Prairie View sees change of fortunes

PRAIRIE VIEW, Texas – Get ready for another shocker that fits right into this crazy year in college football: Prairie View A&M is on the verge of a winning season.

That’s right, the same program that lost an NCAA-record 80 consecutive games in the 1990s – the team that hasn’t finished better than .500 since 1976 and once lost three consecutive games by a combined score of 194-0.

Look at the Panthers now.

They’re 5-2 and have won three in a row heading into Saturday’s game at Arkansas-Pine Bluff (1-7). If Prairie View can win its final three games, it would complete its best season since 1964, when the Panthers went 9-0 and won their last Southwestern Athletic Conference title.

“We’re starting to wake up from the dream,” fourth-year coach Henry Frazier III said. “It’s starting to come to reality.”

The turnaround started two years before Frazier arrived, when Charles McClelland became the athletic director. A 1993 graduate of the school, McClelland witnessed the start of the historic losing streak as a student.

“I took that personally,” he said.

When he took over, the athletic department’s budget was less than $2 million and there were only 15 football scholarships. Five years ago, students accepted a fee that generates $1.8 million per year for athletics, and McClelland raised the annual budget to more than $3 million.

That’s still second lowest in the conference, but Frazier has succeeded in selling recruits and his staff on his “dream” of turning Prairie View into more than a punch line. He has 63 players on scholarship and redshirted 24 this season – unheard of when the school could barely field a team just over a decade ago.

“We’re not selling the dream anymore,” he said. “You can come here, win some ballgames and get a great education. You can be part of something special down the line.”

Linebacker Zach East transferred from Hampton in 2005. A Houston native, he knew all about the infamous program, but he called Frazier anyway.

He’s now the fourth-leading tackler in the Football Championship Subdivision (formerly Division I-AA) and said the current team uses Prairie View’s wretched past as motivation.

“History is always going to be there to remind us that we need to play hard every down,” East said.

Prairie View’s bad reputation has helped the resurgence in another way. Opponents still aren’t taking the Panthers seriously.

“A lot of teams seem to make that mistake when we play them,” Frazier said. “When we warm up, we’ll hear it: ‘They’re the same ol’ Prairie View.’ The players will look at each other and then they’ll tell me. And then they become eager to prove that, ‘No, we’re not.’ “

But word is getting out.

Last week’s 26-21 win over Mississippi Valley State drew an overflow crowd at 6,000-seat Blackshear Stadium. Fans were turned away at the gate, another sign the program isn’t what it used to be.

The Panthers are still a long way from becoming a power.

Frazier said he had only $24,000 to spend on recruiting trips last year and only $6,000 for players who wanted to stay on campus last summer and work out on their own. The team shares a weight room with the student body, and beat-up Blackshear would be inadequate for many high school programs in Texas.