The Return of the A&T Homecoming

By Craig R. Turner
bluedeathvalley.com
October 30, 2009

For the first time in six years, N.C. A&T will be entering its homecoming in a very unfamiliar role for both its football team and the 24,000 fans expected to be in attendance tomorrow afternoon.

First, the Aggies will be coming into Saturday’s game with a winning record (5-3) and a chance to clinch its first outright winning season since 2003.

Second, they will be entering this homecoming as one of the current top four teams in the MEAC with a 3-2 conference mark, which is good for third place at present time.

Third, they come into homecoming as a clear favorite over a team that has terrorized A&T for years. The arrival of Alvin Wyatt’s Bethune Cookman Wildcats should mark the first sellout of an A&T homecoming in over three years.

Most importantly it speaks volumes by which first year head coach Alonzo Lee has established his football program, gained his players’ trust, and has pushed a football team that was totally helpless against most of the MEAC, a team that won just one conference game last season and only slightly removed from back to back 0-11 seasons and a 27-game losing streak that stretched all the way back to mid season of 2005.

Since January 18th, when Lee was first introduced to the Aggie Nation by Athletics Director Wheeler Brown, he immediately put together a MEAC-tested staff and went about the business of taking a bunch of much-maligned young kids and a decimated football program that most people had given up for dead with no hope of any sort of resurrection.

In fact most writers and coaches who glanced at the A&T job figured it would be an uphill climb that would take at least 4 to 5 years to reach respectability, let alone have a winning season.

Whoever A&T would pick after the dismissal of Lee Fobbs, Jr., prognosticators speculated that they would be shaking their heads after a year or so while asking themselves why did I take this job?

But Lee never thought in those terms, in the interview process, in his first speech to the Aggie faithful, to his signing of an incredibly successful initial recruiting class, or posting wins over both of A&T’s top in-state rivals and reversing the mindset from loser to winner.

In fact Lee, whose persona is that of part general, part motivational speaker and nearly full time old fashioned fire-and-brim stone Baptist preacher, never shrank from the task he signed on for.

He embraced the challenge that lay ahead of him and so did his coaching staff, many who had been through many wars with him before at A&T and at other coaching venues along the way. They had no doubt of his ability to mold individuals into a cohesive unit, and teenagers into solid young men through discipline and hard work. The real work had to be done on the psyche of the student athletes who never had tasted any success.

How did Lee address that problem and change the culture so quickly?

A lot of folk call it old school coaching techniques. There isn’t a lot of stroking of “fragile” egos that fans see going on at a lot of larger football programs between Lee and his players.

Instead you see a philosophy of steady encouragement, a rising of the expectation that if a student athlete does your best and pushes himself hard every day both on the field and in the classroom that he, Lee, in turn will return the favor by doing right by the young men through his leadership, tough love, and wise counsel.

And although Lee is only eight games in as A&T’s football coach, it is evident to anyone who has ever stopped to simply say hello and speak about A&T football or just a general question about life itself, that he is a special individual who is the right man at the right time for the job that has to be done.

Though he wasn’t the household name coach that many Aggies were expecting to see take over the A&T, there isn’t anyone who is worth their own spit who could now dispute that he has indeed done what many thought would be impossible in turning the ship around and getting it headed in the right direction.

Now this week, he has a chance to put the naysayers, the detractors and the doubters of the A&T revival to bed once and for all with a win over the dangerous wildcats from Daytona Beach, FL.

A win this weekend would be more than breaking a six year homecoming losing streak but it would make a statement that A&T football is back and will be a force to be reckoned with as long as the General is in command.

This week we rally round the flag men. Now is time for us to reclaim the winner’s legacy which is ours without equivocation.

We are Aggies. We are A&T.

Aggie Pride!