A&T's AD says Classic is 'over'
BY MIKE POTTER, The Herald-Sun
September 9, 2004 12:59 am
Any talk from Greensboro about a possible ending for the annual Aggie-Eagle Classic football game may be moot.
In the minutes following a skin-of-the-teeth 16-15 victory by North Carolina A&T over N.C. Central on Sunday at Raleigh's Carter-Finley Stadium, A&T athletics director Charlie Davis told the News & Record of Greensboro that he was planning to cancel the series.
"This is over," Davis said to columnist Ed Hardin. "After 2006, I'm ending it."
Davis, whose team survived on Carlos Davalos' career-best 50-yard field goal as time expired, went on to say that it did the Aggies "no good" to play the game, comparing the possible cancellation of the series to his Division I-A alma mater Wake Forest's ending of its highly popular series against Division I-AA Appalachian State.
Never mind that the Aggies will be visiting the Deacons at Groves Stadium on Sept 18.
NCCU athletics director Bill Hayes took exception to Davis' comments and said the A&T athletics director -- the same man who fired him as the Aggies' football coach after the 2002 season -- just doesn't understand black college football.
"Somebody much bigger than Charlie Davis will have to make the decision on a game that's been going on this long," said Hayes, who played in the series as an NCCU lineman and coached in it with the Aggies "Somebody who doesn't have much experience at a black college might not understand that."
Hayes said that the Aggie-Eagle Classic is bigger than the coaches and athletics directors, and that the schools' chancellors -- James Ammons at NCCU and James Renick at A&T -- have far more to do with that game than any other single event on the athletics schedule.
"That's in the chancellors' hands, and they're smart enough to know what the ramifications [of canceling the series] would be," Hayes said.
NCCU has played at least one Division I-AA opponent in every season since the Eagles dropped out of the Mid-Eastern Athletic Conference -- the league to which the Aggies currently belong -- in 1980. Some years, the Eagles have played as many as three.
This Saturday, the Eagles will travel to Dover, Del., to play Division I-AA Delaware State, a team they defeated 21-14 last season. Hayes said that negotiations are in progress to continue the series with Delaware State and to add other Division I-AA opponents.
NCCU essentially has completed its feasibility study concerning a possible move to Division I-AA, which would follow a recent decision by rival Winston-Salem State to make the same move.
Hayes said the study would be presented at the NCCU Board of Trustees meeting on Sept. 22.
Broadway about A&T game: 'We ain't scared ?'
NCCU coach Rod Broadway said he was disappointed to lose and didn't think it was a fluke that the Eagles were in the game until the end.
"We ain't scared of them any more," the second-year Eagles coach said at his Wednesday news conference. "It looks like they're the ones tucking their tails and getting a little chicken right now, now that we're able to compete with them, with all their built-in advantages and their 39 extra scholarships. ?
"The advantage they have is numbers, but I wasn't afraid to play them. I thought we had to protect the football, shorten the game and win the kicking game, which I thought we did until the last play of the game. I said to our players, 'Put your left foot forward and take off the gloves. We're going to have to bare-knuckle it. Don't blink.' "
Clipped wings?
The Eagles suffered one loss in Sunday's game when Donnie Pippen, the senior running back from Roxboro, suffered a knee injury on the second play of the day.
Pippen is not supposed to be available on Saturday, and Broadway said he didn't know how long he would be out.
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