HOUSTON - On Monday, Morehouse College dismissed Gerard Wilcher after one season as head football coach of the Maroon Tigers. In Saturday's season finale, Morehouse defeated rival Clark Atlanta, 35-21, equaling last season's 1-9 record.
President David A. Thomas and the Morehouse trustees hired Wilcher eight months ago after former head coach Rich Freeman stepped down from leading the program for sixteen seasons. Wilcher was a longtime assistant coach at Rice University before returning to his alma mater as head coach. The reality of the Morehouse football program's challenging conditions hit Wilcher upon accepting the position, as he told HBCU Legends in an interview.
"It's just a different world [at Morehouse]," Wilcher remarked. "Like, when I was at Rice, there were ten assistants plus the head coach. Every assistant had an assistant. We had, like, a recruiting department. There are, like, four people. There's, like, you know, you have a director of football operations. You get the high school relations. The head coach has his own secretary. There's a secretary for the staff. And then you go downstairs, and we got, like, four full-time trainers plus GAs. And then there's a woman in the training room that only deals with insurance. And then you go into the weight room. It's four full-time strength coaches. And each one of them got an intern. And then you got, like, you got two full-time people in the equipment room. Plus, they get interns. Right? And so we [Morehouse] have none of that."
Coach Wilcher outlined more of his frustrations in a social media posting announcing his dismissal from Morehouse. "We played a challenging schedule with only two home games and even though we asked numerous times, we were not give the resources to have a strength and conditioning program." He continued, "I was hired after the recruiting season and had no recruiting budget. However, the College has made the decision to no longer retain me rather than give us the support and resources we need in order to be successful."
Wilcher foreshadowed his concerns about being behind in the recruiting process during our discussion. "I feel pretty good for the most part about the class we brought in. So I'm fired up because I'm like, imagine what happens if we get a real runway and we're not behind the eight ball."
Last week, the embattled coach told HBCU Gameday, "I'm not leaving, and I refuse to resign. I will make them publicly fire me if they want me out. I know there are some people that aren't happy that we haven't been able to get it done, but I have not even been approached about leaving."
Throughout the 2023 football season, the Maroon Tigers began to show improvement. The next coach will face similar challenges unless the institution's administration finds the resources to adequately fund and field a competitive football program at Morehouse College. Unfortunately, it is an all too familiar difficulty HBCU football programs have faced over recent years unless adequate marketing and fund-raising efforts become the staple of our athletic department's operations.
As a Morehouse Man, I wish the very best for the Maroon Tigers program, my beloved institution, and Coach Gerard Wilcher.
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