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The Howard Bison men’s basketball program is immensely successful for small-budget HBCU program.
The Bison are two-time defending MEAC tournament champions and just barely fell to Wagner, 71-68, in the First Four of the 2024 NCAA Tournament.
They are also up for sale. But the Bison won’t come cheap.
Howard head coach Kenny Blakeney recently told the Washington Post that he wants to sell a 33 percent stake in the Bison to a private equity company for $100 million.
“College athletics is full-fledged business now,” Blakeney told the Post. “The whole idea is to not get left behind. It’s, ‘How do we include ourselves in this?’
“I don’t want to have a two-tiered system where we’re not able to compete for the NCAA tournament or the national championship. And from what I’m hearing right now, that is a real possibility, that there’s going to be an NCAA tournament that isn’t going to include everyone else, it’s just going to include those Power Four [conference] universities and maybe the Big East. That’s not what I signed up for.”
Kenny Blakeney Believes Howard Bison Could Become Obsolete Without Investment
Blakeney makes a good point. Conference realignment is all about finances. And the non-Power Four (ACC, Big Ten, Big 12, SEC) are quickly getting left behind. Even the ACC and Big 12 have fallen behind the other two.
But how does he expect private equity to help?
T”he main thrust, though, is that Blakeney needs that initial $100 million to upgrade Howard’s arena and roster,” Jesse Dougherty writes. “From there, he would want Howard to go independent, allowing it to find its own television deal (think Notre Dame) or join a bigger conference as an affiliate school (think the Big East, which Blakeney mentions throughout his written proposal).”
Why would a private equity company do that?
Blakeney suggests a three-way split of revenue.
One-third goes to the owners, another to Howard, and the final third to the men’s basketball program. Blakeney believes he could then use the interest to cover annual operating costs and no longer take money from the school.
Is it legal? Nobody knows. But Blakeney doesn’t care.
“You have to be aggressive if you want to position yourself well for the future,” college sports lawyer Mit Winter told WaPo. “There is a lot of uncertainty right now, not just legally but with what the structure of college athletics is going to look like. So if you’re sitting back and waiting to see, you’re probably going to be caught off guard when it does settle. You have to start that preparation now.”
Is it a crazy idea? Sure. But it might just be crazy enough to work.