Wilberforce University will play football again.

On Sept. 16, the university announced that men’s tackle football will return in fall 2027, eight decades after Wilberforce last fielded a varsity team. Head coach Earnest Wilson has begun recruiting the players who will make up the first roster.

The university is also asking corporate sponsors, major donors, foundations, alumni and community partners to help pay for a stadium and for everything else a new program needs, from helmets and travel to scholarships and coaching.

The announcement does not include a budget, a stadium timeline, or the level and conference the program will compete in. Wilberforce’s athletic teams currently compete in the NAIA.

Wilberforce’s audited financial statements for the 2024-25 school year, its federal tax filing, its athletics spending report, and its federal enrollment data show the financial position the university is building from.

A Championship Past

Football at Wilberforce has a real history. In 1931, the Wilberforce Green Wave went 8–0 and won the Black College National Championship under head coach Harry C. Graves. That team outscored its opponents 201–30 and beat an unbeaten Tuskegee team that had won 35 straight games.

Football left campus after the 1947 separation that led to the formation of what is now Central State University.

The university ties the sport’s return to a larger plan. Its football plan sets a strategic enrollment goal of 1,500 students and treats football as one potential contributor to enrollment growth, retention, and alumni engagement.

What a Stadium Could Cost

The announcement offers three recent projects to show how widely stadium costs vary.

Wilberforce is clear that these are not estimates for its own stadium, and that a reliable budget would require a feasibility study and a site-specific cost analysis.

Still, the comparison is useful. The smallest project on the list, a single phase at Wichita State, is about four times what Wilberforce received in gifts and private contributions in the 2024-25 school year, which totaled $2.93 million. That figure was up sharply from $1.61 million the year before.

The Cash Position

Wilberforce ended the 2024-25 school year essentially at break-even.

The university’s overall net assets grew by $580,945, but most of that came from investment gains on its scholarship endowment, which donors restricted. Operations alone produced a surplus of $62,198 on $22.5 million in spending.

Cash was tight. The audit states that the university “borrowed $1,400,000 during the year to cover the cash shortage for the year,” drawing a line of credit that had a zero balance a year earlier.

It also states that “management is projecting an increase in enrollment to cover the current liquidity deficit.”

Wilberforce’s own policy is to keep enough unrestricted liquid assets to cover 60 days of expenses. Its year-end cash of about $841,000 covered roughly 14 days. The audit’s own measure of financial assets available for general use within a year, $1.41 million, covered about 24 days.

The Debt

In the fall of 2024, Wilberforce paid off $11.08 million in notes from Charter Asset Management that carried a 13.85 percent interest rate. It replaced them with a $10.5 million loan from the Reinvestment Fund at 7.25 percent.

The new loan is secured by all of the university’s assets. Payments of about $76,842 a month run for 83 months, but the loan is amortized as if it ran for 25 years, leaving a large balance due at the end.

The audit reports that the loan did not meet all covenants. The university “has requested a waiver of certain covenants that were not met during and subsequent to year-end.” The full $10.44 million balance is listed as a current liability.

Wilberforce also carries $3.04 million owed to the U.S. Department of Education from federal aid audit determinations covering 2009 through 2011. That includes a $700,667 lump sum that came due in September 2020. The university has petitioned the department to forgive it, and the audit says no decision has been made. A separate $427,328 determination from 2018 is under appeal and is not recorded as a liability.

In 2009, the department notified Wilberforce that it had failed the department’s financial responsibility test. Since then, the university has posted a series of letters of credit with the department. The current one, for $1.24 million, runs through September 2029.

Interest cost the university $1.41 million in the 2024-25 school year, more than 6 percent of all spending.

What the Auditors Found

The auditors issued a clean opinion on the financial statements and did not raise doubts about the university’s ability to continue operating. They reported five findings, all of which were repeats from the year before.

The most significant involves the endowment. The auditors found that the university’s accounting system did not track the original value of its individual endowed funds, that original donor documentation for some funds could not be located, and that “funds may have been used in excess of donor restricted balances.” They identified an unfunded endowment balance of about $2.08 million.

The other findings covered how the university prepares its financial statements, including a lack of regular data backups, its tracking of federally funded equipment, its reconciliation of federal grant funds and its checks on whether students receiving federal aid were making satisfactory academic progress. In that last test, nine of 60 student files did not meet the standard.

In its response, the university said it is hiring experienced accounting staff, upgrading its accounting software and searching for a new chief financial officer.

The audit also lists the university’s latest cohort default rate on federal Direct Loans at 31.7 percent. Under federal rules, a school whose rate is 30 percent or higher for three consecutive years can lose access to Pell grants and federal loans. The audit does not list the prior years’ rates.

The Athletic Department Football Would Join

Wilberforce currently sponsors seven teams: baseball, basketball, and track and cross country for men, and basketball, gymnastics, track and cross country, and volleyball for women. Its women’s gymnastics team is one of very few at an HBCU.

The entire department, across seven teams, cost $808,961. That is 3.6 percent of university spending.

Assistant coaches averaged about $4,000 a year. Head coaches averaged $59,000 on the men’s side and $55,000 on the women’s side. The men’s and women’s track and cross country teams together reported $354 in game-day operating expenses.

The department reported no athletic scholarship spending. Federal data show that 99 percent of first-time students receive institutional grants averaging $8,219, so athletes may be receiving aid that is not classified as athletic. The report does not say.

A football program, even a lean one, brings coaching staff, equipment, insurance, travel and game operations, plus a place to play. Its operating cost could rival or exceed the entire current department before it awards a single scholarship.

The Title IX Math

Wilberforce’s full-time undergraduates were 46 percent men and 54 percent women in the 2024-25 reporting year. Its athletes were already 52 percent men: 57 men and 52 women.

A football roster would change that picture. The table below assumes every player is a new full-time student.

With a 100-player roster, Wilberforce could need about 86 more women athletes to match its enrollment. Proportionality is not the only way to comply with Title IX, but the announcement does not mention new women’s teams or roster spots.

Can a Roster Pay for Itself?

Football can be a tuition engine for a small private HBCU. Edward Waters Turns Down Division I Paydays and Explains Why Football Already Pays for Itself lays out how that model works.

The following is an illustration, not a projection. It uses Wilberforce’s published 2025-26 tuition of $16,448, its average 2024-25 discount of about 21 percent, and its on-campus food and housing cost of $8,564, and it assumes 100 players who would not otherwise have enrolled.

On paper, the numbers can work. But the program’s operating budget, the number of scholarships, where the team plays and how many players stay enrolled are all unknown. Full-time students in Wilberforce’s fall 2023 class returned for a second year at about 74 percent.

The Enrollment Goal

Wilberforce enrolled 838 students in fall 2024, including 822 undergraduates. Reaching 1,500 would take 662 more students, a 79 percent increase.

A football roster of 100 to 120 players would cover about 15 to 18 percent of that gap; if every player were a student, the university would not otherwise have enrolled.

Interest in Wilberforce is not the problem. The university received 6,338 applications for fall 2024 and admitted 2,567 students. But only 210 of those admitted students enrolled, about 8 percent.

Published tuition and fees for 2025-26 are $16,448, and the on-campus cost of attendance is $28,212. Wilberforce awarded 68 bachelor’s degrees and five master’s degrees in 2024-25.

What Comes Next

Wilberforce has a championship history, a coach on the road recruiting and a public call for partners. Its records show a university that finished the year at break-even, borrowed to cover a cash shortage, is waiting on a covenant waiver, and is counting on enrollment growth to close the gap.

The records leave several questions open:

• What level and conference will the football program compete in?
• Where will the team play in fall 2027 if a stadium is not built?
• What is the program’s startup and annual operating budget, and how will it be paid for?
• Are new women’s teams or roster spots planned alongside football?

The first kickoff is a year away. Wilberforce’s next audit will show whether the enrollment growth the university is counting on has arrived.