The Southern University baseball team has backed out of the Historically Black Colleges and Universities World Series, citing a lack of organization as the reason.
The SU Jaguars were set to play North Carolina A&T in Chicago this weekend, but Southern’s athletic director says organizers failed to meet the terms of a contract signed earlier this week.
“It was a done deal and they failed to execute what was in the contract by this (Wednesday) morning,” Banks told The Advocate. “We weren’t comfortable going forward with the unanswered questions about the travel and weather situation. We’re not going up there looking for uncertainty. We want to make sure our student athletes have a good experience. We felt Wednesday morning they weren’t ready.”
The World Series was being organized by BCSG 360, a non-profit organization that hosts HBCU events. Plans for the same type of game apparently fell through last year as well.
The teams were set to play at 1 p.m. on Friday at Guaranteed Field, home of the Chicago White Sox. The Jaguars were originally set to fly to Chicago on Thursday and return home on Saturday, but when that fell through the teams tried to work out a deal to have SU bussed in. That also fell through.
“The first obligation is travel,” Banks said. “They downsized the travel and didn’t meet the expectations of the arrangements in the contract. It was supposed to be a flight to Chicago. We were looking to work with them, even talking about busses and being able to stop overnight, but the busses weren’t in place.”
Banks also noted that there was no weather contingency in place.
“We all wanted to play the game but we’re going to do everything the right way,” Banks said. “We tried to work with them and were willing to make some adjustments. That group has the right intentions but they’re not fiscally responsible to what we agreed on.”
