People really want to support HBCUs … but sometimes the lack of resources plays a significant part in why quality students go to white schools or transfer out.
That at least is the case for Hip-Hop mogul Master P’s son.
The No Limit founder has raised outstanding student-athletes, ballers that could write their tickets to any D1 school. To “level the playing field,” he allowed his son Hercy Miller to attend Tennessee State and play in their basketball program.
However, after the school failed to provide proper attention to Hercy after he injured his hip during the season’s first game on Nov. 9 against Alabama A&M, the “Make ‘Em Say Ugh” chart-topper is yanking his son from the school.
“We’ve got a great program at Tennessee State, we’ve got great people, we loved the culture, we just don’t have enough trainers,” Master P said in a statement. “We don’t have enough medical people to take care of what needs to be taken care of. We don’t have the technology that the Dukes and all these major universities have. An injury like this could have been prevented.”
According to The Tennessean, the injury almost ended the young man’s promising career.
Four days after he suffered the injury, the school’s medical team cleared Hercy to play in the next two games against Norfolk State (9 minutes) and Fisk (17 minutes).
Master P, as a concerned parent, pushed for his son to get a second opinion and even took him to a specialist.
“The specialist said if we would have waited any longer he probably wouldn’t have been able to play basketball anymore because next his ACL was going to go out and all other kinds of injuries,” Master P said.
Despite him taking his son out of the program, Master P is not bashing the school. Instead, he pointed to the lack of funding that Historically Black Colleges and Universities receive from donations, endowments, state and federal funding.
“That’s when I said I have to bring awareness to what’s going on at all these HBCUs — underfunding with no resources. I’m going to be with all the HBCU programs to bring awareness to this but I’m not going to sacrifice my son’s career and his future.”
The school begs to differ. They say that the issue is not lack of funding.
TSU director of sports medicine Trevor Searcy said, “The issue is not that we’re underfunded at all. It’s actually the opposite. The issue is that since (athletics director Mikki Allen) has been here we’ve been growing and when you grow your facilities have to grow as well and that’s what we’re in the process of doing now.”
To that … Master P called b#######.
He said, “How can we help HBCUs if we’re going to sugarcoat the truth? Then we are failing the next generation. What do we need to fundraise for if staff members are saying we have everything we need?”