Celebrities are using one of the biggest rivalries among black colleges to recruit D.C. students.
The Howard and Morehouse football teams square off at RFK Stadium this weekend. It’s a fierce rivalry more than 100 years old.
To get fired up for Saturday’s AT&T Nation’s Football Classic, the Washington Convention Center turned into a large pep rally Friday. Hundreds turned out to watch the battling bands and cheerleaders.
Big Tigger introduced Sean “Diddy” Combs, representing Howard, and Jermaine Dupree, representing Morehouse.
“I came here today to support my alma mater, Howard University,” Diddy said. “When I was going here, our biggest rival was always Morehouse. This is a big game. This is a great time for two of the greatest schools in the world, black schools, to come together.”
Because the matchup between Howard and Morehouse is so attractive on the field, education leaders are using this weekend to introduce young people to a whole new experience. At the Convention Center, almost 2,000 D.C.-area students met college recruiters from HBCU’s all over the country.
At 6-foot-1, senior La’Shaughn Jones is the star of the Theodore Roosevelt High School girls basketball team, but in college she wants focus on more than just sports.
“I want to major in sports medicine or even computer engineering so some of these schools here actually have that,” she said.
“We definitely know how to approach our students from a cultural aspect, obviously from an academic aspect, but we truly do take care of our students. It is as important to us that they graduate as it is that they mature,” said Joseph Carlos, of Morehouse.
