March Madness has just begun. People’s brackets are being carefully monitored, hell, some people are even taking off work for the first couple of days where back to back games are on from morning to night. Millions of dollars will change hands in betting alone.

Alumni and HBCU student alike all are aware and tuning in to the Hampton vs VA game. In a show of solidarity rarely seen nowadays, whether you went (or go to) chief rival Howard or my alma mater, CAU, we all are throwing our moral support (not dollars) behind the Hampton Pirates.

March Madness is big. Big money, that is. $900 Millions in revenue…big.

Every year I’m baffled. So many of these teams’ starting five (sometimes back-up ten) are majority Black. I’ve often joked that when I was growing up, I thought Georgetown was a Black college for that very reason. Colleges like CU (which I know for a fact can’t have more than 3% Black folk on their campus) or U CONN flood the court with Black players; players that generate millions for their schools. And what do they get in return?

I didn’t go to school to play a sport, I went for an education, and, while people still advocate against Black colleges, for many students it’s the best fit.

Really — it’s the best fit for most of these athletes too. And that’s what this is about.

Let’s be real — most of these players won’t ever play pro ball. And I know you think your son or cousin Ray Ray is the exception to the rule — but they are almost better off playing lottery. Well, maybe that’s an exaggeration; that’s a 1 and 292 million type of deal. Where at least 1.3% of all college players make the transition to the NBA.

And you don’t need me to tell you the woeful condition, academically, that many of these student athletes are in. Whether it’s through social promotion or down right illegal favors, it’s not uncommon for a star high school athlete to be a functional illiterate. I knew several.

I wasn’t in the best of shape my damn self. I recall turning in my first Creative Writing paper, proud. I’d be lying if I said I remember what the paper was about. I do, however, remember the response with the same sensory recall as I remember the birth of my children.

I was called in an old Haven-Warren office; the kind that evokes the feeling of a B/W films’ Doctor’s office — and that’s where I felt I was when the professor cut into me.

“You need to go to the Writing Lab. Don’t come back here until you learn how to write a sentence, a paragraph, and an essay…with punctuation.”

My 18yr old eyes began to welt up. How was I going to go to this lab and still keep up with the reading and writing assignments?

And here is the beauty of a Black college. She waived all of the work that I would miss and gave me credit for Writing Lab time I put in. Her reasoning was, anything I turned in before I finished the Lab would be below average and a waste of my time…and hers.

Taylor Branch — yeah, the one who wrote Parting the Waters on the Civil Rights Movement — laid down the law in an October 2011, Atlantic Magazine Article, “The Shame of College Sports” where he exposed College sports for what they are — exploitative.

Because that’s a succinct, forty-six minute read, you can go ahead and tackle it here. But suffice it to say, College Sports are a huge racket and HBCUs ain’t getting none of that money.

The rise of College Sports sits at the intersection of several key factors: the rise of the sneaker behemoths, integration, and the crack epidemic. Any of those factors alone could be investigated as a cause for the swift decline in Black men and education but we won’t beat you too hard with this.

It is different because under the guise of affirmative action and other civil rights programs, athletic administrations have made athletes more exploitable than ever. With all too few exceptions, “eligibility majors” pass through the process doomed to failure and a future of disillusionment. John Underwood

In the May 19, 1980 issue of Sports Illustrated in the aptly titled “The Writing is On The Wall,” John Underwood was on the ground floor of the change that started the shift of college sports from an amateur endeavor to a billion dollar industry.

The reality is, with integration, the values of Black people went from “being ten times better,” to Black people wanting to consume ten times more. Amateur, summer league sports and the like went from fundamentals, skills, etc to corporate sponsored teams where coaches “bought” players with shoe deals.

Ask Sonny Vaccaro. He was a major player in not only the rise of Nike but supposedly the signing of Nike’s biggest catch — Michael Jordan…and countless others.

We created the commercialization of college sports. We were the first corporate entity to be involved with a coach or a university.

Vacarro admitted this about his time with Nike (before moving on to Adidas and Reebok and doing the same damn thing). Numerous books have been dedicated to this phenomenon, George Dohrmann’s “Play Their Hearts Out,” being one of my personal favorites.

By the late 80s the desire for athletic wear (shoes, jackets, coats, jerseys) fueled inner city violence which was exacerbated by the fast cash made through the sell of crack.

This is the environment that existed when I entered college.

It wasn’t just my English professor that was genuinely concerned with my matriculation. Every professor gave me and other students the attention that many of us had never had in our lives.

I even rekindled a love for math. Being an underachiever had me in Algebra…yeah, just regular Algebra and I did the same type of thing that got me in trouble in High School…cut to the chase, skipped steps…solved the problem. Miraculously, the teacher’s aid (whom’s name I can’t remember) didn’t mark the paper up with red comments of “show your work,” they instead handed it in to the professor, Dr. Abdulalim Shabazz(may Allah be Pleased with him).

As you may or may not know, Dr. Shabazz was once responsible for the majority of all Black mathematicians in the country and the reason why is because he could recognize what students needed. What I needed was an understanding and appreciation for the steps required to solve problems. He offered analogies and gave examples of how showing your work could be helpful when it came time for you to do six page problems…he never stopped trying to get me to join the math program. Long after I was his student, I would drop in on him during his office hours and we’d talk Islam, Mathematics, and manhood.