Marauders

The 1990 and 1992 titles came against Mesa State and Gardner-Webb, both games settled by margins that left little doubt.

What Joe inherited was a program still rebuilding its identity within the National Association of Intercollegiate Athletics ranks, and what he left behind was a Maroon and Gold outfit that also carried Black College National Championship banners from 1948 and a stretch of titles across 1987 to 1992 — six in all. The team plays out of Wilberforce, Ohio, a name tied to the university itself rather than to any wider metropolitan pull, and McPherson Stadium holds 7,000, modest by the standards of the championship runs staged there.

The program did not survive intact. Financial pressure forced Central State to drop football in 1997, and the Marauders did not take the field again until 2005, returning to a Southern Intercollegiate Athletic Conference landscape that now pits them against Kentucky State and Tuskegee rather than the NAIA opponents of Joe's era. Kentucky State remains the rivalry that matters most, a line drawn back to the years before the shutdown.

Among those who went through the program and on to the NFL, Erik Williams is the name still invoked first.