Aiming high: New football coaches have big plans at local HBCUs Benedict, Allen
Ron Dickerson Jr. and Cedric Pearl are technically rivals.
But these two head coaches have plenty in common.
Both men are in their 50s. Both are in their second head coaching job. Both have spent about 30 seasons working in college football, including extensive time at historically Black programs.
And even though they’re on separate sides of the Battle for Taylor Street — Dickerson at Benedict College and Pearl at Allen University — they’re both aware of the big shoes they need to fill at Columbia’s crosstown schools and just how tough (but rewarding) that can be in 2024.
Dickerson, 52, and Pearl, 55, are the new faces of HBCU football in the city after Benedict and Allen — longtime rivals whose Columbia campuses are literally separated by a street — had banner years in football at the NCAA Division II level … and promptly lost their head coaches to other jobs and most of their top players to the transfer portal.
Pearl was hired in December to replace Allen’s Teddy Keaton, who left for Clark Atlanta after his Yellow Jackets went 7-3 in 2023 and won their most games in a single season since the university started playing football again in 2018.
Benedict tabbed Dickerson in January as the successor to Chennis Berry, who took the South Carolina State job after going 27-7 in three years with the Tigers and leading them to back-to-back undefeated regular seasons and D2 playoffs.
Now, with their 2024 seasons approaching, the new leaders at both schools have the same goals: Keep the momentum going, and win even more than those they replaced.
As Dickerson put it at his introductory news conference: “We’re chasing NCAA championships now, not just to be sitting as a No. 1 seed.”
Allen’s Pearl is also thinking big.
“We’ve got two goals in our program,” he said. “For these guys to walk away with a degree and to walk away here with a championship ring before they graduate.”
An ‘unfortunate reality’
During interviews with The State, Dickerson and Pearl oozed positivity. They raved about the recent success of the private school programs they’re inheriting, the high school recruiting talent across the state of South Carolina and the city of Columbia’s unique charm — all perks, they said, that drew them to apply for the jobs and have Benedict and Allen positioned for long-term success.
At the same time, both coaches are realists. They understand they’re walking into a new sort of college football, far different from the one they both played in the 1990s.
The NCAA transfer portal is more popular and less regulated than ever. All college athletes can financially benefit from their name, image and likeness (NIL), which has introduced a behind-the-scenes world of roster tampering and “pay for play.” And at all levels, football success — and the significant television money that comes with it — has never been more important.
The end result?
“From the Power Five down, everything’s sped up now,” said Steven J. Gaither, a veteran journalist and founder of the website HBCU Gameday.
Unhappy with on-field results, an SEC school moves on from its football coach and replaces him with someone from a Group of Five school. That G5 school plucks a sitting FCS coach to fill its vacancy. The FCS school hires a D2 coach. And so on.
“It’s no different in the HBCU landscape,” Gaither said, and Benedict and Allen both got caught up in those unavoidable waves of change after combining for an impressive 18 wins in 2023 and finishing No. 1 and No. 10, respectively, in the final major HBCU Division II poll of the year.
The Tigers under Berry were undefeated Southern Intercollegiate Athletic Conference champions and playoff-bound for the second year in a row. Then they were down a star coach, as Berry was hired to replace the legendary Buddy Pough at FCS school South Carolina State.
Keaton’s Yellow Jackets had their breakthrough year after Allen restarted its football program back in 2018. Then their coach saw a better opportunity at Clark Atlanta, which also competes in the SIAC and didn’t win a game last season but offers better pay, facilities and location.
Just over a month removed from Benedict and Allen’s much-hyped 2023 rivalry game, a night kickoff that drew 3,500 fans to the Tigers’ Charlie W. Johnson Stadium, both schools were hitting the reset button. Players scattered. Athletic directors scrambled. None of it was really that new.
“It’s definitely the unfortunate reality of being a D2 program,” Gaither said.
Portal work
When Pearl arrived at Allen in December, he said university compliance told him there were at least 30 players in the transfer portal already. When Dickerson got to Benedict in January, he said about 48 players from the Tigers’ 2023 roster were gone.
And many of those players followed their old coaches to their new jobs. Former Allen starting quarterback David Wright, for example, was one of 10-plus former Yellow Jackets who are now playing under Keaton at Clark Atlanta. Berry has about 10 former Tigers on his first S.C. State roster, including Caden High, who was Benedict’s leading receiver in 2023 as a true freshman.
To which Dickerson and Pearl essentially shrugged.
“That’s the name of the game,” said Pearl, who spent six years as head coach at Central State University in Ohio from 2014-19 and was most recently an assistant at Alabama A&M.
“The world we live in now,” said Dickerson, who was the first Black head coach in Big South history at Gardner-Webb from 2011-12 and has also worked in the SEC.
Neither coach is the biggest fan of how quickly the transfer portal can gut a roster. But they came into their new jobs ready to use the portal to their advantage, too, and replenish their programs with the sort of high school and college talent they’re jazzed to be coaching — even though, as Division II schools, they can only offer players partial athletic scholarships.
As Pearl’s Allen team started preseason practice earlier this month, the roster consisted of 35 true freshmen from the high school ranks, 28 collegiate transfers and just 24 returning players.
The Yellow Jackets’ new staff hit the state of South Carolina hard (there are 31 Palmetto State players on the roster) and boasts transfers from all over: S.C. State, North Carolina A&T, Southeast Louisiana, Florida A&M.
One transfer of particular interest as Allen (picked to finish 11th out of 13 teams in the SIAC preseason poll) tries to get back on track: wide receiver Marcus Fleming, who was a four-star 2020 recruit and has played at Nebraska and Miami.
“You have to embrace it,” Pearl said of the portal, “and that’s what we’ve done.”
At Benedict, Dickerson has followed a similar strategy. His program ended up signing about 30 to 35 “really good” high school recruits, he said, by zeroing in on uncommitted players who had talent but may have been initially passed on by larger programs (often in favor of transfers).
The Tigers — picked fifth in the SIAC preseason poll — also have some big transfers from FBS schools including Liberty and Georgia State and Shatarius Williams, a wide receiver who walked on to Nick Saban’s Alabama football team and won a national title in 2020 before playing at FCS Chattanooga.
“We probably have six, seven guys here that have played in or won a national championship, whether it was JUCO or within the NCAA,” Dickerson said. “And that’s what we wanted to do: Recruit guys that came from winning programs and understood what it took.”
Taking the baton
Now, with their new rosters settled, it’s almost game time.
Benedict’s recent success has earned the program a big-time season opener: The Tigers are kicking the year off against Virginia State in the Black College Football Hall of Fame Classic in Canton, Ohio. The game will be played Sunday, Sept. 1 and broadcast nationally on NFL Network.
Allen, meanwhile, is opening the season against its former coach. The Yellow Jackets travel to Clark Atlanta to face Keaton’s Panthers on Saturday, Sept. 7 in an early conference game.
And come Oct. 19, Dickerson and Pearl will be on opposite sidelines for the Battle for Taylor Street. Benedict and Allen’s annual rivalry game will be played this season at Westwood High School in Blythewood, where Allen has played its home football games since 2018. (The school is currently building a new off-campus stadium in Columbia, but it won’t be ready for this fall.)
On that Saturday three months from now, they’ll be trying to beat each other.
Until then, they’ll be pushing for the same thing: Continuing the tradition of Benedict and Allen football set before them, representing HBCU football in Columbia and winning games. Hopefully, lots of them.
“The foundation was laid. … You’ve just got to keep building,” Dickerson said. “And that’s what myself and my staff are trying to do with these young men: Take the baton and continue to build this program.”
“It’s all about the relationships with the kids nowadays and getting them to trust you and you trusting them,” Pearl said. “And that’s how we feel like we can keep the program going in the same direction.”
2024 Benedict football season
Three players to watch
▪ DE Aaron Miller: Senior had 10.5 sacks and 15.5 tackles for loss last season and was named to the 2024 preseason HBCU football All-America team
▪ WR Shatarius Williams: 6-foot-2 transfer wide receiver who originally walked on at Alabama and has also played at FCS Chattanooga
▪ QB Komari Frye: A talented redshirt freshman from Ohio’s Notre Dame College and one of six players competing for Benedict’s starting QB job in fall camp
Three key games
▪ Sept. 1 vs. Virginia State: A nationally televised season opener in Canton, Ohio for the Black College Football Hall of Fame Classic.
▪ Sept. 19 vs. Edward Waters: A Thursday night game under the lights at Charlie W. Johnson Stadium that’s being broadcast by ESPNU.
▪ Nov. 2 at Fort Valley State: Benedict, the reigning back-to-back SIAC conference champion, goes on the road to play the team predicted to finish second in the league.
2024 Allen football season
Three players to watch
▪ RB Beau Herrington: Senior RB has been a huge part of Allen’s offense the past three years and has 3,005 career all-purpose yards, an NCAA-era program record
▪ WR Marcus Fleming: A former top 300 national recruit who’s appeared in games for Nebraska and Miami but hasn’t played since 2022
▪ DB Sharrod Simmon: Veteran safety who led Allen with three interceptions last season and also had 36 tackles, 11 pass deflections and a pick-six in 2023
Three key games
▪ Sept 21 vs. Point University: The first home game of the Cedric Pearl era.
▪ Oct. 5 vs. Albany State: Allen hosts the preseason favorite to win the SIAC.
▪ Oct. 19 vs. Benedict: The Battle for Taylor Street is set for a 7 p.m. kickoff.
This story was originally published August 7, 2024 at 12:01 PM.
