Hornets

The wait for real dominance was longer still. Bill Collick built it, five conference championships across the 1980s and into the 1990s. Al Lavan finished what Collick started: in 2007 the Hornets took the Mid-Eastern Athletic Conference title outright and, with it, the Black College National Championship.

The distance between those peaks and the program's low point is difficult to overstate. In 1980, Delaware State lost 105–0 to Portland State, still the heaviest defeat in Division I-AA history. That the same program produced conference champions within five years of it says something about how quickly Dover was willing to rebuild.

Alumni Stadium has room for 7,193, but it was enough to watch John Taylor pass through on his way to three Super Bowl rings with the San Francisco 49ers, and to later welcome Rod Milstead back not as a player but as head coach, work he took on between 2018 and 2022 after his own Super Bowl title with the 49ers.

Two rivalries define the schedule. Inside the conference, it is North Carolina Central, met each year in the Freedom Bowl. Outside it, the Hornets face the University of Delaware's Fightin' Blue Hens in the Route 1 Rivalry.