Tuskegee athletic director Reginald Ruffin has drawn the road within the sand early this season.
A put up from his Fb web page took former TU athletes to job for asking about free tickets and sideline passes for Golden Tiger soccer video games this season, encouraging them, succinctly, to “Purchase your rattling tickets!”
Tuskegee’s AD/Coach delivers a message on Fb and nicely👀 pic.twitter.com/jL5GAdfEdZ
— yardtalkhbcu (@yardtalkhbcu) September 2, 2025
Whereas some on social media felt Ruffin, a two-time SIAC soccer championship coach at Miles Faculty, was out of line, quite a lot of others agreed along with his rant.
Add me to the latter; we now have to start out giving and giving again to our establishments if we would like them to outlive. Backside line.
You don’t should look far to see what an absence of assets and funding can do to HBCUs. Various are in peril as a result of state and federal governments refuse to fund public HBCUs the identical method their PWI counterparts are funded.
Non-public HBCUs face much more hazard as a result of there is no such thing as a federal or state cash coming their method. Tennessee State is simply now getting 90-plus million {dollars} for campus maintenance nevertheless it isn’t almost sufficient.
For Tuskegee, the college based by Booker T. Washington, they don’t have any alternative however to forged their buckets down the place they’re and grind it out. Everybody has to pitch in to verify one of many oldest and most well-known HBCUs survive a world the place Donald Trump and Linda McMahon (there’s no method anyone who acquired Tombstoned by Kane needs to be anyplace close to an training place) are actively working to make Individuals dumber and Black folks extinct.
Sports activities have all the time been a method to attract folks collectively, particularly at HBCUs. Fellowship, camaraderie and the spirit of competitors have been a relentless within the tradition of our faculties.
Our faculties can’t survive on “Hey, isn’t that so-and-so who scored the profitable factors in 2004?” Nice recollections sure, however recollections don’t purchase new locker rooms, present scholarships or pay professors and different important campus personnel.
Prefer it or not – and most of us don’t – we dwell in a world that’s dominated by Eddie Levert as soon as yelled about a few years in the past – the almighty greenback. And sure, our faculties “acquired to have it.”
Whereas folks could also be upset with Reginald Ruffin calling out former athletes searching for handouts, he wasn’t improper; give to your faculties. They want it now greater than ever.
