Coaching Deficiency
Coaches and athletic directors grew increasingly frustrated at HBCUs’ inability to keep up financially with their white competitors, in salaries and facilities. Many coaches stayed and built legacies, like Eddie Robinson at Grambling in football or Clarence (Big House) Gaines (above) in basketball at Winston Salem. But many young coaches, once majority schools became open to hiring Blacks, moved on to white schools, where they helped recruit Blacks and made more money. Those colleges’ budgets were huge for recruiting and for travel, with much of the money donated by alumni associations. Bottom line, HBCUs, private and public, have almost always been underfunded.
