Inside Hotlanta and the SIAC

By Hal Lamar
Photos by Patsy Collier-Lamar

Former Morehouse Athletic Director Enshrined in AD Hall of Fame

Former Morehouse College Athletic Director and head basketball coach Arthur J. McAfee has been inducted into the Hall of Fame of the National Association of Collegiate Directors of Athletics (NACDA).

MaAfee, a native of Wichita, Kansas and 1951 graduate of Wichita State University, is the third Morehouse AD to be so enshrined behind Frank Forbes ( 1972) and BT Harvey (1971).

He joins 32 other Athletic Directors from historically black colleges and universities in the Hall. Ten of those 32 are from colleges in the Southern Intercollegiate Athletic Conference (SIAC).McAfee

McAfee coached at Lane, Mississippi Valley, Lincoln (MO) University and Bishop College (Dallas Tex), his last stop before arriving at Morehouse as head basketball coach in 1965. Seven years later, he replaced Forbes as Athletic Director.

As basketball coach, MaAfee hit the ground running. By the time of his official retirement in 2000, He had amassed some 517 career victories, 499 of them at Morehouse. The Maroon Tiger fives reached the SIAC championship game six times, won three conference titles and advanced to the NCAA playoffs. He had four 20-win seasons and 11 of his players made first team all conference. One of those, Harold Ellis , who helped lead the team to the Division II final four in 1990, went on to play in the NBA for three years with the LA Clippers and the Denver Nuggets .

In 2008, McAfee was also inducted into the Wichita State University Hall of Fame.

His induction in the NACDA Hall takes place Thursday, June 14 in Orlando Florida.

NACDA was founded in 1965. Based in Cleveland Ohio, it boasts a membership of 6100 representing colleges from the NCAA, NAIA plus junior and community colleges.

Here is a listing of the other HBCU ADs who have been enshrined in the Hall according to the NACDA website:

XTRA POINTS: I didn’t know this before but Morehouse’s Harold Ellis, now a big wheel with the Orlando Magic, is only the fifth player from an HBCU to have his jersey retired. If you happen to visit Morehouse, stop by the Frank Forbes Gym. You’ll see Ellis’s number 30 hanging on the gym’s west wall…..

I checked the rosters of the 14 teams of the Arena Football League to see how many players were from HBCUs.  I counted 35. Six of them are from the SIAC and one player is from CAU of the Atlanta University Center. The six from the conference I’m sworn to cover are LaRoche Jackson, a two year player from CAU, Jacob Hardwick ,Juan Bongarra and Alvin Ray Jackson from Albany State,,Justin Hannah from Tuskegee and Raymond McNeil from Fort Valley. In my next column, I’ll identify them all……

Several readers have called to correct the writer on my indicating that North Carolina A&T’s entry into the Atlanta Football Classic would be their second time ever in Atlanta. I’m told now by some readers that A&T was here in the early part of the new century participating in the Peach State Classic against South Caroiina State…

L. Jackson	Hardwick	Bongarra
A. R. Jackson	Hannah	McNeil

Got an item? Contact Hal -> hallamar at comcast.net