Commissioner tries to calm Legacy controversy
VIRGINIA BEACH, Va. --Amid the storm of controversy surrounding the proposed Legacy Bowl, Mid-Eastern Athletic Conference commissioner Dennis Thomas has attempted to maintain a calm front.
Aside from comments made in June confirming the possibility of ESPN reviving the Heritage Bowl under a new aforementioned moniker with the MEAC and Southwestern Athletic Conference facing each other starting Dec. 17, 2011, the former South Carolina State head football coach has kept talk about the contest mostly under wraps.
"We are doing due diligence about the possibility and no decision has been made," Thomas said on Monday. "I can't make any comments until or if the deal is done. And then I can make some accurate comments about what is."
Thomas said he was hopeful a final decision on whether to participate in the game, which would require the MEAC to drop its automatic qualifying berth into the Football Championship Subdivision playoffs, would take place "sometime in the fall." At that point, the final decision would be left in the hands of the conference's school presidents and chancellors.
South Carolina State board of trustees member Maurice Washington has also voiced objection with the MEAC taking part in the Legacy Bowl, calling it "a reversal of the right direction we are taking this program." The Bulldogs have earned the automatic berth the past two seasons, losing to Appalachian State on the road both times.
As an institution, S.C. State has yet to take an official stance on the game aside from acknowledging discussions by the MEAC.
Repeated interview requests with S.C. State president George Cooper, athletic director Charlene Johnson and Board of Trustees president Jonathan Pinson have either been unanswered or declined.
A column in Sunday's edition of the Newport News (Va.) Daily Press quoted an executive assistant to North Carolina A&T athletics director Wheeler Brown as stating a "gag order" was in place among MEAC schools regarding the Legacy Bowl topic. Thomas denied such an order being in place, but understood why his institutions are reluctant to discuss the matter publicly.
"There's no gag order," he said. "It is what it is. It would be, I guess, feasible for the institutions not to comment until all the facts are on the table. Let the process work. We have a process when we have events and proposals on the table not only for situations like that, but also other situations that we have to exhaust the process that we have and then we make the decision."
Ironically, the same article revisited a 2007 quote attributed to Thomas in which he stated the MEAC should be judged by how it performs in the FCS playoffs and the MEAC needed to break its winless streak in order to command the respect he believed it was due. The MEAC owns a 8-24 record overall in the FCS playoffs and have dropped 13 straight games dating back to 1999.
The SWAC last competed in the playoffs in 1997 and since then has held a season-ending conference championship game. If the Legacy Bowl is formalized, Commissioner Duer Sharp indicated the SWAC title game would discontinue.
When told about the strong negative reaction expressed by fans and some media in newspapers and websites devoted to black college football about leaving the FCS playoffs, Thomas stayed on his message.
"What people write on blogs, I can't comment on that because I don't make decisions based on what people say in a blog," Thomas said. "You have so many other fans of our institutions who might have a different opinion. So, it is what it is and I'm not going to get into what people are saying. I'm dealing with facts and that's what the due diligence process is."
