- Delaware State has 20 sports teams – 14 for women and six for men
- The Hornets most recent MEAC football title came in 2007. Their last winning football season was 2012, when they went 6-5.
- DelState lags well behind its conference cohorts in income from rights/licensing
Delaware State University spends more money on athletics than any of its Mid-Eastern Athletic Conference rivals.
Among the nation’s Historically Black Colleges and Universities that play NCAA Division I sports, the Dover university ranks in the top four among expenditures devoted to its sports.
Despite that earnest investment, Delaware State keeps having difficulty producing championship teams, with just one – women’s volleyball – earning a conference title during the 2022-23 school year though several others came close and had very satisfying seasons.
In particular, the DSU football and men’s basketball teams, which bring the most attention, fans and potential income, have not been competitively successful.
DSU continues to fund its athletics almost completely from university coffers while failing to obtain valuable outside financial support from alumni, other individuals, businesses and organizations as successfully as its rivals.
DSU, therefore, relies significantly on itself. For fiscal year 2022, $14.9 million of DSU’s $16.2 million athletic budget was allocated by the university.
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That 92.2% total ranks fifth among the 232 NCAA Division I public schools in USA Today’s annual financial report, released earlier this month. Only Cal State-Northridge, Chicago State, Cal-San Diego and New Jersey Tech had a higher percentage of institutional funding related to athletics.
The information is gleaned from revenue and expense reports that public universities have an obligation to release and is also used in the Knight-Newhouse annual college athletic database. However, DSU did not submit that data this year, which athletic director Alecia Shields-Gadson said “could have just been an administrative oversight.” It was obtained after a Freedom of Information Act request submitted by Delaware Online/The News Journal in conjunction with USA Today.
The University of Delaware also did not submit information this year for the USA Today and Knight-Newhouse reports because, it said in a statement, no state appropriations support the athletic department’s operating budget. A FOIA request has also been submitted to UD to get that information.
DSU’s $16.2 million in revenue and expenses is the highest among the seven MEAC schools included in the USA Today chart. The eighth MEAC member, Howard, is a private university that does not submit data for that assessment but is included in the Department of Education’s Equity in Athletics data.
“I think there’s a recognition that athletics can definitely be one of the windows to the university,” Shields-Gadsen said. “I think we’re definitely one of the windows and there’s a great opportunity for us to leverage athletics, and the exposure and the experience that we have for everyone.”
Norfolk State and Howard are the closest to DSU with each having $15.9 million in revenue and expenses. Next is Morgan State with $14.9 million in those categories. The MEAC schools with the least athletic revenue and expenses are the two that do not field football teams – Maryland-Eastern Shore and Coppin State.
Delaware State does have 20 teams – 14 for women and six for men – which is topped only by Howard’s 21 among MEAC members. No other conference school has more than 16, which Shields-Gadsen said is part of the reason why DSU has more sports-related revenue and costs.
“When you look at the dollars that we’re spending,” Shields-Gadsen said, “we have a model that we try to ensure that every program has access to championships.”
A leader among HBCUs on athletic commitment
There are 23 HBCU schools in NCAA Division I. In addition to the eight MEAC members, that includes the 12 institutions that make up the Southwestern Athletic Conference, Colonial Athletic Association representatives Hampton and North Carolina A&T, and Tennessee State of the Ohio Valley Conference.
Like Howard, SWAC member Bethune-Cookman and Hampton are also private schools that were not included in the USA Today list but are part of the Equity in Athletics analysis.
Only SWAC member Southern University in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, and North Carolina A&T reported greater athletic revenue than DSU among HBCU schools, with Southern at $18.1 million and North Carolina A&T at $16.3 million, according to USA Today.
Figures for expenses show just three HBCU schools that devote more finances to athletics than DSU. They are SWAC programs Prairie View A&M ($18.8 million), Southern ($18.5 million) and Alabama State ($17.8 million).
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“The second I got on campus there was always a sense of trying to support the athletic teams as best they could,” said Rick McCall Jr., who left his position as head pro at Wild Quail Golf and Country Club in Wyoming to become DSU women’s golf coach in 2019. “I always felt like we wouldn’t be breaking records like we are without that.”
In women’s golf, Delaware State was second in the PGA Works Collegiate Championship among 12 minority-based schools this season after also taking second in the Northeast Conference Tournament.
Echoing McCall, men’s and women’s cross-country and track coach Stephen Kimes said school support has revived the teams he oversees.
“It was a program that was in last place in all six of the sports I’m the head coach of before we got here,” said Kimes, hired in 2019 from nearby Wesley College, which was later closed and taken over by DSU. “Obviously, we’ve gotten support from Delaware State University that has allowed us to resurrect the program, build it back up. We’ve been top three in the league in both genders.”
Self-sufficient DSU seeks outside donors
Only one HBCU institution is even close to DSU when it comes to the percentage of the athletic budget being drawn directly from school funds. That’s SWAC school Alabama A&M at 90.3%.
The only other HBCU schools that collect more than 80% of their athletic funding directly from the school are Morgan State (82.5%), Maryland-Eastern Shore (81.3%) and Tennessee State (81.2%), the USA Today table reveals.
Shields-Gadsen complimented DSU President Tony Allen for “recognizing the overall importance that athletics can play in the university setting. … When you think about it, that’s the university adopting athletics just as it would an academic program, to say that’s a priority area, and they recognize how critical athletics can be to the overall success of a university.”
While DSU benefits from state government appropriations, just $325,400 of that went to athletics, school data shows.
Delaware State athletics could do better attracting contributions from outside individuals, corporations, foundations, clubs and other such entities. It also lags in securing revenue from rights and licensing fees through sources such as radio and television broadcasts, corporate sponsorship and advertisement sales.
DSU ranked fifth in both categories among the seven MEAC schools included in the USA Today survey. The university’s $429,097 in outside contributions was not far off the MEAC leaders in that category — Morgan State ($695,248) and North Carolina Central ($556,171).
However, DelState lagged well behind its conference cohorts when it came to the acquisition of rights/licensing income with $498,541.
“In these times, we recognize that dollars are tight for everyone and we want to make sure that we’re being purposeful, intentional,” Shields-Gadsen said. “We’ve now made that a priority, and we just got to do better. … So, yes, we are now being very intentional.”
In June 2020, when school and sports were shut down due to the COVID-19 pandemic, Delaware State announced a partnership with PEAK Sports Management in an effort to better market the school and seek sponsorship and multimedia opportunities. There have been incremental gains since.
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Norfolk State, which certainly benefits from its location in the nation’s 42nd largest media market according to Nielsen, secured a whopping $1.7 million in rights/licensing income. South Carolina State was close behind at $1.3 million. Even nearby rival Maryland-Eastern Shore ($871,146) and North Carolina Central ($841,768) far surpass DSU.
The challenge, Shields-Gadsen added, is trying to “really engage outside constituents to where they see the same value that we see in DSU.”
Women’s golf, McCall said, has greatly benefitted from a PGA Tour grant and flight vouchers from United Airlines that have reduced travel costs.
“I think we’re leading the way as far as getting outside donations and it’s really allowing us to reach our what our ceiling could be,” McCall said. “Without Delaware State, we would not be getting those things from the PGA Tour.”
McCall also praised the benefits of “being in a diverse culture” for the student-athletes at DSU, where roughly two-thirds of the students are Black but those from many ethnic and racial backgrounds merge.
Seeking more success in two major sports
The Hornets most recent MEAC football title came in 2007. Their last winning football season was 2012, when they went 6-5.
In an effort to reverse that trend, Delaware State will enter the 2023 season with its fourth head coach since then. Lee Hull, a former head coach at Morgan State and offensive coordinator at Howard, is now in command.
In men’s basketball, Delaware State has had just two winning seasons since capturing its third straight regular-season MEAC title in 2006-2007 and hasn’t finished above .500 since 2011-12.
Two years ago, DSU hired Stan Waterman, who’d guided Sanford School to eight Delaware high school state championships over 30 seasons, as its new coach. While still in the early stages of Waterman’s efforts to revive the program, DSU has gone 8-50 overall and 4-24 in the MEAC his first two seasons.
The Hornets have also endured 15 straight losing seasons in women’s basketball, including 0-24 in 2021-22 and 7-19 this past season.
The DSU women’s volleyball team did make history, however, by becoming the school’s first NCAA Tournament qualifier in that sport last fall. In May though, coach Bruce Atkinson moved to East Tennessee State.
In addition to the women’s golf team’s success, Shields-Gadsen noted how women’s tennis reached the MEAC title match for the first time.
In track and field, where the Hornets have a proud history, the men were third and women fourth in the MEAC outdoor meet this spring. Individual successes in 2022-23 included hurdler Tayshaun Chisolm qualifying for NCAA Outdoor Track and Field Championships and sprinter Kat Glenn of the women’s team reaching the NCAA Regionals.
“The recruiting has obviously picked up and, as we start traveling to more competitive meets, I’ve never not been supported,” Kimes said. “We’re constantly pushed to reach for the stars with my program.”
Long one of DSU’s most successful teams, the nationally ranked women’s bowling squad was forced to end its season prematurely in February after two team members were injured in a Virginia bus crash en route to an event at North Carolina A&T.
In the previous 2021-22 school year, volleyball and baseball were the only Hornet teams to win MEAC titles, both doing so in the regular season but not in league tournaments.
With only four MEAC schools now playing baseball, DSU and the other three this spring moved into the Northeast Conference for that sport. The DSU women’s soccer and women’s lacrosse teams will join baseball and women’s golf in the NEC this year.
J.P. Blandin, the DSU baseball coach since 2001 who won his 50th game this spring, said the school has been willing to meet the increased travel costs in the NEC as well as improvements to its new home at Bob Reed Field on the former Wesley campus.
“Alecia said whatever you need to compete we’ll support you,” Blandin said. “Making that move, I was super excited with the administration that they were all for the four baseball programs at the MEAC schools having an opportunity to compete for a championship opportunity and a [NCAA] bid [in the NEC].”
Have an idea for a compelling local sports story or is there an issue that needs public scrutiny? Contact Kevin Tresolini at ktresolini@delawareonline.com and follow on Twitter @kevintresolini. Support local journalism by subscribing to delawareonline.com.
