Howard University’s men’s basketball coach has an ambitious plan for his program and the school to keep up with the professionalization of college sports.
According to The Washington Post, Kenny Blakeney has pitched a proposal to private equity firms and wealthy individuals to buy a 33% stake in the basketball program for $100 million. In return, the Bison head coach is offering a three-way revenue split between the prospective owner, the university and the team itself.
The report says that Blakeney has not formally pitched the idea to the school, but he has met with private equity firms and other investors to pitch his idea.
Sportico has reached out to the university for comment.
In his proposal, the $100 million investment would redevelop the team’s arena and upgrade the roster, something that could encourage prospective athletes to join the team amid wider choices of places to play in the nascent era of NIL. Once that infrastructure is in place on campus, Howard could go independent a la Notre Dame and seek out its own media deals and perhaps join a bigger, more resourced athletic conference as an affiliate member.
“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,” Blakeney told the Post. “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.”
The plan also calls for collective bargaining with the players, which is the coach’s recognition of the growing movement among college athletes to unionize, such as the case with Dartmouth’s men’s basketball team and previously by Northwestern’s football team.
Howard, arguably the most famous historically black college in America, includes Kamala Harris, the current Vice President and presumptive Democratic nominee for President, among its alums. The Washington D.C.-based school plays in the Mid-Eastern Athletic Conference (MEAC) and—like its fellow HBCUs—is significantly under-resourced compared to Power Five schools and even some mid-majors.
Even some well-heeled colleges are looking to private equity to support, if not fully fund, some operations. Most notably, Florida State has been in talks with Sixth Street.
Howard won the MEAC for the second year in a row but lost to Wagner in the play-in round of the NCAA Tournament. The Bison program gained attention in recent years when Makur Maker chose the school over Kentucky, UCLA and Memphis, making him the highest-ranked recruit to ever play for an HBCU. However, Maker only played in two of the Bison’s five games completed before the coronavirus pandemic took root in 2020. Maker currently plays for the NBA G League’s Raptors 905.
Howard spent $1.44 million on its men’s basketball team in fiscal 2023, according to numbers it gives the U.S. Department of Education.
