MEAC Sports Blog – Sept. 3

Here is a blitz through the Mid-Eastern Athletic Conference

Games go as expected highlighted by four shutouts:  Opening night for the 2010 Mid-Eastern Athletic Conference football season went pretty much as expected with four shutouts recorded on the night…   Florida A&M fell to #13 Miami, 45-0, Norfolk State trailed 6-0 at the half, but bowed at Rutgers, 31-0, while Hampton was blanked in the Midwest, falling 33-0 to Central Michigan…   MEAC newcomer North Carolina Central scored the lone victory Thursday night with a 59-0 whitewash of Johnson C. Smith in Raleigh….   Saturday’s action will see defending champ South Carolina State at Georgia Tech; Howard University at Holy Cross; Bowie (Md.) State at Morgan State; Savannah State at Georgia Southern; Edward Waters at Bethune-Cookman, and the I-40 Showdown between host North Carolina A&T and rival Winston-Salem State.   Sunday’s MEAC/SWAC Challenge in Orlando on ESPN (12 Noon) pits Delaware State against Southern University in the weekend’s final game.

Conference Favorites: FAMU and South Carolina State are the league’s leading NCAA playoff contenders and both are looking for strong performances in opening games against ACC teams to kick off their seasons and help their ratings as they look forward to their heavyweight showdown in Tallahassee on October 2….

Battle of I-40 has some bad blood: The A&T-WSSU game may be the most intriguing game of the weekend from the standpoint of bloodlines, and perhaps bad blood…. WSSU’s head coach, Connell Maynor, was the two-time MEAC Offensive Player of the Year quarterback for the Aggies, who was spurned for the A&T head coaching job in favor of Alonzo Lee, which should give him a bit of incentive to make a point…. Add in WSSU athletic director Bill Hayes, who was the winningest coach in A&T history before getting let go in 2002 watching his former star lead the Rams and you have the makings of an interesting evening in the Triad… Maynor and Hayes not only joined forces at A&T, they actually started their association at WSSU, where Hayes was head coach (1976-87) and Maynor was a recruit for the Rams, who transferred to A&T when Hayes got the nod in Greensboro…

MEAC/SWAC Challenge  A Chance For Redemption: Overshadowed by the four MEAC vs. I-As on this opening weekend is the 2010 MEAC/SWAC Challenge in Orlando, featuring Delaware State vs. Southern University… The DelState contingent, winners of the MEAC title in 2007, have seen their fortunes sag the past two years to the point that perennial contenders have dropped to the second division, so they are hopeful that a win Sunday will jump start a resurgence in Dover…. Meanwhile, Southern University is under new management for the first time since 1994, when Pete Richardson left Winston-Salem State for Baton Rouge, as Stump Mitchell, a longtime NFL assistant and former player takes the reins in Jaguarland… Mitchell served previously as head coach at Morgan State for four seasons….

Legacy Bowl Update: Looming over the HBCU Football landscape during the summer and August training camps was the ongoing intrigue surrounding the proposed Legacy Bowl…. The MEAC Council of Presidents were supposedly poised to vote on the game this fall, but intense scrutiny from the league’s fans and media forced the CEOs to put the vote on hold until the spring, especially after two of the COP’s most prominent members, FAMU’s Dr. James Ammons and SCSU’s George Cooper publicly expressed misgivings in written letters to their fan bases and the league office….