Golden Bulls

Johnson C. Smith University opened as Biddle Memorial Institute in 1867. On December 27, 1892, the school met Livingstone College in what is recognised as the first organised intercollegiate football game played between two Historically Black Colleges and Universities.

The Golden Bulls compete in the Central Intercollegiate Athletic Association at NCAA Division II level. Home games are played at Eddie McGirt Field, part of the Irwin Belk Complex, which holds 4,500.

The program went to seven bowl games, winning four, with victories stretching from the 1942 Flower Bowl through the 1949 Iodine Bowl to the 2011 Pioneer Bowl. The first CIAA championship did not come until 1969, under Eddie C. McGirt, the coach whose name now sits on the home field. It took until 2025 for a second, when Maurice Flowers's team beat Virginia Union 45–21 to close the gap between the two titles at fifty-six years.

Grover Covington left Charlotte for a career that ended in the Canadian Football League's Hall of Fame.