PHOTO | NORTH CAROLINA CENTRAL ATHLETICS

North Carolina Central’s Eagles are scheduled to play UCLA at the Rose Bowl in Pasadena, California in 2023. It’ll be the Eagles’ first football game against a Pac-12 Conference program.

Wednesday was not a good day. Received some really bad news.

North Carolina Central football will travel to California in 2023 to play UCLA in the Rose Bowl. What’s so terrible about that, you ask.

It means I’m going to have to play nice with the boss man for the next two years.

I WANNA GO! I WANNA GO!!!

The Eagles are going to California! And not just the football team, either. The Sound Machine Marching Band was invited as well. Of course, it was. White sports fans love themselves some HBCU bands, not to mention the HBCU alumni who only show up for halftime.

“We are excited about the opportunity to play UCLA, a member of the PAC-12 Conference,” said NCCU football coach Trei Oliver. “For our young men to be able to play in the Rose Bowl, the most storied venue in all of college football, is an experience of a lifetime.”

The Eagles will be the second HBCU to play the Bruins in football. The SWAC’s Alabama State will make that same trip a year earlier on Sept. 10, 2022.
NCCU’s schedule is better for me since it gives the boss man more time to put pennies in the jar for my trip.

Terez Paylor Scholarship
Terez A. Paylor, a beloved and respected sportswriter at Yahoo! Sports, died unexpectedly in February.

Paylor also worked at The Kansas City Star for 12 years and hosted The Terez Paylor Show on 610 Sports Radio. More importantly, he mentored numerous young journalists.

To honor his memory and contributions, The Wall Street Journal, Yahoo! Sports and The Star have joined together to create a scholarship in Paylor’s name at his alma mater, Howard University. The scholarship will go to a journalism student carrying a 3.0 GPA or higher, with an emphasis on sports journalism.

“It was a long-term goal of Terez’s to have a scholarship in his name at Howard to help bring more students, especially those of color, into sports journalism,” fiancée Ebony Reed said.

Donations can be made at https://giving.howard.edu/givenow. Be sure to write Paylor’s name on your contribution so it will go to the right place.
Normally, I don’t write about scholarships, but sports journalism is so lacking in journalists of color, I made an exception. And don’t get me started on the dearth of black female sports journalists.

Is the season over yet?
The MEAC basketball regular season is down to its final week, and it can’t come soon enough. I mean, c’mon, have you been able to keep up?

OK, maybe you A&T fans have since both of your teams are in first place in their divisions. The Aggies (10-2, 7-1) have the best record in the women’s division and are on a seven-game win streak. The men will probably win the Southern Division after their victory over NCCU last week.

But the tournament is a whole different animal. Bethune-Cookman women won the 2019 MEAC tournament (last year’s was canceled mid-week), and we all know about NCCU’s success.

The NCAA mandates that teams must play a minimum of 13 games to qualify for the postseason tournament. NCCU men were dangerously close to not reaching that goal a few weeks ago. The team was three games shy of 13 with four regular season contests left.

And the NCAA only counts conference tourneys as ONE game, no matter how many you win during the week. The Eagles cannot afford any forfeits from here on out.
Bonitta Best is sports editor at The Triangle Tribune in Durham.

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