For most of the SWAC, this past weekend was the end of the 2025 football season.
This week, uncomfortable offseason conversations begin as many top-performing SWAC student-athletes start weighing their options to stay put or move on to bigger programs with more NIL dollars and exposure to offer. It’s the time of the year HBCU coaches brace for because of the college athletics landscape and the inevitability of some of their players jumping for greener pastures.
“A kid can wake up any minute or any hour of the day and say he wants to go in that portal when those opportunities come,” Jackson State coach T.C. Taylor said to the Defender. “You just read and react from it, and you go out and try to get the best replacement, whether you go in the portal and a young man out of there or you try to get a high school kid to replace those guys.”
It’s the offseason quandary SWAC and other HBCUs competing at the Football Championship Level (FCS) level have faced since the NCAA began allowing student-athletes with remaining eligibility to have unlimited opportunities to transfer without sitting out or losing any college eligibility. The opportunity for student-athletes to capitalize on NIL deals and lucrative revenue sharing at the Football Bowl Subdivision (FBS) level has only fueled the transfers.
The dilemma comes down to basic math for those student-athletes who are attracting interest from Power 4 and other FBS schools: Remain at their HBCU school, where NIL money is scarce and revenue sharing is nonexistent. The other option is to move on to an FBS program where thousands of dollars are being paid.
For HBCU coaches, the poaching by larger schools has meant uncertainty, as their rosters are constantly in flux when it comes to their most talented players.
“You really don’t know. That’s why you have to keep recruiting, recruiting fluently. You can’t just look at one number and say I need this number,” Bethune-Cookman coach Raymond Woodie said to the Defender. “You’ve got to have a list of guys that you go out and recruit. If things happen perfectly, then obviously those additional guys are a bonus, but you just never know.
“So you just have to go and look at the depth charts and fill in numbers where needed, almost like over-recruit because you just never know.”
If there is an aspect that some coaches are frustrated with, it is the actions of so-called street agents who solicit student-athletes to work on their behalf, encouraging them to seek offers from larger schools. It’s for a fee, of course.
Sometimes it works out for student athletes who want a shot at playing for bigger schools, but then there are instances where players and their families are left scrambling because they jumped into the transfer portal with no assurances of a landing spot.
Texas Southern coach Cris Dishman is frustrated by the reality that uncertified people are permitted to play such an influential role in the transfer process.
“It’s a shame that we are allowing that, not as a university but as the NCAA, allowing these street agents, these poachers to poach our kids. It’s crazy,” Dishman said. “You can’t have an 18 or 19-year-old kid talking about he has an agent. You’re only 18 years old. You don’t even have the right to have an agent.
“These street agents are charging these kids 18 to 20 percent of what. What are they charging 18 to 20 percent of? They aren’t doing anything but sitting at home making calls when guys are using all of their talent, and the kids aren’t getting what they are supposed to be getting because they have to pay these street agents 18 to 20 percent. That’s the frustrating thing about coaching these days is everybody wants to be an agent, but nobody wants to go get a degree to be an agent.
“We have to educate our young men to don’t listen to these bums out here who are trying to be street agents,” Dishman continued. “You have to be able to talk to your family, and if your family and you agree that you need to go into the portal, then I’m okay with that.”
“It’s just tough these days and times. You’ve just got to get the trust of the guys and build it the right way. But even sometimes when you do that, that still doesn’t work. You have to always be ahead of the game.”
Raymond Woodie, Bethune-Cookman coach
The poaching of top players has created significant instability in rosters and weakened many HBCU programs. For example, going into what was the regular-season finale for most SWAC teams, the conference had just three eight-win teams and one team with seven wins. The other eight programs were stuck in mediocrity, with a record below .500.
Coaches must start evaluating and predicting which of their players may hit the open market once the season is over. Grambling State coach Mickey Joseph said that the process began for him in Week 3 of the season because he started receiving calls about some of his players.
“You start evaluating and see how many you are going to lose,” Joseph said to the Defender. “We have an idea of the kids we are going to lose because that is going to happen every year. It’s not just my team, but the SWAC and the MEAC.
“When these kids ball out in these places … You go to these Power 5 schools who have unlimited dollars. The only ones who lose in this are the SWAC and MEAC because the kid gets money, the school gets a good player, and who is left without? We are. We lose in this situation.”
Here is a list of SWAC players who moved on to FBS schools after the 2024 football season
| Cameron Williams (Sr) | OL | Alabama A&M | Kennesaw |
| Sedrick Smith (So) | DL | Alabama A&M | Maryland |
| Christian Anderson (So) | OL | Alabama A&M | Southern Miss |
| Delvon Gulley (So) | CB | Alabama A&M | UAB |
| Dorian Wesley (Sr) | DL | Alabama A&M | Western Michigan |
| Marvin Smith (So) | DB | Alabama A&M | Western Michigan |
| Caleb Offord (Sr) | DB | Alabama State | Kennesaw State |
| Jakeem Fletcher (Jr) | DT | Alabama State | WKU |
| Anas Luqman (Jr) | DE | Arkansas-Pine Bluff | Ohio |
| Javonnie Gibson (Jr) | WR | Arkansas-Pine Bluff | Oklahoma |
| Rio Hay (So) | LS | Arkansas-Pine Bluff | UTEP |
| Aramoni Rhone (Jr) | WR | Arkansas-Pine Bluff | UTEP |
| Marcus Velez (Sr) | TE | Bethune-Cookman | Buffalo |
| Anthony Frederique (Sr) | P | Bethune-Cookman | Missouri State |
| Thomas Nance (Sr) | TE | Bethune-Cookman | Temple |
| Dennis Palmer (So) | RB | Bethune-Cookman | Troy |
| Quan Lee (Jr) | WR | Florida A&M | Arkansas State |
| James Ash (Sr) | DL | Florida A&M | Auburn |
| Koby Gross (Sr) | TE | Florida A&M | Ball State |
| Janik Ogunlade (Sr) | OL | Florida A&M | New Mexico State |
| Javon Robinson (Jr) | WR | Grambling | Georgia State |
| Andrew Jones (Sr) | LB | Grambling | Ole Miss |
| Micheal Garner (Jr) | DE | Grambling | Wisconsin |
| Jaden Hardy (Sr) | DL | Grambling | WKU |
| Joshua Nobles (Sr) | DE | Jackson State | UMass |
| Isaiah Spencer (Jr) | WR | Jackson State | Virginia Tech |
| Trent Sims (So) | LS | Mississippi Valley State | FIU |
| William Boone (Sr) | OL | Prairie View A&M | North Carolina |
| Ayden Jones (So) | LB | Prairie View A&M | Texas State |
| Tyler Kirkwood (Sr) | WR | Southern | Baylor |
| Jelani Davis (Sr) | DT | Southern | Kent State |
| Rodney Johnson (Sr) | DB | Southern | Louisville |
| Stephon Wright (Sr) | DL | Texas Southern | UConn |
Credit HERO Sports
Joseph has a solution for mitigating the loss of so many top talent players. He wants the bigger programs to have to pay a buyout for FCS players, like what schools sometimes must pay when they lure coaches away who are under contract.
This past offseason, approximately 33 student-athletes from the SWAC transferred up to the FBS schools. TSU lost Stephon Wright to UConn, and Prairie View had two players leave the program for the FBS, including offensive lineman William Boone, who transferred to North Carolina.
What’s interesting is that most of the kids at the HBCU or FCS levels weren’t the 4 and 5-star athletes coming out of high school that the big schools covet. HBCU coaches have spent the time developing these players, and now the Power 4 and FBS programs get to reap the benefits.
It’s unclear what the impact will be after the NCAA’s recent decision to limit the transfer portal window from two a year to a single,15-day period that will run from January. 2-16, 2026.
“If they are going to take them, they need to have a little buyout. I think that’s fair,” said Joseph, who lost four players to FBS schools this past offseason. “If you look at the whole situation like I’m going to look at it, … I know I say some things that people want to say. The school wins, the kid wins, but we don’t win.”
What’s more realistic is that SWAC coaches must not only focus on recruiting from outside their programs, but also within their programs, in hopes of convincing players to stay.
“I know in today’s world people do what they say, chase the bag,” said Dishman, whose program lost only Wright this past offseason but could lose more this offseason. “I don’t know what a bag is. But I try to chase greatness, not bags.”
TSU running back Athean Renfro, who has fluctuated between being the top rusher in the SWAC and no worse than fifth-best this season, could be a player who receives attention from some of the bigger programs. Renfro, who is a sophomore and in his first season of playing significant snaps, says he is loyal to Dishman, who gave him the opportunity to go from a walk-on longer snapper to a featured back on scholarships for the Tigers.
However, Renfro sounded as if he and his family would at least listen if the opportunity came when he spoke with the Defender in October.
“I really just give it up to God, really, because he has brought me this far so, why should I stress myself out?” Renfro said. “Whatever He says I need to do or put it into my family to let me know what I need to do, then that’s what we are going to do. But for the time being, we are focused right now, and nine out of 10, I’m going to be staying here at TSU next year.”
Interim Southern University coach Fred McNair, who was the longtime coach at Alcorn State and is the older brother of all-time Alcorn State great and former NFL star quarterback Steve McNair, says FBS schools luring HBCU athletes with riches and exposure is the culture of major college sports these days. However, the fact that Power 4 programs are increasingly visiting the SWAC and other HBCUs speaks to the talent level being recruited among these schools.
However, to retain more top talent in the SWAC and MEAC, McNair said the revenue sharing for NIL money must improve.
“That’s a credit to us that we’ve got guys like that who can go and play at the next level,” McNair said. “It’s nothing negative about it, but just the standpoint that when you see guys leave the Black college universities and go into those other schools, and you know you have talent at these schools. I just wish that somehow with the NIL deals that we can get these kids to stay and we can produce more kids.”
