BCSP year 30 begins this week

LUT WILLIAMS BCSP Editor

Steve McNair

This week begins the 30th year of publication of the Black college SportS page.

Over the span of nearly three decades we’ve seen and covered a lot in the HBCU landscape.

In our inaugural year, 1994, we chronicled the late Alcorn State quarterback Steve McNair’s incredible run at the coveted Heisman Trophy. The buzz McNair generated that season had been nearly impossible to match.

That was until NFL Hall of Famer Deion Sanders brought his on- and off- field magic to the SWAC as head football coach at Jackson State over the last two seasons.

Sanders’ presence on and off the field generated unprecedented national coverage and exposure. It seemed like every time “Coach Prime” made a move or opened his mouth something controversial and headline-grabbing followed.

His signing of the top high school player in the country – Travis Hunter – in 2021 sent a shudder through the halls of big- time college football. His vows to dominate the SWAC and break- up the fabric of college football partially came true.

He did dominate the SWAC but came up short in two tries against MEAC champions in the season-ending Celebration Bowl before leaving the scene. Those two losses may have been the biggest triumphs for black college sports during his tenure.

We were there to document his entrance and departure from the HBCU platform.

In 1995, the BCSP was there as legendary Grambling football coach, the late Eddie Robinson reached the 400-win plateau. We watched and wrote as his once vaunted program waned in his final years.

We waded through the creation and demise of the Heritage and Pioneer Bowls in the late 1990s and early 2000s and the re-birth of HBCU postseason drama with the Celebration Bowl.

The BCSP told the story as Hampton and Norfolk State left the CIAA and joined the MEAC and when Arkansas-Pine Bluff and Alabama A&M joined the SWAC before the turn of the century.

We’ve been there as the conferences continue to shift over the past three seasons

The BCSP didn’t party in 1999 but mourned the deaths of HBCU basketball coaching legend John McLendon, Jackson State and NFL legend Walter Payton in 1999 and Southern and NBA vet Bobby Phils among others in early 2000.

We had similar laments when HBCU legends Willis Reed and Otis Taylor, and BCSP stalwart Eric Moore left us over the past year and when cohort Roscoe Nance passed in 2021.

We have documented black college players in the NFL every year since we started in ’94. There were 92 players from the HBCU ranks in the league that year. There were a third of that number, just (31) this past season (2022).

These 29 years have been littered with dramatic wins and equally dramatic losses, incredible highs and pain-staking lows.

It has continued to be our pleasure and delight to mark for posterity the great contributions these institutions and their products have produced.

We intend to do nothing less in 2023.