Coach Tremaine Jackson can make college football history at Valdosta State

Good afternoon ladies and gentlemen, welcome to another edition of “No Black coach has ever won a college football national championship.” I’ve been on this wave all season about the top-level FBS, where legends and billions of dollars are made even as the lingering effects of discrimination deny equal opportunity.

I recently learned that Division II has a similar history – and that Tremaine Jackson, head coach at Division II Valdosta State, could achieve one of the last remaining “firsts” in sports.

Earlier this week, my phone pinged with a text from Pooh Jeter of the Black Coaches Association: “Head Coach: Tremaine Jackson. Valdosta State defeats Minnesota State 35-21 to earn a trip to the NCAA DII Football National Championship.” When I called down to the school in southern Georgia, assistant athletic director Kit Strief informed me that no Black head coach has won an FCS title (In 1978, Florida A&M head coach Rudy Hubbard won a Division I-AA, now the Division I Football Championship Subdivision, national championship).

How, Sway? Part of the answer can be found in Jackson’s winding journey to this championship game, where 13-0 Valdosta State will play 13-1 Ferris State (Saturday, 2 p.m. ET, ESPN2).

“We always talk about how in coaching, there’s two sides of the mountain,” Jackson told me during a phone interview. “There’s a side where your dad coached, your uncle coached, somebody got you started where you are kind of already on second or third base.

“And then there’s the rough side of this mountain. I came up on the rough side of the mountain. I didn’t know a lot of people. I certainly didn’t know a lot of people that were making decisions. And so every job I got, I had to fight, scratch and earn through personality, through what I really believed in. And now being the head coach of Valdosta State, looking back, it was worth every minute of it.”

After growing up in the Acres Home neighborhood of Houston, Jackson played on the defensive line at Louisiana-Monroe and Texas Southern, then graduated from the University of Houston. In 2006, he started coaching at Texas A&M-Kingsville for no salary, just room and board. Next came Trinity Valley Community College, where his $9,000 annual salary felt like the good life. 

Next he got hired at Texas Southern, where he rose to defensive coordinator of a unit that led Division I FCS in total defense. But the following season, Jackson found himself out of a job due to athletic department violations he had nothing to do with.

Jackson sat at home and watched his phone not ringing. He thought about selling insurance or working for the Boys & Girls Club. But one day he was searching the internet and saw a job opening for a D-line coach at a place called Evangel University (Mo.).

“Man, it was the best thing I ever did,” he said. “It humbled me as a coach. We’re no different than players, and as a competitor, it really humbled me to go from coaching the best defense in the country to coaching in the NAIA division. I loved those kids, but the talent level was just not what I was used to.

“I really learned and grew in terms of how to mentor kids regardless of their height, weight or stature. We learned how to connect with their hearts and make the 5-foot-8, 200-pound kid play bigger than what he really is. It taught me that pouring into young people, it doesn’t matter about statistics or hand sizes. Pouring into people is just pouring into people.”

After stints at the University of Sioux Falls, Abilene Christian and Texas State, Jackson got his first head coaching job at Colorado Mesa, where he went 8-2 in 2021. The next season, he arrived at Valdosta State, a perennial Division II power with four football national championships.

Asked to describe himself as a coach, Jackson said, “I’m very tough and confrontational, because life is tough and confrontational and demanding. You got to meet those demands to have a good life. You don’t just wake up in the morning with the house, dog, beautiful wife, two kids and a picket fence. Everything you get, you have to earn.

“I think people would say about me, ‘That dude is tough. That dude is going to make you work hard. He’s going to check your temperature to see if you actually love ball, and he’s going to love you in the same manner.’ I get excited about our guys that have been successful off the field, not just the ones that’s All-whatever. When they put me in the ground, I hope they say, ‘Here lies a man who did everything he could to make the next generation better.’ ”

Jackson is the third Black coach to reach the Division II title game, according to Streif. In 2012, the historically Black college Winston-Salem State, coached by Connell Maynor, lost to (coincidentally) Valdosta State. And in 1983, Central State in Ohio, coached by Billy Joe, lost to North Dakota State.

That’s it – three Black coaches in 51 years of Division II championships.

Since America is now in the midst of an equal-opportunity backlash, with advocacy for the disadvantaged under relentless attack, let me point out that it defies logic, history and science to claim that no Black coach has had the ability to win a national title. Black coaches have not had the opportunities – in terms of access, networks or respect for their intelligence – to get the jobs.

But equality is marching down the field, with first-and-10 inside racism’s 20-yard line. Jackson was named Division II Coach of the Year for 2024, and almost certainly will get an opportunity to step up to Division I. Black head coaches Marcus Freeman of Notre Dame and James Franklin of Penn State are in the College Football Playoff. Please believe that I’d love to stop writing these columns, but until change punches it in for a touchdown, we have to deal with the reality of the situation.

“People just need to realize that we can coach,” Jackson said. “We don’t have to be the recruiter or the guy to get a kid to sign the NIL deal, because the head coach struggles with relationships. Man, we can do all of it. I’m talking about offensively, defensively, schematically, motivationally, and relationally. You know what I’m saying? It’s just all inclusive.”

Jeter, the Black Coaches Association leader, told me that Jackson is among a group of Black college football head coaches finishing successful seasons that includes Charles Huff, who just went 10-3 at Marshall and will coach Southern Miss next season; Frank Brown at Syracuse, which went 9-3 and upset No. 6 Miami; and Myles Russ at Keiser University, which plays for the NAIA national championship on Saturday.

“We’re showing what we’ve always showed,” Jeter said. “As long as we get the opportunity, great things will happen.”