College athletics have long been male domain, especially at colleges and universities with football programs. But in recent years, women have steadily risen at the institutional and conference level. Today, of the five athletic conferences, solely comprised of HBCU institutions—two at Division I, two and Division II and one NAIA—there are three women conference commissioners. These are Sonja O. Stills (MEAC, Division I), Jacqie McWilliams Parker (CIAA, Division II) and Dr. Kiki Baker Barnes (HBCU Athletic Conference, NAIA).
“These three women are way qualified for their roles,” said Dena Freeman-Patton, vice president and director of athletics at Morgan State University, one of three female ADs in the MEAC. “They were given an opportunity at some point as a woman in this field to be able to develop and grow and to be taken seriously in the role. … We’re in a space now where those women are very innovative, very progressive, and they look at things from a different lens. They’re leading men and women.”
Barnes would agree. “At the point that we were chosen, people were looking to do something different,” she said. “Not that anything was bad before, but maybe they wanted a new way of envisioning what was possible for these organizations. We were positioned at the time. … You have to be competent, confident and connected. The time you spend developing relationships on the career path is very important.”
Stills had worked at the MEAC for more than 15 years. McWilliams Parker had spent nearly a decade at the NCAA headquarters in various capacities, including director of the Division I men’s basketball championship and director of championships and alliances. Barnes was the athletic director at Dillard University as well as working as the interim commissioner of the conference, slowly building it back up after years of attrition.
Freeman-Patton, the first female AD at Morgan State, noted that in the past the attitude in athletics was that since the two main revenue generating sports were football and men’s basketball, leaders had to be men. Prior to her current position, she had experience in all the areas needed to succeed, including men’s sports, facilities and revenue generation. She helped start the football program at Georgia State University. “While you’re growing in the industry, get your hands on that experience,” she said.
“People had to get over football being a male sport because economics doesn’t have gender,” said Barnes. “If you’re intelligent and you understand numbers, you can lead whether you’re a male or a female. The characteristics to lead aren’t given to a particular gender or color.”
Morgan State’s president, Dr. David K. Wilson, has the goal of the university becoming a Research 1 institution. “That signaled to me that athletics needs to be the equivalent,” said
Freeman-Patton, who is a highly visible representative of the university on a global level. She recently traveled to Botswana with Morgan State’s volleyball team where she was interviewed by the country’s national media.
“We’ve got to be the front porch for the university,” she added. “We’re working on a facilities master plan right now.”
Morgan State competes in the Football Championship Subdivision (FCS), and each year plays invitational games against Football Bowl Subdivision (FBS) schools. These are televised games that generate significant revenue. Freeman-Patton is on the NCAA Football Oversight Committee for FCS where there are few women in the room.
Tasked with re-establishing and rebranding the then-Gulf Coast Athletic Conference, Barnes said she came in with optimism, a plan and strategy to build the conference to its current 15 member institutions (16 as of next academic year). Honesty is crucial as well as spelling out the pathway forward. “Those are the things we learn in sports,” she said. “I said [to the institutions and supporters], ‘Here is what we have, here are the steps I’m going to take, and here is what I need you to do as a part of this team. If we work together, I fully believe we can do it.’”
In June, the MEAC added flag football, which comes out of the NCAA Emerging Sports for Women program, as a championship sport. Women’s flag football has been happening at NAIA schools for quite some time. In the case of flag football, the NFL provided the push for the sport’s development, including financial support. As for balancing an emerging sport with traditional sports like football and basketball, Barnes referred to the NAIA model, in which student-athletes are welcome to pursue name, image and likeness (NIL) opportunities but there is no institutional revenue sharing.
While Morgan State has not yet added flag football, it does have acrobatics and tumbling, which was also an emerging sport and is now heading to NCAA championship status. As colleges and universities balance these emerging sports with NIL and revenue sharing, ADs must figure out how to adequately finance all sports.
“When we started acrobatics and tumbling, we decided it’s going to be a ticketed event,” said Freeman-Patton. “A ticketed event helps to support the program. You’re bringing in revenue as that sport. We’ve also had videos go viral. … These types of opportunities give emerging sports in this space of NIL/revenue share the opportunity to bring in revenue, to bring in visibility for the university. … We’re working to get our women’s programs up to a level to where they do become revenue producing sports, which in turn provides more opportunities."
