PHOTO/N.C. A&T STATE UNIVERSITY

N.C. A&T football coach Rod Broadway will lead the Aggies into a nonconference game against his alma mater, North Carolina, Saturday in Chapel Hill.

Rod Broadway ought to quit it.

Listening to him on Tuesday’s MEAC teleconference was like being at a funeral. Oh, poor N.C. A&T has to go into Chapel Hill and take on the big, bad Tar Heels.

“We understand we’re overmatched, but we will go in and give it our best shot,” Broadway said. “The best case is we play well and make some improvement. Our kids think they can beat them, and that’s a good ‘thought’ to have. We’re in the same position as Shaw was in last week.”

The Aggies defeated the Bears 61-7. Yes, N.C. A&T could get beat like that this weekend, but it won’t be because the team went into the game with a defeatist attitude.

Who does Broadway think he’s fooling? He will return to his alma mater on the sideline for the first time since former Tar Heels coach John Bunting released him in 2002. If that’s not motivation, what is?

Broadway was a defensive line coach under Bunting for two seasons. His firing led to his first head coaching job at then-Division II North Carolina Central, where he led the Eagles to back-to-back CIAA championships and a black college national championship.

But it wasn’t all glory. The love of his life, Dianne Broadway, died after battling scleroderma for 14 years. Scleroderma is a rheumatic disease of the tissue that attacks women aged 30 to 50. He also lost his mother and his personal secretary within a year’s time.

He left for Division I-FCS Grambling State in 2007, a university made legendary by the great Eddie Robinson, and turned the Tigers into conference champions within two years.

But when the opportunity came to return to his home state, Broadway jumped at the chance. He took over a N.C. A&T football program that had a 27-game losing streak and so many scholarship reductions from NCAA violations that he couldn’t hold spring practice for fear of injury to the few players he had.

Fast-forward five years. Broadway has since remarried to LaTonia Broadway, and the Aggies are picked to finish No. 1 by the MEAC coaches after tying for the league title last season with four other teams.
“It’s a compliment to our program to be picked first, although it means nothing at this time,” Broadway said. “Five years ago, we were the laughingstock in black college football.”

The Aggies and Tar Heels will tangle at 6 p.m. in Chapel Hill. Yes, it’s a money game for N.C. A&T. Yes, no one but Aggie Nation gives the team a chance. But that’s what they said about Appalachian State and Michigan.
Here in Durham, NCCU and Duke will square off in the third annual Bull City Classic. The Eagles and Blue Devils play at – wait for it – 6 p.m.!

Now I know the prevailing thinking: Duke fans don’t go to Carolina games and vice versa, and they’re nonconference “easy wins,” but some of us are HBCU fans and would have loved nothing better than to hit up the Triangle for an HBCU doubleheader.

Did that occur to anybody?

NCCU and N.C. A&T have two of the largest fan bases in all of HBCU sports – and they travel. They don’t see mismatches, but an opportunity to root for their team, see the bands perform and fellowship.

Even though they are bitter rivals, I guarantee each fan base would have attended the other’s game to root for their MEAC comrade against the bigger boys.

And you know what that means: CHA-CHING!

Did that occur to anybody? El-Stupidos!

Bonitta Best is sports editor at The Triangle Tribune in Durham.

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