Tiffani-Dawn Sykes gets real on potential Virginia State move to the MEAC

Virginia State University athletic director Tiffani-Dawn Sykes was a special guest on HBCU Sports’ “12-Hour New Year’s Eve Pod-A-Thon” and broached the topic of a potential move to the MEAC. MEAC expansion is always a huge topic in HBCU athletics, and schools such as Tuskegee, Clark Atlanta, and Morehouse are often spoken about. But, Virginia State has an amazing academic and athletic pedigree and could be an institution ripe to move up to Division I.

HBCU Sports writer and podcast host Chris Stevens asked about the possibility and received a very straight-forward answer.

“As far as the MEAC, Chris, not today. Not today. And, you know, people talk to me at all throughout my [job] interview. You know, I had a full-day interview. I met with boosters, I met with students, I met with university leadership, and the question continued to come up about us moving to the MEAC. And, you know, I can’t even say we don’t have MEC money, right? Because we, we actually do have MEAC money.

Sykes then went on to explain the big issue with a potential move to the MEAC.

“We don’t have MEAC money for the 21 sports. Now, if I were to have 14 sports or 15 sports and I was supporting that number of sports with my budget, we, we could certainly move tomorrow. Right? But my goal is to maintain all of the sports we had for my student athletes to have a great experience to allow them to compete for championships. That was the reason we joined all of these conferences so fast.”

She then went on to explain the Trojans competing in different conferences outside of this CIAA for their sports outside of football, basketball, and volleyball.

“So that’s why we’re joining the Peach Belt. We’re joining the Gulf South. We’re joining the USCAA, and I’m just lucky to have a president who’s as bold and progressive and as innovative and as fearless as I am, and he just has turned me loose.”

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