How HBCUs like NC Central, North Carolina A&T are navigating changing sports landscape

By Andrew Carter

Skip Perkins hasn’t yet had time for much decorating inside his office at N.C. Central University. He returned to his alma mater in early June to become its director of athletics, and almost three months later the walls around his desk are mostly still bare. Part of that is due to his schedule. He’s a busy man these days, charting the future of the Central athletics department. And part of the lack of decor is because he hopes it’s only a matter of time before the space is renovated, anyway.

The Eagles’ administrative offices are part of a long list of upgrades Perkins would like to make, and sooner than later. Sometimes it’s difficult to prioritize them all, given the endless needs. A year ago, Central’s softball team traveled from campus in Durham to Cary for games and practices, an untenable situation Perkins described as “totally unfair,” and one he wants to remedy. The football team, meanwhile, practices on its home field and has been using locker rooms that are largely the same as they were when the Eagles opened O’Kelly-Riddick Stadium in the mid-1970s. The men’s and women’s basketball teams don’t have a separate practice facility, either; instead they share space and the two baskets — the only two baskets — at historic McDougald-McLendon Arena. Perkins’ office is on the arena’s ground floor, just down the hall from the court. Which means when he comes to work every day, he’s reminded of how he’d like to renovate that building, too.

“I mean, this is the same building that Sam Jones played in,” Perkins said, referencing Central’s most prominent basketball alum. “So, you know, we’ve got to keep up with the Joneses.”

College athletics has reached a crossroads and an inflection point. The past year has brought developments that have changed everything: name, image and likeness (NIL) rights for athletes; another round of major conference realignment, with the Big Ten’s move to add USC and UCLA; another massive television rights deal, also for the Big Ten, that instantly became the envy of rival leagues.

The illusion of major college sports as a pursuit rooted in amateurism and the noble mission of providing an education — long a fallacy, anyway — has more and more been proven to be a mirage. And in this summer of change, another truth has emerged, too: more is never enough. The ACC has become Exhibit A, given that it continues to set revenue records yet finds itself imperiled because of a less generous (compared to the SEC and Big Ten) TV deal. In his office, Perkins smiled widely at the thought of all the grumbling over money in conferences several financial stations above his own. He smiled not because he enjoyed the consternation but because, at times, it had all become so difficult to fathom — schools with $100 million athletics budgets worrying about money, when Central’s is about $13 million. The thought of it all brought out “that inner chuckle,” Perkins said.

“It’s interesting when they’re making moves that can create an extra $25 million,” he said. “You know, that’s twice our budget … it’s one of those things where, wow, if you’re having problems with these types of numbers, what’s going on here?” Indeed, college athletics has become a veritable gold mine for those at the top of the financial pyramid. Athletic departments in major conferences are making enough money to build palatial facilities, and renovate those that already exist. Coaches and administrators are becoming wealthier and wealthier. The Big Ten just agreed to a TV rights deal that’ll generate at least a billion dollars in revenue — annually. Meanwhile, those in less prosperous conferences are trying to find where they fit into a changing college athletics landscape. The gap between the haves and have-nots grows wider. For North Carolina’s two NCAA Division I historically Black universities, Central and North Carolina A&T, the divide continues to expand, along with the pressure to try to keep up.

Along with N.C. Central, North Carolina A&T became a charter member of the Mid-Eastern Athletic Conference at its inception in 1970. In its original form, the MEAC was home to seven schools, all HBCUs, between Delaware and South Carolina, and the conference came into existence in a time when racial progress remained slow to arrive in the South. Four years before the creation of the MEAC, in 1966, Charles Scott became the first Black scholarship athlete at North Carolina, where he was an integral part of Dean Smith’s early success. Another four years passed before Duke welcomed Don Blackman, who became the university’s first Black scholarship basketball player. MEAC schools in those days provided opportunities to Black athletes that were more difficult to come by outside of HBCUs. The bonds tying the MEAC together went much deeper than shared sports rivalries. By the mid-2010s, though, North Carolina A&T began exploring its options, and questioning if the MEAC still provided the best match for its aspirations.

There wasn’t any one factor that led A&T to that point, said Earl Hilton III, its athletic director, but “just the continued assessment and continued evaluation, trying to read the tea leaves — as everyone is doing.” In 2021 that process led the Aggies out of the MEAC and into the Big South Conference; then, earlier this year, A&T decided to leave the Big South for the Colonial Athletic Association, which is among the nation’s most formidable FCS football leagues. It was not part of A&T’s long-term strategic plan, Hilton said, to be a part of three conferences in three years. In moving to the Big South, though, and now again to the CAA, Hilton believes the university’s athletic department will be better prepared to navigate the changes that he anticipates will arrive sooner than later throughout college athletics.

Among those potential changes: a restructuring of how college sports are governed, with more power and responsibility shifting from the NCAA to individual conferences. The NCAA Division I Transformation Committee, which began its work earlier this year, has been charged with evaluating the state of college athletics and creating recommendations that would lead to “true transformation” in the way Division I is structured. This fall, according to the committee’s official timeline, it will spend months “exploring a new D1 model.” If and when a new model emerges, Hilton believes A&T will find itself in a more favorable position in the CAA instead of the Big South or the MEAC. “I think it’s safe to say that this new iteration of the NCAA constitution will put considerably more emphasis — more administrative, perhaps even more enforcement responsibility at the conference level, where it was once very much a centralized function,” said Hilton, who envisions a day when conference affiliation “will become much more critical” in determining a schools’ future, and what it can provide, than it is now.

By enrollment, A&T is the nation’s largest HBCU. Its campus in Greensboro has undergone something of a transformation, with a sparkling new student center that opened in 2018. When it left the MEAC, A&T left behind 50 years of history and the shared rivalries, and camaraderie, that are unique to HBCUs. The Aggies’ defection has raised questions about the long-term viability of the MEAC which, along with the older and more established Southwestern Athletic Conference, has been a beacon for HBCU athletics. UNPREDICTABLE IS ‘THE NORM RIGHT NOW’ Down the road, in Durham, Perkins sometimes finds himself reflecting, and thinking about how different Central’s campus looks compared to his days as a student there. A four-year captain of the Eagles’ tennis team, he graduated from Central in 1994 with a degree in political science before earning his Masters from Central in public administration and instructional media. On the one hand, the university has come a long way in the past 25 years. On the other, Perkins can take a look at any number of the Eagles’ athletics facilities and gain a reminder of the progress yet to be made. Central hired him as its athletic director in part because of his experience in fundraising, a role in which he excelled at Morgan State and Coppin State.

And now Perkins is charged with steering the Eagles through the turmoil surrounding college athletics and the related drama in the MEAC, where Hampton, Florida A&M and Bethune-Cookman have joined A&T in defecting in recent years. Hampton, like A&T, found a new home in the CAA. FAMU and Bethune-Cookman, meanwhile, joined the SWAC in 2021. “There is no school or conference that is going to be left unscathed,” Perkins said of conference realignment, and the forces behind it at all levels. “… I mean, who ever thought a sister institution, like A&T, would be in three conferences in less than four years? “So I think the unpredictable — the unseen, unknown — is just the norm right now. So you have to be on your toes. And then I think of Central, my alma mater, I’m looking around (and) I’m like, ‘Wow, I never thought that we would be called by a Conference USA or a Sun Belt, with interest.’”

Those conferences, Perkins said, have contacted Central to gauge its potential interest should enough dominoes fall to make such a move tenable. As it is, though, that kind of leap remains unlikely any time soon for Central, given it’s an FCS program on a campus with athletics needs far and wide. Besides, Perkins said, “we’re married to the MEAC.” At least for now. “We’re happy,” Perkins said. “We’re in good shape. But I think you have to be thinking, you know, what could happen tomorrow? Or what could happen a year from now. So I think being prepared and always elevating your brand is important.”

TRYING TO KEEP PACE For schools whose athletic departments operate outside of the media spotlight, brand elevation can be a challenge. The success of the Eagles men’s basketball program under LeVelle Moton has helped raise the university’s profile. In football, Central will have a chance to gain some attention when it begins the season against A&T in Charlotte in the Duke’s Mayo Classic. The long-term future of the Aggie-Eagle Classic, as the schools’ football rivalry is known, isn’t necessarily guaranteed now that A&T and Central are no longer in the same conference. Even so, Hilton said, “I hope we maintain that and keep that in place — (I’ll) certainly do all I can to maintain their rivalry.”

In Charlotte, Central and A&T will converge in the same stadium but at two different points in their athletics trajectories. A&T will beginning its first season in the CAA — short-lived Big South rival Campbell will be joining the Aggies there next year — while Central is holding onto hope that the MEAC finds a way to sustain itself, at least long enough for Central to find an alternative. Both schools share a history of learning to do more with less. In Durham, Central is across town from Duke, where former basketball coach Mike Krzyzewski earned more than $12 million during the 2020-21 season. That figure represents the approximate entirety of Central’s entire athletic department budget. The financial gulf between Central and Duke, and the typical ACC school, has always been considerable. Now it’s even more astronomical, despite the reality that Central, like some of its far wealthier counterparts, is also a member of Division I. In recent years, Perkins said, HBCUs received some measure of a fundraising boost “because of the George Floyd movement.” “We’ve been able to do a little bit better; it’s improved,” he said. “But from a fundraising standpoint, we’re going to have to do better, period, if we’re going to even have a chance to keep up with other FCS schools.” Outside his office, a little ways across campus, Perkins has already identified a place where he’d like to build a new practice facility for the basketball and volleyball teams; the survey work alone cost $12,000, he said — no small price for a department with ever-limited funds. The construction itself is still a ways from becoming reality. Back inside Perkins’ office, the bare walls are like a blank canvas. He hasn’t had time to fill them with mementos or photographs. They’re a reminder of the work yet to be done, a testament to the possibilities.