Editor’s note: The following article is an op-ed, and the views expressed are the author’s own. Read more opinions on theGrio.
Tiffany Greene was 5 years old when she set her mind on becoming a sportscaster. She didn’t predetermine her academic path but kinfolk might’ve bet on an HBCU, particularly Florida A&M. Her parents met there and her grandparents met there, and a great-grandmother graduated from there in 1908.
“Pretty much all of my aunts and uncles and cousins went to an HBCU,” Greene said via phone. “I saw HBCUs all around me and Florida A&M was the dominant one. FAMU is really like FAMULY.”
An ESPN employee since 2012, she’s the first Black woman to call college football on a national level. But the pride within her orange-and-green clan has swelled as she prepares for the Celebration Bowl on Saturday afternoon in Atlanta when the Rattlers face Howard for the Black national title.
These are heady times for FAMU, coming off its first championship in the Southwestern Athletic Conference since it left the Mid-Eastern Athletic Conference in 2021. The brand has never been stronger, not even in 1978 when FAMU became the first and only Black college to win the Division I-AA national title.
Greene’s broadcast partner for Saturday’s game happens to be Jay “Sky” Walker, who quarterbacked Howard to an 11-0 record in 1993. Like anyone who’s well-versed in HBCU culture and its linguistical combat arts — the snaps, cracks and unlimited shade for opponents — he isn’t impressed.
“Don’t put us down there with FAMU,” he said. “I don’t even know if FAMU is the official HBCU for the state of Florida. I know Howard is America’s Black college. It’s Howard and everybody else.”
This pairing has called FAMU games and Howard games together, but never a contest between their alma maters. Howard punched its ticket to the Celebration Bowl on Nov. 18, forcing Walker to wait patiently until Florida A&M…
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