Tremaine Jackson on HBCUs playing Power Four programs: "When you are dealing with things that you cannot control, you attack it. That's what men do."

Southern lost 77-6 at Houston. Florida A&M lost 77-7 at Miami. Prairie View lost 44-3 at Baylor. That was one Saturday of HBCU programs cashing money-game checks, and Prairie View head coach Tremaine Jackson does not think the arrangement makes much sense.

Jackson says he does not believe HBCUs, or FCS programs built on similar budgets, should be lining up against Power 4 opponents at all. His reasoning is not that the players cannot hang. It is that the money behind the two rosters is not close, and that the gap starts inside the culture of the schools themselves.

"I think we can [compete], but we don't value college football the same way those people do," Jackson told hbcusports.com. "It's evident. We value classics and homecoming."

Florida A&M runs an athletic budget in the neighborhood of $12.4 million. Miami is playing with a reported $44 million collective, and its quarterback alone is said to make more than half of what FAMU spends on its entire department. Programs take those games for a payday that can run from roughly $740,000 to $1 million, then absorb the injury risk that comes with lining up 22 scholarship players against 22 players being paid like pros.

Jackson is not interested in complaining about it, and he made that clear when Baylor showed up on his 2026 schedule. That game was booked before he got to Prairie View.

"You can complain about the situation you're in and woe is me into it, or you can attack it," Jackson said.

"So no, Tremaine Jackson doesn't agree that HBCUs or mid-level budget FCS schools should be playing Power Four people. I do not agree with that. But since you put in on the schedule, and Tremaine Jackson is the only one at the University that has something to lose by playing the game - because it goes on the head coach's record - then Tremaine Jackson chooses to attack it and to teach these young men that when you are dealing with things that you cannot control, you attack it."

"That's what men do."

He believes the fix is investment, not avoidance. Jackson has said that "one school is going to make a decision to do the same things that others do, and we're going to beat those people," and he pointed to a future where an HBCU could carry a roster budget in the eight figures. He does not know when it arrives. He believes it will.

Jackson took over at Prairie View in December 2024 after three seasons at Valdosta State, where he went 30-9, won back-to-back Gulf South Conference titles in 2023 and 2024, and reached the Division II national championship game. Before that he was the head coach at Colorado Mesa, and he spent years as a defensive coordinator at stops including Sioux Falls, Abilene Christian, and Texas Southern.

In his first year at Prairie View, he went 10-4, won the program's first SWAC title since 2009 with a win over Jackson State, and took the Panthers to the Celebration Bowl, where they fell to South Carolina State in overtime.

Jackson also backs the SWAC's move to stop scheduling non-conference games against teams below Division I, a mandate that takes hold in 2027. He thinks the league should have done it years ago. His view on competition is consistent. Play good people, invest to beat good people, and stop treating the paycheck games as the ceiling.

Jackson has made a habit this year of saying the quiet part out loud. Back in April, talking about that same scheduling mandate, he said the league was "five years behind" and called the old way of ducking Division I opponents "a losers mentality." In August, he broke Prairie View's tradition of opening against Texas Southern in the Labor Day Classic and called it "asinine" to start a season against a conference rival. "That's not college football," Jackson said. "College football rivals happen in the end." He replaced the opener with Tarleton State, a top-five FCS team, on national television in Week Zero.

In July, Jackson ripped the Texas High School Coaches Association for leaving his staff off the speaker lineup at its coaching school, one of the largest clinics in the country. "You don't respect our ball because we're a Historical Black College," Jackson said, noting Prairie View was the only school in the state to play for a national championship a year ago. He asked why the program's coordinators and position coaches were not invited after a Celebration Bowl run, and drew a line for going forward. "We will not sit on our hands and be disrespected anymore," he said.

There is a counter to Jackson's position, and it's been made by fellow HBCU leaders. For one, Howard's Ted White has called the Power 4 trips valuable for players chasing the NFL, injuries and blowouts included, because the exposure is real and the check funds the rest of the athletic department. 

The debate is far from settled, and this weekend's scoreboards will keep it going.

Stay tuned to The Scoop for the latest.