Tennessee State announced Thursday that its football team will play Arkansas-Pine Bluff next season, but both UAPB’s coach and athletic director said the game isn’t set in stone yet.
The Tigers released their 2012 football schedule, listing the Golden Lions as its Sept. 29 homecoming game at LP Field, home to the NFL’s Tennessee Titans. UAPB has not yet released its schedule, but coach Monte Coleman and athletic director Lonza Hardy said their school has been in talks with Tennessee State as well as other potential opponents.
“We’re trying to work out the logistics of it,” Coleman said of possibly playing the Tigers.
Hardy said he hopes the Lions can release a schedule by next week.
If the game is a done deal, it will be the first meeting between the two historically black Football Championship Subdivision programs since 1947, according to UAPB’s year-by-year records. The records list only two meetings both won by the Tigers, 50-19 in 1944 and 20-0 in 1947.
But Tennessee State said in its release it would be the first meeting between the two teams.
The Nashville school is the only historically black member of the Ohio Valley Conference. The Tigers were 5-6 and 4-4 in the OVC in 2011, while the Lions went 6-5 and 5-4 in the SWAC.