NC A&T AD EARL HILTON STEPPING DOWN:
The administrator who has led North Carolina A&T athletics to incredible highs and controversial changes over the last 15 years, Athletics Director Earl M. Hilton III, is moving on.
The university’s leadership announced Tuesday that Hilton will step down this summer when his current contract ends.
A national search for a new athletics director will begin immediately with Hilton continuing in the role until a successor is identified and seated.
“It has been my singular privilege to have worked with so many wonderful and talented student-athletes and the dedicated coaches and staff who support them,” Hilton said in the press release from the university.
“I have been blessed to be part of a remarkable community of boosters and fans who have sustained us with unflinching resolve. I am honored to have witnessed historic academic and athletic achievement and look forward to our continued success under the leadership of (current) Chancellor (James R.) Martin (II) and the next athletics administration.”
Referencing “our” continued success in his statement is notable as Hilton has embraced his role leading the athletics department with passion, dedication and a steely determination to look out for A&T’s student athletes and its programs in an ever-changing and challenging athletics environment. The highs, lows, challenges, controversies and critiques come with navigating this current landscape. These realities are captured in this statement from Chancellor Martin.
“North Carolina A&T is tremendously grateful for the outstanding leadership Earl has provided for our student athletes over the past 15 years,” said Martin. “He created an environment in which more than 300 student athletes each year never lose sight of the fact that they are students first and that success in the classroom comes before competition on the playing field.
“We have especially appreciated his steady hand in a time of unprecedented change throughout the NCAA.”
Hilton came to A&T in 1999 to work under former AD Alphonso Scandrett and moved over to the university’s auxilliary services department when Scandrett was fired in 2002. A lawyer by training, Hilton assumed the AD position on an interim basis in late 2010 before being named A&T’s permanent athletics leader in February 2011.
He inherited a struggling program in “academic and organizational chaos,” as one media outlet described it, and one facing legal scrutiny after the death of an athlete in a training exercise. Hilton’s legal background was reportedly key to his ascension.
Working with other university administrators, Hilton set about bringing new order and discipline to the program under the banner of “excellence without apology” and recruited outstanding coaches, gifted student athletes and dedicated administrative professionals. A&T student athlete graduation rates increased by more than 51%, annual giving to athletics grew by more than 15-fold and the department earned more than 70 individual, team, conference, national and Olympic championships.
He has also been at the helm as A&T stunned its supporters and many in black college communities in 2020 as it left the cozy confines of 50 years competing in an HBCU conference, the Mid-Eastern Athletic Conference, to join the predominantly non-HBCU Big South Conference and eventually moved to the predominantly non-HBCU Coastal Athletic Conference (CAA) where it now resides.
Those two conference-related moves have perhaps generated the greatest amount of criticism and polarization about his leadership as the Aggies have struggled to gain traction or produce standout programs since the moves. The moves were seen as an attempt to help A&T better align with other doctoral research universities while also delivering wider exposure for A&T sports teams and student athletes. The latter part of that assertion is certainly in question.
From 2015 to 2019, Aggie football teams won four Celebration Bowls, also known as the black college football national championship. In 2021, track and field athletes took home three medals — two of them gold – from the Summer Olympics in Tokyo. The following year, the men’s track and field team took second place at the 2022 NCAA Indoor Championships, trailing only Texas. It was the highest indoor finish ever for any Division I HBCU. A&T also started two new varsity programs under Hilton — men’s and women’s golf.
Hilton’s leadership was nationally recognized in 2019, when he was named an Under Armour Athletics Director of the Year for NCAA Football Championship Subdivision (FCS) institutions.
