Ted Chambers

There is no Howard soccer story without mention of Chambers, who joined the Bison coaching staff in 1945 after serving in the Army during World War II. Chambers was an influencer even beyond Howard, and helped launch the D.C. Collegiate Soccer Association in 1958 and served as its president for six years.

Born in Union, West Virginia, Chambers established Howard’s soccer program, and had an impressive record (104-27-11) as coach. His 1961 Bison team won the National Association of Intercollegiate Athletics (NAIA) championship with a 3-2 victory against Newark College of Engineering. That ’61 Bison squad was led by two Bermudians (Alex Romeo and Cecil Durham) who were inducted into Howard’s Athletic Hall of Fame in 2014.

Chambers also coached swimming, basketball, track, boxing, wrestling, cricket and football, and taught physical education at Howard. He also served briefly as the school’s director of athletics, before retiring in 1975.

He passed away in 1992, at age 91.

Amdemichael Selassie

A strong and silent player who could play in goal and at forward, Selassie was known to dive only when necessary.

In the championship game in 1974, Selassie – by now, a senior – was to have gotten the start, but Lincoln Phillips famously gave the nod to freshman Trevor Leiba, who alternated games with Selassie during the regular season and had started the 2-1 semifinal win against Hartwick College.

Selassie clearly wasn’t happy with the benching.

When approached by Selassie’s wife at the team’s 25th anniversary reunion in 1999, Phillips assumed the goalkeeper might still be perplexed at being left out of the pivotal title match. Wrote Phillips in his 2014 autobiography Rising Above the Crossbar: The Life Story of Lincoln “Tiger” Phillips, “Mrs. Selassie, a quiet lady, approached me and said: ‘Thank you for my husband.’ ”

At first, Phillips was confused at her comment, but recalls Mrs. Selassie’s explanation: “When the couple faced problems, her husband often mentioned the ways in which we had overcome obstacles at Howard,” wrote Phillips, who said of the exchange, “It was the best tribute I could have hoped for.”

In the weeks leading up to the team member interviews for The Bison Project, conducted in-person at Howard’s Law School, an ailing Selassie declined the invitation to attend: “Due to my current health situation, I don’t have the energy to converse, even for a minute via phone. Whatever you want to accomplish I wish you success,” he texted via WhatsApp to storyteller Mark W. Wright. “And my teammates can fill [in] for me, because we succeeded in our goal together to be champions. Thanks for thinking about me during my difficult conditions.”

Twenty-three days later – on Feb. 7, 2022 – Selassie passed away. He was laid to rest in his native Eritrea, with full honors by the government.

Alvin Henderson remembers Selassie as a great person whose talents were understated. “During the summers, Amde would play for the Haitian [club] team in D.C. as a forward and was outstanding,” he said. “In 1973, I’m sure if he had played forward he would have made the starting 11. He was that good.”

Steve Waldron

When Waldron arrived at the Hilton Hotel off of Military Road in Washington, D.C., to meet up with his former Bison teammates to be interviewed for The Bison Project, he had a bit more baggage than the rest. While some teammates brought old press clippings and magazine features from their glory days, Waldron’s 24-by-36-inch framed poster – a gift from his wife for his 70th birthday – stole the show.

“This is the 1971 team – all the guys,” he said, pointing to each player. “We had just arrived in Jamaica and met [future Prime Minister] Michael Manley after we beat Saint Louis in the championship.”

The weight of the frame was hardly a burden for Waldron; he was all too happy to relive the moment with his guys.

Even before making his way to America – and joining Howard’s soccer team in 1971 – Waldron, alongside his future Bison teammates Ian Bain and Alvin Henderson, had helped to guide St. Mary’s College to the intercollegiate soccer championships in 1968 in their native Trinidad & Tobago.

With the Bison, Waldron was the starting right back who also had experience playing in central defense. Waldron, who played two seasons for Howard, was a quick and a hard tackler who often ventured forward to provide critical crosses for attacking players.

None of the memories – so many memories – are lost on him. And he’s got the framed picture to show for it.

Isaac “Ike” Darden

Darden has been the keeper of all things Howard athletics since 1968. He oversees the school’s athletic history — from yearbooks and photos to game-day programs and newspaper clippings — from an office in Howard University’s Burr Gymnasium, which opened in 1963.

A longtime clock operator for all team sports at Howard, Darden fell in love with soccer, a game that was foreign to most African Americans. “I was enthused to be around those guys,” explained Darden, who still holds the keys to the building as manager of athletic facilities. “I was impressed by them — their brotherhood and the atmosphere that they brought to campus,” he said.

Asked to name the best all-around Howard athlete he’s ever seen — in any sport — Darden, 81, does not hesitate: “No question about it, it’s Keith ‘Bronco’ Aqui, and I have seen ’em all.”

Facts.

Eddie Holder

Holder played amateur soccer in Trinidad & Tobago before migrating to the States. A reliable and trusted occasional starter for Lincoln Phillips in defense, Holder started in the semifinal (against Harvard) and final (Saint Louis) in 1971 in place of an injured Desmond Alfred, holding his own in both games.

Gerald “Jerry” Grimes

Making note of his energetic style, Coach Lincoln Phillips encouraged Grimes (friends call him Jerry and Grimes) to use his gift of gab as the team’s game-day announcer and hype man, where Grimes excelled — infusing R&B music of the day to intro the players, to the delight of the “Dust Bowl” crowd.

When asked to explain why the pain of the ’71 championship still stings, an emotional Grimes said: “We know that other schools, like San Francisco, were blatantly cheating. And nobody ever said anything about that. It hurts. At 71 [years of age], it hurts.”

Michael Billy Jones

Ask Lincoln Phillips about Billy Jones, and the one-time goalkeeper will undoubtedly tell the story of the anxiety he felt when he knew it was time to pull Billy Jones, who by season’s end had dropped to third in the rotation (behind Peter Keiller and Gboyega Adelaja, a young upstart Nigerian) from a critical game in 1970, Phillips’ first as head coach.

It happened against UCLA in a semifinal matchup — with Howard clinging to a 3-2 lead, with 15 minutes to go. Billy Jones, then a senior, had looked shaky — his play that day highlighted by a ball he let slip through his legs and into the net.

Predictably, UCLA would storm back to win the game 4-3, ending Howard’s season at 12-1-1. That UCLA would lose in the final, 1-0, to Saint Louis University, was no consolation to the upstart Bison.

Phillips would later write in his autobiography: “I realized I had to pull my keeper, but I was paralyzed by thoughts of his seniority.”

Donnie Simmons

As one of four Bermudians inducted into Howard’s Athletic Hall of Fame, Simmons recalls fondly the energy of home games, which featured an attractive brand of soccer that became “must-see events” on campus, with professors often scheduling classes around matches.

“Back then [soccer] was not high-profile in America — everything was [about] American football or basketball,” Simmons said. “But we took it to another level, and once we started to do well, we basically galvanized the entire institution to the extent that people took off classes to come and watch us play.”

Ernest Skinner

That bit of indecision would work out well for Skinner, who was the manager on Howard’s soccer teams from 1969 to ’72. Skinner earned degrees in Economics and Accounting, and later received a master’s from Columbia in Corporate and Industrial Relations, enjoying a lengthy career in the financial industry.

But soccer is hardly a footnote to his story. Skinner, an avid photographer, co-signs with Alvin Henderson’s stance that Howard’s 1970 team laid the groundwork for future success. He explained, “That 1970 team, coming of age at that critical time in America, set in motion a foundation that changed soccer in America, not just at Howard.”

Tony Martin

Even as a first-semester freshman in 1971, Martin had a knack for communicating with his teammates — even the vets. After all, as a center halfback, “you see the whole operation,” said Martin, who was 23 when he joined the team. “I see what everybody’s doing and what they’re not doing.”

In one particular game, he noticed that Keith Aqui, who was at least two years his senior and the unquestioned star, was going through the motions. “We were playing a team in Newark, New Jersey,” Martin recalls. “And this team wasn’t good. But we were sleepwalking — we had no energy at all. It was 1-1 with 20 minutes to go in the game, and I called out to Keith and said, ‘Keith — we need to get something going. Please — get something.’ He listened to me, and three minutes later, he start to run … we called him ‘Bronco’ because he run like a horse. And he was dancin’ and movin’ and dancin’ and movin’, and about three minutes later, he scored, and we won the game 2-1.”

Unlike many of his teammates who’d been recruited by Coach Lincoln Phillips, Martin — though he went same high school, Queen’s Royal College in Trinidad, as his coach — was not recruited to play at Howard. Rather he was recommended by another QRC alum, Victor Gamaldo, who had played semi-pro soccer with Phillips.

When Martin joined the Bison, he learned the story of the 1970 team losing in the quarterfinals. But he said he noticed that this super-talented team lacked maturity and soccer intelligence. He felt that he, along with fellow freshmen Ian Bain and goalkeeper Amdemichael Selassie, had that in their respective bags to complement the veteran group.

Martin holds firm that Howard was targeted by the NCAA, but added that it was important for him personally to move on and not dwell on the past. “You have to understand,” he explained. “When a chapter is finished, you have to turn the page and keep going. And that’s how I’ve lived life. But I know in my heart we won clean.”

Stan Smith

Smith, who played professionally with the Baltimore Comets and San Diego Jaws in the former North American Soccer League (NASL), was important to the Bison team in many ways — including, notably, off the pitch, as he was one of a few players with a car.

Smith and Simmons are two of four Bermudians in Howard’s Athletic Hall of Fame — all four enshrined in 2014. The other two, Dr. Alex Romeo and Cecil Durham were members of Howard’s 1961 Ted Chambers-coached team that won the National Association of Intercollegiate Athletics (NAIA) championship.

Said Smith after the team was stripped of the title in ’71: “It was very disturbing once we were stripped, but we held our heads high. We still felt like we were the champions and were treated that way.”

Mori Diane

Ask any of his former teammates, and they’ll tell you that Diane had the ability to unbalance a defense – not only with his speed, but with his jukes and feints, which created scoring opportunities for others. Diane scored the equalizing goal in the 1971 final against Saint Louis University, which set the stage for Alvin Henderson’s game-winner.

Diane acknowledges that the talent on the ’71 team was unmatched, but it was the sense of brotherhood, he said, that made them champions. “One of the biggest strengths of that team was the off-the-field connection that everyone had — the brotherhood,” explained Diane, who left Howard after the ’73 season and had a short professional playing career with the San Antonio Thunder and the Washington Diplomats in the North American Soccer League (NASL).

“And it transcended into a game situation. If somebody got beat, that was your brother who just got beat — and you covered for him, even if it wasn’t your job. It was almost instinctive.”

Rick Yallery-Arthur

A teacher in his native Trinidad & Tobago prior to coming to America, Yallery-Arthur had intended to return home to the classroom after completing his studies at Howard University. But when he told his former employer in Trinidad that he’d earned an undergraduate degree, they told him that “a bachelor’s degree in America meant nothing.”

So it was on to Plan B for the former stalwart defender, and Yallery-Arthur enrolled in grad school at Howard to study History and Political Science. Turns out, it wasn’t a bad plan — sticking around “the Mecca” also afforded him the good fortune to stay close to his old Bison teammates as a writer and columnist for the Hilltop, Howard’s student newspaper.

Yallery-Arthur attacked his role as a columnist the same way he did as a defender. In the Nov. 10, 1972 issue of the publication, he called out his former team — including star goal-scorer Alvin Henderson — for not finishing early chances in a game against an overmatched Jacksonville University. “With this kind of start against a team that was not in their class, the Booters were expected to score against Jacksonville almost at will,” he wrote.

In that game, the Bison led 3-0 at the half — with goals from Richard Davey, Mori Diane, and Frank “Scrap Iron” Oshin. Howard’s second-half ball dominance was hardly reflected in the final score.

At least Henderson, who “muffed two early chances at point-blank range,” Yallery-Arthur wrote, would later redeem himself by getting the game’s last goal to give the Bison the easy 4-0 win.

Yallery-Arthur parlayed his straight-shooter approach into a long career in law — practicing in D.C., Maryland and the Caribbean — and covering everything from Bankruptcy to Civil Rights to Wills & Trusts.

Leslie Douglas-Jones

A steady and quick player, Douglas-Jones played for both Ted Chambers and his eventual successor, Phillips. Known for his reliable play, he also wasn’t bashful to take his goal-scoring chances on a team blessed with goal-scorers.

In the second game of the 1970 season, Howard manhandled Warren Wilson College 8-0 to up their goals tally to 12 in just two games. Douglas-Jones was one of four players to get a brace (Alvin Henderson, Keith Aqui and fellow defender Desmond Alfred were the others) that day.

Kenny Thomas

Called “Man Mountain” by his teammates (he was 6-foot-4, 230 pounds), Thomas was a long-throw specialist and a rugged left back. In the second game of the 1970 season — an 8-0 drubbing of Warren Wilson College — Thomas was credited with an assist, off a throw-in to Keith Aqui, who smacked a screamer from 40 yards out, his first of two goals that day.

After leaving Howard, Thomas coached youth soccer in Trinidad for several years, leading the St. Augustine Green Machine to several Secondary Schools Football League (SSFL) titles in the ’90s while also serving as an assistant with Tobago United, a Pro League team.

Former Howard teammate Alvin Henderson remembers Thomas, who passed away in December of 2015, fondly: “He was a gentle giant off the field and a true enforcer on it when needed,” Henderson said. “He always had our backs.”

Keith Aqui

Prior to coming to America, Aqui attended Mausica Teachers College in Trinidad from 1965 to 1967.

The fact that Aqui was a relative unknown – and in his mid-20s – contributed to the NCAA’s inquiry of Howard University, many former teammates maintain. (Aqui graced the cover of the national soccer magazine of the day, Official Collegiate Scholastic Soccer Guide, in 1972, holding Howard’s ’71 championship trophy.)

The ’72 season would be Aqui’s last at Howard, and in February of ’73, the Dallas Tornado selected him in the first round (sixth overall) of the North American Soccer League draft. The Tornado released him in the preseason, and he joined the Baltimore Bays of the American Soccer League. In 1974, Aqui signed with the Baltimore Comets of NASL.

But it was at Howard where Aqui made his greatest mark before embarking on a long career as an attorney with the U.S. Department of Treasury.

Wrote soccer journalist Paul Gardner in 2016, shortly after Aqui passed away: “I remember Aqui quite well. I never spoke to him, but he spoke to me.”

Aqui’s legacy lives on in the form of Project YES Africa, a 501(c)(3) nonprofit he co-founded in 2015 that built a school in Khayelitsha, a township in Western Cape, South Africa that completed construction in 2023.

“A lot of this was done in Keith’s memory,” Aqui’s widow Antoinette Charles-Aqui said. “Keith always said, ‘If you start something, you need to finish it.’ ”

Spoken like the finisher he was.

Desmond Alfred

Alfred was a school teacher in Tobago, and when he pondered his future, he didn’t want to end up a school principal down the road, like the crowded pack. That, to Alfred, couldn’t be his ceiling. So, he decided he’d to go America, having saved $250, enough to pay his first-semester school fees.

Alfred remembers it was a Sunday in August of 1969 when he left Port of Spain in Trinidad, arriving at JFK airport around 8 pm. After clearing immigration and customs, he jumped into a waiting Yellow cab bound for Grand Central Station to catch a bus to D.C. His driver — a white man — loaded his suitcases, and they pulled off. After a few minutes, the driver picked up another passenger and then told Alfred, rather forcibly, to hand over all his money.

Though shell-shocked, Alfred cooly handed over the money that took him two years to save. “I wasn’t about to get killed,” he said.

Eventually, Alfred got to D.C., thanks to a Good Samaritan giving him $40 for his bus fare. Upon arriving in the nation’s Capital, it was Ted Chambers — after hearing Alfred’s ordeal — who gifted the young Tobagonian not only the $250 he’d lost, but a full scholarship to Howard.

“In less than 24 hours, I had gone from losing all of my school fees for one semester to getting a four-year scholarship to play soccer. So, it’s not all bad. Those are the things that give me inspiration and hope,” Alfred said.

Football, for Alfred, was the easy part. He soon became one of the anchors in defense as well as the team’s designated penalty shot taker, and he was adept at reading the game and capable of playing multiple defensive positions. He was also comfortable enough on the ball to play out of the back.

Among his memories of that epic championship in ’71, Alfred said — footballer to footballer — there were no issues between Howard and Saint Louis. It was all about competing. He understands why Saint Louis’ coach Harry Keough never claimed the trophy after the championship was vacated.

“Keough … never uplifted that trophy,” Alfred said. “Why? Because he knows he lost the game. And that’s a footballer.”

Carlton Fraser

Born in Kingston, Jamaica, where he attended Wolmer’s Boys School, Fraser studied medicine. As a member of the Bison team, Fraser was a specialist as well – a left-footed dribbler known for his crosses.

He returned to Jamaica in the mid-1970s where he would meet reggae superstar Bob Marley through his connection to Cole (Fraser’s schoolmate from the 1960s), who was a key member of Marley’s inner circle.

Fraser became a personal doctor to Marley and other Jamaican entertainers, including Marcia Griffiths, Tarrus Riley, Dean Fraser and the late Dennis Brown.

A Rastafarian, Fraser was at one stage the team physician for Jamaica’s soccer team, the Reggae Boyz. He passed away in November 2021, at age 74.

“Yuh can’t find a nicer person,” Cole said. “‘Pee Wee’ was a man that gave everything to people. A really, really great youth.”

Ronald “Sandy” Daly

Responding to a poll question in the Dec. 3, 1971 edition of The Hilltop that asked students to share their thoughts on the Howard University student government’s greatest accomplishment, failure or mistake for the semester, Daly didn’t mince words:

“The ability to have survived in light of the farce that the students have made HUSA into. HUSA’s leadership has tried to appeal to the senses of supposedly mature, college-educated Black people, something meaningless in itself. Another important aspect is the inadequateness of the structure of HUSA.”

That’s who Daly was — a straight shooter, remembers former teammate Alvin Henderson.

“Sandy was not what I would describe as a footballer — certainly he could play football, but that wasn’t his whole character on campus,” Henderson explains. “Compared to guys like me, Ian [Bain] and Keith [Aqui], we were soccer players and the game was an integral part of our being. Sandy, on the other hand, was a student organizer who was focused on getting the best of us — foreign and domestic — to come together. And he did that.”

Charlie Pyne

Known for his quickness and ability to shoot powerfully with both feet, Pyne described the ’71 group as “an ideal team.”

“We could see from the beginning that we were onto something special, even though we couldn’t pinpoint what it was,” explained Pyne, who graduated with a bachelor’s degree in Economics in 1975 and a master’s degree in City and Regional Planning in 1977. “But you could feel that there was something special about it, [and] I realized that, as an individual, I brought something unique to that team.”

Pyne was candid when he was interviewed for The Bison Project, adding that he and Coach Lincoln Phillips had a strained relationship. “There was this jealously that emanated out of nowhere,” Pyne explained. “I recall the first time he saw me on the soccer field, he called me ‘Pele’ and ‘Crowd Pleaser.’ And I recall saying to him, ‘Where I come from, you please the crowd by showing your stuff.’ ”

Pyne takes great pride in knowing how his teammates regarded him, on and off the pitch. “I was a very social animal … I couldn’t help it,” Pyne said. “I just like to entertain people and [make] everybody comfortable wherever I am, regardless of the situation, you know?”

Andy Terrell

Even though Terrell — a Glen Mills, Pennsylvania native — had the ball skills to play in the midfield, at 6-3 and 175 pounds (with good hands), he was put in goal by Coach Lincoln Phillips to fight for minutes behind mainstays Amdemichael Selassie and Samuel Tetteh.

And while significant game minutes were hard to come by, Terrell found his place after feeling a bit like an outsider, at first. Ultimately, Terrell — who studied Electronic Engineering and Computer Science — was happy he chose Howard over Swarthmore College, Springfield College, and West Chester University.

Since graduating in 1977 — with a degree in Business Management — Terrell had lost touch with his former teammates. When told about The Bison Project, Terrell admitted to being oblivious to an asterisk even being attached to their ’71 championship. “I thought we had won it fair and square,” he said.

“If there’s an asterisk, it should go away.”

Lincoln Phillips

Phillips hadn’t been in the States long, but he’d already cemented himself a legend as goalkeeper for Trinidad & Tobago’s national team. When Chambers approached him about joining Howard’s fledgling soccer program as an assistant, it was the opportunity of a lifetime for the young “Tiger,” who at the time was a player/coach for the American Soccer League’s Washington Darts. Starting out as an assistant under Chambers’ tutelage would allow him to learn the coaching ropes and be the catalyst to the program’s growth.

When Phillips finally got the head coaching job, his high-pressure, uptempo style was a good complement to his no-nonsense coaching demeanor. Phillips’ practices were so tough, he was known around college soccer circles — and certainly among his players — as “Killer.”

“We call him Killer because every time we take the field we know he’s gonna kill us,” noted Keith Aqui in a 1972 Washington Post article.

From 1970 to 1980, Phillips made a name for himself, amassing an impressive 117-19-11 overall record, eight NCAA tournament appearances, and two national championships.

Phillips still believes HBCUs can make an impact on the American soccer landscape. “If we are to really move to the next level and develop our own Messi and Ronaldo, we have to get back to making the sport a priority, developing the game at the youth level and reopening the lines of communication with Caribbean and African players,” he said. “It’s time for us to be proud again and point to successful soccer programs on both the men’s and women’s side at HBCUs.”

And regarding the imprint his Howard teams of the early 70s had on college soccer, Phillips told the New York Times in a 2013 article that the impact is undeniable.

“Though it is hard to imagine when looking at today’s game in Europe, Black players from Africa and the Caribbean were never considered good enough to play in Europe in the ’60s through the ’80s,” he said. “In many ways, North America — through the NASL and college soccer — provided a haven for talented Black players from Africa and the Caribbean. So, I believe Howard had a role on the impact Black footballers had on the game in this country.”

Grant Wahl

Wahl worked at Sports Illustrated for 24 years, landing his dream job at the iconic magazine in November of 1996 as a fact-checker, straight out of college.

“I got a subscription to Sports Illustrated as a Christmas present from my parents when I was 10 and that became my bible,” Wahl recalled in a 2015 interview. “I remember telling my friends in high school that I wanted to write for Sports Illustrated someday.”

So when Wahl had the opportunity to earn his first byline, he knew that the story of Howard University’s 1974 soccer team was the one to tell.

The longtime soccer fan met up with Ian Bain and his wife Betty in their northern Virginia home; he also spent quality time with Lincoln Phillips in his home in Columbia, Md., looking through old magazine articles and plagues, unearthing a story that had been all but forgotten for decades.
 
When looking for subject matter experts — during the filming of the ESPN documentary “Redemption Song” — producer Mark W. Wright’s first call was to Wahl, who originally learned of the story while in grad school at NYU, where he wrote a research paper for an African American Sports History class on the team. 
 
“Grant just seemed to have an interest in social justice, which carried on until the very end with him,” explained Jeffrey Sammons, Wahl’s former professor in that class. “He had a big interest in soccer, and those two things came together, coalesced in Howard’s travails. I don’t think I was the one who directed him or put him in that direction. I think that he was self-directed.” 
 
Wahl, who wrote more than 50 cover stories for Sports Illustrated, died of an aneurysm on Dec. 10, 2022, while covering the World Cup in Qatar. He was 48 years old. He was well aware of The Bison Project and was a massive supporter of the initiative.  
 
Said Wright: “Grant was at the very top of my list of people who I most wanted to hear this podcast. He’s very much a part of this story, and it saddens me that he’s no longer with us.”

Paul Gardner

Of course, Phillips was hot under the collar because the sting of losing a semifinals match to Howard’s nemesis St. Louis University the night before still burned — dashing any hopes of the school repeating as national champions.  

With a captive audience of some of the nation’s top college soccer coaches and NCAA officials, he spit fire. “You could just feel it,” Gardner continued. “You could just see him calling it back to tell you, in measured tones, that what you saw [against St. Louis] was not Howard but the ‘remnants of Howard’ after the NCAA had gone at them,” Gardner said, lowering his tone to sound like Phillips. 
 
A longtime critic of the NCAA, Gardner doesn’t pull punches when the topic is college soccer in the early ’70s, which he said mostly consisted of leadership that knew nothing about the game and featured a playing style that resembled American football without shoulder pads.

“The only time that I remember [fondly] watching college soccer of the early ’70s was — suddenly, out of the blue — Howard University, who were playing much closer to what I thought soccer should be,” explained Gardner, who has covered the sport since the mid-1960s, writing for the likes of Sports Illustrated, The New York Times, and The Guardian, among other publications.  
 
“And presiding over all that was Lincoln Phillips, who was certainly a soccer man whereas a lot of the college soccer people were not soccer people at all,” explained Gardner, a 2010 recipient of the Colin Jose Media Award from the National Soccer Hall of Fame.  
In a conversation with Mark W. Wright in December 2022, the 92-year-old Englishman hinted at some optimism for the NCAA and Howard: “The trends and the attitudes and the positions of people are very different now from what they were 40, 50 years ago,” he said. “And I think there is a much more widespread feeling that injustices were done, and people want to correct them.”