Growing up in Jacksonville, Florida, he said he had family members who went to several Historical Black Colleges and Universities, including Florida A&M University (FAMU) in Tallahassee; Bethune Cookman in Daytona Beach; and Savannah State in Georgia.
Now, some 30 years later, he has added another HBCU to the list.
On Thursday, Central State University named Carter – who played seven years in the NFL and since then has coached in the pros and at three colleges – as its new head football coach and the man they hope can lead their long-floundering program back to the glory of three decades past.
“I grew up around HBCU’s and my first taste of college football was going to their games as a little kid with my family,” he said. “We’d tailgate and take everything in. I loved the tradition of all of it.”
But after a stellar career at Mandarin High in Jacksonville, he was recruited by several Power 5 schools and finally chose Florida State, where his dad, Tony. Sr. had played basketball.
“Bobby Bowden was one of my favorite coaches of all time and when he walks into your living room, it’s hard to tell him no,” Carter said in smiling reference to the Seminoles’ legendary coach.
“But even when I went to Florida State, the FAMU campus was just 10 minutes away and I spent more time over there than at our campus,” he said.
“Deep down I’d wanted to go to an HBCU. As an African American man, there was a pride in the tradition and accomplishments of black people.”
Some people now will think it wasn’t so much that love of HBCUs that helped Carter stand out among the 90 people who applied for the CSU job as it was the fact that he’s a former NFL player and black school’s hiring them is part of a trend now.
This coming season at least five HBCU’s besides Central State will have new head coaches who were NFL players: Michael Vick at Norfolk State; DeSean Jackson at Delaware State; Sam Shade at Alabama A & M; Terrell Buckley at Mississippi Valley State and Chris Goode at Miles College.
The HBCU embrace of pro coaches was heightened by the splash Deion Sanders – Coach Prime as he likes to be known – made at Jackson State after a 14-year Hall of Fame career in the NFL and nine years playing Major League Baseball.
Sanders’ flamboyance and outspokenness, backed up by his success as a recruiter and coach, put the Tigers – who he coached from 2020 through 2022 -- on the center stage of college football.
In 2023 that led him to Colorado, where he turned around the struggling program and made it the talk of college football. This season the Buffalos dynamic two-way player Travis Hunter, who followed him from Jackson State, won the Heisman Trophy.
Carter praised Sanders who is a Florida State alum like him:
“He’s one of my favorite players of all time. He’s one of the reasons I went to Florida State and now that he’s a coach, I’ve watched him from afar.
“He does a great job and has opened doors for guys like me. Thanks to him, people see there are many ways to coach and reach young men as individuals.”
While Sanders’ influence is undeniable, Central State has long been familiar with turning its program over to former NFL players.
Three of the Marauders’ last five head coaches played in the NFL:
E.J. Junior was a first-round draft pick of the St. Louis Cardinals and played 13 seasons in the league.
George Ragsdale spent three seasons with the Tampa Bay Buccaneers.
Kevin Porter, who coached CSU the past three seasons, was a third-round pick of Kansas City and had a six-year NFL career.
Those three, though, didn’t have a lot of success at CSU, which hasn’t had a winning season since it rebooted its football program in 2005 after discontinuing the sport for eight years, in part, because of financial reasons.
Porter went 9-21. Ragsdale, who served as the interim head coach for part of the 2021 season, was 0-4 in what ended up a 1-9 campaign that year. And Junior, who ran the program from 2009-2013 went 9- 45.
But the Marauders also know great triumphant under the leadership of a former pro.
Billy Joe spent seven years in the AFL – before its merger with the NFL –and was the 1963 AFL Rookie of the Year with the Denver Broncos.
He was CSU’s head coach from 1981 to 1993, and after his team finished as the NCAA Division II runners-up in 1983, he led the Marauders to NAIA Football National Championships in 1990 and 1992.
Rick Comegys then led CSU to a third NAIA national title in 1995.
During those days, several CSU players went on to play in the NFL, including Vince Heflin, Vince Buck, Erik Williams, Hugh Douglas, Charles Hope, Kerwin Waldroup and Brandon Hayes.
Moving Forward
“For us to have such a story of winning and competitiveness in football, I am wanting history to repeat itself,” said Central State’s athletics director Kevicia Brown.
At this point it’s become long-past history.
The Marauders were 10-1 in that 1995 championship season and 4-4 the year after under Jack Bush. Then came the shutdown and since then the Marauders have won just 48 of 187 games.
That decline doesn’t bother him, Carter said:
“I’m not concerned with what’s happened in the past few years. We know the deficiencies, but I’m focused with our own vision and direction moving forward.”
He’s in the process of putting together a staff that will include other former NFL players, and he said, even with this late start, they’ll have a spring game in late April.
During his press conference Thursday, Carter made an open invitation to former CSU players and alumni to connect with the program again.
“I want our players to know who and what they are playing for,” he said.
That said, he stressed the need for a new dynamic and focus for the future.
Brown thinks the 38-year-old Carter will connect to current student-athletes:
“As we went through the interviews for this job, he stood out. His personality, his character, his ideas for the program were in line with the vision we had.
“There’s a different type of student now. I think COVID changed that for all athletic programs. You’ve got to meet students where they are now, and he knows that.”
While Carter talked about having an open-door policy and embracing students of different social and philosophical outlooks, he also stressed the foundation for the program’s success would be built on discipline, accountability and doing the right thing.
With that structure, he believes his players can achieve more than they ever imagined.
He knows it’s possible.
His own career is proof.
“I feel a connection here”
Carter was listed as a 5-foot-9, 177-pound defensive back coming out of Florida State.
That’s small for the NFL and while it left him undrafted, he also was undeterred.
“I’ve been undersized and overlooked my whole life,” he said. “I’ve been told I wasn’t big enough, wasn’t good enough, wasn’t this and wasn’t that.
“I was told I didn’t measure up.
“And each and every time that happened, it created a definite hunger in me.”
Credit: jgetz@ajc.com
Credit: jgetz@ajc.com
That helped him catch on with the Denver Broncos coming out of FSU and it was a key to him enduring the ups and downs of being waived and re-signed over and over – 17 times – in his seven NFL years.
Rather than being overcome by the setbacks, he said he stayed ready for the opportunities as they presented themselves.
“From the start, I tried to learn from the older guys I played with,” he said.
“My rookie year I had three Hall of Famers in the locker room – Champ Bailey, Brian Dawkins and Ty Law – and I just watched them from afar. I saw how they went about things to be a professional.
“Champ became a good friend. He was a guy I looked up to and someone who gave me little tidbits of advice. Things like: ‘Shut your mouth…Be seen, not heard…Listen, that’s how you learn.’”
Carter played five seasons with Denver and one each with New England and Indianapolis. He also had brief off-season looks from the Minnesota Vikings and New Orleans Saints.
His best year was 2012 when he played 15 games with the Broncos.
And on a Monday Night Football game that season against the San Diego Chargers, he returned a fumble 65 yards for a touchdown and then intercepted a Philip Rivers’ pass.
Later that season, he got a pick-six interception off Carolina Panthers’ quarterback Cam Newton.
Asked Thursday about any memories of those moments, he shook his head:
“I don’t think about that stuff anymore unless someone brings it up.”
With a smile, he added: “Hopefully when I’m super old and done with football, I can tell some lies to my grandkids.
“Right now though, I enjoy coaching and using my experience to help me teach.”
Once he retired from the NFL in 2016, he entered the Bill Walsh Diversity Coaching Fellowship and had internships with the Oakland Raiders, Miami Dolphins and Jacksonville Jaguars.
After that, he was defensive coach with the Detroit Lions and the Orlando Guardians of the XFL and he coached defensive backs at three colleges:
Jacksonville University, Southern Illinois and last season at Southeastern, an NAIA school in Lakeland, Florida.
He said coming to Central State not only means he’s gotten his first head coaching job, but it also has reignited his long ago love affair with HBCUs.
“I feel a connection here,” he said.
He should.
It’s that old storybook coming back to life once again.
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