Legendary Virginia Union head basketball coach Dave Robbins will be inducted into the Virginia Hall of Fame in April 2010.
Going into the hall with him are his three Division II national championships, more than 700 career victories, a throng of former players who made it in the NBA, and a full-fledged fashion war with Mr. CIAA.
What was almost a reality for the SWAC last year became reality for the CIAA football championship in 2009, as Bowie State University advanced to the conference championship game by way of a three-way coin flip tie breaker.
The accounting firm of Cavanaugh and Nelson administered the coin toss tiebreaker, where the three contending Athletic Directors simultaneously flipped coins; where the Bowie State Interim AD, Arlene Creek, flipped a tail versus two heads tossed by Virginia Union and Elizabeth City State.
Is it just me, or is there a way college football can solve ties without reliance on chance? Why keep track of stats like total scoring offense and defense if you can’t use them to determine which teams are better than others?
If they did, we’d likely be looking at an Elizabeth City State – Fayetteville State championship, which is what CIAA coaches predicted in the preseason. With an average margin of victory of 9.7 points per game on the year, the Vikings are .5 better than the Bulldogs and 1.3 points better than the Panthers.
There are countless other ways you could determine who is a better team between the three, but for as close as they were in 2009, you really can’t be disappointed with the upstart Bulldogs drawing the right side of the coin.
Several HBCUs have been ranked on national preseason basketball polls in both the NCAA and NAIA.
Tougaloo College and Johnson C. Smith are ranked in the top 25 of the National Association of Basketball Coaches preseason men’s basketball poll. The TC Bulldogs went 22-11 last season, and are ranked 21st on the Association’s Division I NAIA poll. Langston University also received votes, but were 50 points behind 25th-ranked Olivet Nazarene.
Johnson C. Smith is ranked 19th in the NCAA Division II poll. The Golden Bulls defeated the Virginia Union Panthers in February of this year for their second-consecutive CIAA basketball championship. The Panthers fell 14 points shy of making the top 25, and were joined by the SIAC’s Benedict College, who missed the rankings by 10 points.
West Virginia State, regular season champs of the WVIAC, also received 14 points in the Division II rankings. The Yellow Jackets, along with the JCSU Golden Bulls, were selected 24th and 23rd respectively for the Division II Bulletin top 25.
How fitting that representation from the CIAA East in the conference championship game will come down to Virginia Union and Bowie State – two teams picked to finish fifth and seventh respectively in the preseason conference predictions.
Some months ago, I penned that it was egotistical and dangerous for Virginia Union athletic director Michael Bailey to take the reigns as the school’s head football coach.
I felt even more heated when it was published that Bailey had applied for the vacant Winston-Salem State athletic director position, just weeks before the start of the football season for the Panthers.
But through all of the obvious and seemingly egotistically-selfish moves made by Bailey in the offseason, he has his Panthers in position to win the CIAA football championship. Everything else is just drama, so it seems.
And I’m sorry that I called it wrong on the wins and losses side of the equation.
Some time ago, I opined that Virginia Union Athletic Director/head Football Coach Michael Bailey put himself in a position to be in over his head, and that Union stood a good chance of suffering under the stress of his double-dipping.
Now we find that with just weeks to go until training camp begins, Bailey is interviewing for the vacant athletic director position at Winston-Salem State?
Matt Pilgrim is best known for his acrimonious departure from Hampton University. Last week, he was unceremoniously cut from the Kentucky Wildcats basketball team, leaving him with one year to get his reputation right, and his game noticed by professional scouts.
So where is the next logical stop for Pilgrim, whose father says has suitors in the Big East, ACC and other power conference programs? None of those power conference institutions are likely to plug in a transfer for one year when they can develop talent out of high school, so the Division I options would appear limited at face value.
So how about the CIAA?
The CIAA will have three games on television this year, each being produced by Urban Sports and Entertainment Group.
| SATURDAY, October 10, 2009 | Shaw vs. Fayetteville State |
| Luther “Nick” Jeralds Stadium | |
| Fayetteville, NC | |
| Kickoff – 1:00 p.m. (EST) | |
| SATURDAY, October 24, 2009 | HOMECOMING |
| Bowie State vs. Virginia Union | |
| Hovey Field | |
| Richmond, VA | |
| Kickoff – 1:00 p.m. (EST) | |
| SATURDAY, November 07, 2009 | CIAA CHAMPIONSHIP |
| Western Winner vs. Eastern Winner | |
| Durham County Stadium | |
| Durham, NC | |
| Kickoff – 1:00 p.m. (EST) |
Virginia Union will face Virginia State on national television this Fall, courtesy of the CBS College Sports TV package with Division II football.
The package – the fourth since Division II and CBS College Sports established their partnership to give Division II schools live TV exposure for their football and basketball programs (in addition to live postseason coverage in those and other sports) – is the first to feature both premium-game match-ups and “conference rotation games” that league commissioners help select.
This is a really big step for D-II black college football, and its not a bad thing that they got a decent inter-state rivalry on the schedule. The only thing that would’ve drawn more anticipation for this kind of exposure is the Inaugural Commemorative Classic between Johnson C. Smith and Livingstone College.
Virginia Union University is one of the hallmark programs of the CIAA. Rare is the occasion when men’s basketball and football can claim multiple recent championships at one institution, and the Panthers can make that claim.
But they aren’t without their problems. Legendary coach Dave Robbins recently retired, VUU athletic director Michael Bailey is also the head football coach in his first season, which is never a good thing for resources and attention to other sports.
