The Lincoln Oaklanders are The Most Bewildering College Football Program in America
Oct. 1 marks the bye week for Lincoln University. The Oaklanders have earned the time off.
Through its first four games, Oakland-based Lincoln lost games of 52-7 at Texas A&M Commerce; 42-10 at Western Oregon; 66-7 against Div. II national title hopeful Grand Valley; and 43-6 at St. Thomas (Minn.).
All four games were played on the road, as you can see. In fact, Lincoln’s entire schedule sends it on the road, from its closest trips into Oregon and Utah, to Texas, in the Rust Belt, and as far east as West Virginia and New York.
Lincoln hit the road for the entirety of its 2021 schedule, as well, primarily against opponents from the Pacific Northwest and Texas. Among the more noteworthy matchups: a 92-0 loss against quality Div. II opponent Central Washington, and a 61-13 defeat against FCS playoff qualifier Stephen F. Austin.
It’s actually the SFA game last season that put Lincoln on my radar. I saw the matchup as I was going over the FCS schedule for my weekly Top 25 ballot and was flummoxed: There was a college football program in California I’d never heard of?
The shuttering of Azusa Pacific in 2020 marked the end of NCAA-sanctioned, scholarship football in Los Angeles and Orange Counties beyond USC and UCLA. That’s a long, sad story all its own I plan to examine for The Press Break, but not at this time.
While Lincoln is in the Bay Area, not the Southland, the Golden State in general has a dearth of Div. I and Div. II football programs relative both to population and its history.
A Div. II program potentially surfacing in Oakland, of all places, piqued my interest — though not enough initially to investigate further. I assumed Lincoln was classifying for Div. II; an upstart Div. I program would have more buzz, and it’s not uncommon for FCS teams like SFA to play Div. II opponents while usually avoiding classifications any lower.
Of course, that notion was dispelled for me last year, in part when The Athletic fav Kevin Kelley padded Presbyterian’s resume with cupcakes St. Andrews, an NAIA member that launched football in 2017; and Fort Lauderdale, the Chris Chambers-coached NCCAA program with more red flags than a viral Tinder profile.
And as for Stephen F. Austin — a much more established and historically competitive FCS program than the Presbyterian team Kelley left after one season in a finger-pointing huff — the Lumberjacks’ willingness to schedule…let’s say, unconventionally, became apparent last week.
SFA blasted Warner, a bad NAIA team, 98-0. Sports Illustrated justified SFA’s scheduling of Warner as a desperation move to fill a slot vacated when Incarnate Word and Lamar got cold feet on joining the reformed WAC and returned to the Southland Conference.
It’s much tougher to justify the ‘Jacks feigning a two-point conversion that would have made the final score an even 100-zilch, beyond coach Colby Carthel’s apparent pursuit of replacing Kevin Kelley as Div. I football’s Most Reddit Coach, but I digress.
The more pertinent point is that, yes, FCS programs will in fact schedule NCAA sub-Div. II, NAIA and even NCCAA members. Given the importance of FBS paydays to the budgets of many-a-FCS program, I can’t necessarily knock the practice.
However, that means nothing should be assumed from Lincoln playing a schedule that’s composed mainly of opponents from either Div. II1 or Div. I2.
OK, then: What exactly is Lincoln University, as a football program or as an institution?
The athletic program is a wholly new endeavor, of what classification I have not ascertained. Lincoln has exclusively played NCAA members, but the program’s statistics are not included in the Div. I, Div. II or Div. III databases.
Ditto NAIA and the more dubious NCCAA databases.
Lincoln’s official website only adds to my befuddlement. The football schedule hasn’t been updated with 2022 dates, and the headlines are spotty — though one of them is that Bay Area legend Gary Payton is apparently Lincoln’s basketball coach.
The association of a former pro standout only adds to the knee-jerk parallel I’m sure plenty of you are drawing between Lincoln and the University of Fort Lauderdale with the former Pro Bowler Chambers heading its football program.
However, that makes the obscurity of Lincoln all the more confounding. Chambers taking over at the fledgling Fort Lauderdale earned it a flowery Sports Illustrated feature, before the program gained further exposure-by-association with The Athletic and the LeBatard Extended Universe latching onto Presbyterian’s dismantling of the lowly Eagles3.
If nothing else, I give the 2021 Blue Hose begrudging kudos for continuing the tradition of teams absolutely bludgeoning opponents representing schools of suspicious make-up, almost 30 years after Troy put 258 points on DeVry — yes, THAT DeVry — in basketball.
That the University of Fort Lauderdale (est. 1995) campus occupies an actual strip mall added to some of the attention the program attracted last year. Lincoln’s campus is similarly unimpressive. Below is the Google Street View image of Lincoln University:
One can understand seeing this space why Lincoln plays all its games on the road: There isn’t exactly a place for the Oaklanders to host football.
Viewers of Netflix’s fifth season of Last Chance U. might note, given the Oakland connection, that Laney College’s campus is practically comparable to a Pac-12 university’s when contrasted with Lincoln. Likewise, Laney has a football facility — and it’s only a few blocks away from Lincoln.
The actual university of Lincoln was founded in 1919, so it lacks some of the Grifter Golden Age stink that comes with an “institution” founded in more recent times4. However, this 2017 Center for Immigration Studies report notes Lincoln among the most egregious offenders of predatory financing practices with regard to foreign-born students.
Essentially, the more I try to learn about Lincoln University football, the more mysterious the whole program feels. I just hope the Oaklanders enjoy their one fall Saturday at home.
Trips to face surprising breakout GLIAC team Davenport, which has a 5-foot-9 and very conservatively listed 245-pound running back, Caleef Jenkins; and Bluefield State, “the whitest HBCU in America,” remain on the Oaklanders’ docket.
Lincoln returns from its bye on Oct. 8 to play Portland State, a program that in 1980 hung a 105-0 final on Delaware State. Friend of The Press Break Craig Haley took a deep-dive last spring into the record-setting performance. Don’t expect the 2022 Vikings to beat Lincoln as thoroughly, but the trio of FCS opponents awaiting Oaklanders’ visits in the next month — PSU, Texas Southern and Southern Utah — will easily pass a combined 105 points.
That Fort Lauderdale had to forfeit midgame against Div. II Gulf South cellar dweller Shorter this season as a result of not having enough linemen to continue garnered considerably less attention.
This is probably as good of a place as any to offer your semi-regular reminder that Full Sail, a for-profit diploma mill that rebranded itself as a “University” in 2008 and is most famous for hosting WWE’s NXT weekly tapings prior to the COVID-19 pandemic, has no sports yet has a heavily advertised School of Sports Broadcasting that Dan Patrick takes money to promote. Whether Patrick takes his payment in the form of McDonald’s bags filled with cash, well, I guess we’re left to speculate. (No word if Public Speculation is part of the Dan Patrick School of Broadcasting curriculum.)