thanks again!
Allow them a game in our stadium on a Friday night and make it part of the season ticket package. Pick up all their costs, bring / share the field with their / our bands. Donate seats to our game the following day. Money losing prop for ND so it wouldn’t happen....
NFL teams travel for scrimmages. Maybe ND could travel to a school and/or pay expenses for the HBCU.
This is how the university promotes itself when it has television viewers' attention.
If that's the bar they've set (virtue signaling or otherwise), that's the bar they should clear.
If they could do this without it being promotional, and to have a real impact, go for it. Disclaimer: I am not fit to judge what real impact is, how to measure it, nor do I know how they'd execute.
that program has been on the rise for the past several seasons. Hell they may make it a competitive game.
Tarik Cohen of the Bears is an Aggie
As you said, competitiveness of the game wouldn't be the main idea, but the Sagarin predictive rankings difference between ND last year and the best of the HBCU come out to about 40-50 points.
The SWAC and MEAC schools aren’t even particularly competitive within FCS.
I don’t want to go do the research, but I’ll bet it has been many, many years since either conference has produced an NCAA quarterfinalist ..... and “lackluster” would probably flatter their FCS playoff record in recent decades.
The competitive gap is just too wide in football. This is more feasible in basketball, and I think there were rumors within the past year that we do have a home-and-home upcoming with Howard ..... not sure whether true.
The SWAC and MEAC have registered some impressive NCAA tournament upsets over high seeds: Southern over Georgia Tech, Coppin State over South Carolina, Hampton over Iowa State, Norfolk State over Missouri all come to mind. And there may have been additional ones.
The SWAC hasn't played in the playoffs since creating a conference championship game in 1999, and the MEAC dropped their AQ status to the FCS playoffs in 2015 so that they could have their champion meet the SWAC champion in the Celebration Bowl.
In any case, I saw a couple of reports that the MEAC's existence might end up in question after Florida A&M decided to leave the MEAC for the SWAC.
Not a lot of close losses either. I'm not sure there's any evidence to suggest the SWAC would have been materially more successful than the MEAC. If these conferences could credibly compete at the FCS playoff level, I think they would still be doing so.
NCA&T, the pre-eminent HBCU program in recent years and winner of four Celebration Bowls from 2015-19, did earn an at-large bid in 2016, losing 39-10 to Richmond in the first round (round of 24).
I don't recall games in recent seasons in which HBCUs have played competitively against P5 or good G5 teams, but perhaps there have been some. I do recall that Howard upset UNLV three years ago as something like a 45-point underdog. And notably, the self-proclaimed Harvard of the West (that school based in Ann Arbor) notched a 63-6 win over the Delaware State Hornets in 2009.
As an indicator of the scheduling suitability of HBCUs, Rutgers played 11 HBCU games in the ten seasons from 2008-17. Rutgers won all 11 games and pitched seven shutouts, including five in a row. The average score was roughly 44-5 and only one game was closer than four scores.
Not all of the HBCUs are in these conferences. Hampton recently left the MEAC for the Big South, and Tennessee State is in the Ohio Valley.
We are one of - how many? two? schools never to have played one.
Oh, and not to mention, the only two schools that fit in this category are Florida A&M and Howard, whose stadiums seat 25,000 and 10,000 respectively.
It would be more competitive and would probably get some interest. Do it in the spring so it doesn't disrupt the fall.
USC was going to play UC Davis in 2021 to end their no-FCS streak, but response was so overwhelmingly negative that they paid them off and replaced them with San Jose State.
It’s not like we aren’t playing buy games against tomato cans. The spirit of the streak is already kind of over. And if it was tied into something like playing Grambling in something like the Eddie Robinson classic (Does that game still exist?), even the most devout/douchebag Michigan fan wouldn’t say anything.
The linked 2019 HBCU footbal preview lists 21 HBCUs with FCS teams.
formerly D-1AA.
playing only FBS schools might have been the factor that got us into the 2018 Playoffs.
Some of those schools have unbelievably kicka$$ bands, so halftime would be cool.
He was given an L by North Dakota (not NDSU) in a championship game.
If you feel pride in ND when thinking of Hesburgh championing social causes, then such a distinction for the football team pales.