The Week's Top Five: Can't Knock the Hustle?

Plus: Tom Brady, the Tush Push, and other assorted acts of dubious morality.

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I. Lincoln University, Oakland, California

Midway through the first quarter of a college football game in Pocatello, Idaho last Saturday, the home team’s quarterback threw a touchdown pass to a wide-open receiver. Four plays later, after recovering an onside kick, Idaho State—which was 0-3 coming into this game—scored again. Less than a minute later, the Bengals scored a third touchdown. By the end of the first quarter, Idaho State led 27-0. By halftime, they led 69-0. The final score was 90-0, and I imagine it could have been worse.

It is not every day that someone who writes regularly about college football discovers the existence of a college football program situated roughly two miles from their own house. Yet that happened to me this week, when I learned the identity of Idaho State’s opponent last Saturday, a team representing a school called Lincoln University, which is located in a single building in downtown Oakland, California.

Lincoln has an enrollment of roughly 220 full-time undergraduate students. Many of those students are athletes who play for sports teams known as the Oaklanders. Some play on a basketball team that was briefly coached by NBA Hall of Famer Gary Payton before he apparently got so disgruntled with the situation that he bailed for another local college; a number of Lincoln undergrads also play on a football team which has not won a single game since November of 2022. Lincoln has no home field, and they practice on a rutted soccer field without goalposts; they are a traveling team who plays every game on the road, but because Lincoln is an accredited four-year institution, they are considered a “countable opponent” for teams like Idaho State seeking to fill a hole on their schedule (and score an easy victory).

This season, Lincoln has already played games in Missouri, Arkansas and Texas (they lost those three by a combined score of 149-26). After the loss to Idaho State, the Oaklanders are up against a Thursday night game in Caledonia Township, Michigan; from there, they go to Alabama, Mississippi, Texas and Oklahoma. I presume the payoffs they get for playing these games are just enough to cover their expenses, but it is hard to know exactly what is happening here except that Lincoln is just trying to find a way to survive. After COVID, Lincoln University’s president—who also (seriously) owns a San Francisco bathhouse—was searching desperately for ways to attract students. “Nothing worked but sports,” he told USA Today.

If the whole thing carries the scent of a Ponzi scheme, you’re not alone in feeling that way. One former Lincoln football player told USA Today last year that Lincoln was essentially the college version of Bishop Sycamore, a purported high-school sports academy that turned out to be a scam.

Lincoln’s football coach, a man named Desmond Gumbs—I swear this is not the synopsis of a Thomas Pynchon novel—has insisted that this is all a legitimate attempt to build a college football program in the heart of Oakland. Gumbs has said he dreams of a future where Lincoln plays its home football games at the Oakland Coliseum; he insists that he’s made plenty of money in other business ventures and is not taking a paycheck for this job. He points to the players who have shown up at Lincoln merely to have the opportunity to play against FCS opponents, and have parlayed that experience into professional careers.

And maybe Gumbs is being truthful; maybe this is all just one man hustling to market an impossible dream in a city that largely has no idea of this dream even exists.