12/30/2025
🗣️You think the is in the crosshairs now—for its mismanagement of the Wild West chaos of the transfer portal and NIL, its decades-long exploitation of college athletes for billions in revenue, its laughable, inconsistent, and often hypocritical rule enforcement, and its prioritization of institutional power over the well-being of the young men and women on whose shoulders its success rests?
🗣️Nah. The ain’t new to this—it’s been NCAA’ing for years with nary a care in the world. And that’s why today (Dec. 30, 2025)—on the 54th anniversary of ’s 1971 national soccer championship—it’s appropriate not only to give the their flowers, but also to call out the for one of its most glaring injustices: stripping of its title by alleging player-ineligibility violations rooted in vague, incomplete rules that, if applied today, would warrant little more than a slap on the wrist.
🗣️Yes, Howard would later earn “redemption” with another ⚽️championship in 1974—but all was not, and is not, well. The asterisk attached to 1971 should be removed. The players who gutted out that championship deserve that recognition —and publicly, too. Do it because it’s the right thing to do—for , for its players, and for their lengendary coach, Lincoln “Tiger” Phillips, who turns 85 on July 4, 2026, as the nation celebrates its semiquincentennial.
🗣️I’ll be forever grateful to Films—and to —for recognizing the importance of the telling of this story.
✍🏼✍🏼✍🏼✍🏼✍🏼✍🏼✍🏼✍🏼✍🏼✍🏼✍🏼✍🏼✍🏼
