Defending HBCU National Champion South Carolina State Finalizes 2026 Coaching Staff

South Carolina State finalized a substantially revised coaching staff in early March as the Bulldogs prepare to defend the 2025 HBCU national championship. The staff-finalization window is reported as March 3-4, 2026, while South Carolina State Athletics opened spring drills on March 2 with a page titled "Berry and Defending HBCU National Champions Open Spring Drills" timestamped 3/2/2026 2:41:00 PM.

Head coach Chennis Berry addressed reporters during spring practice, offering a blunt assessment of the turnover and energy around the program. "It's Year 31, Coach Berry told reporters at Spring Practice. 'It likes, it just so new, just so fresh. There's so many new faces. So many new players, and so many new coaches. But again, the program is the program. It doesn't change... excited about the coaches that we brought in,'" the quote appears in coverage by Kyle Mosley.

The announcement described the hires broadly as coordinators, position coaches and operational staff. Coverage by Kyle Mosley noted the group "includes experienced leaders, up-and-coming assistants, and key support staff" but the material supplied for this report did not list individual names or titles for those hires. The Si piece opened the staffing narrative with the line "New faces in the Bulldogs coaching staff should bolster another championship campaign in 2026," framing the changes as reinforcement for the title defense.

The coaching changes come after SCSU's title run in 2025 and a loss in the 2025 Celebration Bowl to Jackson State. Reporting emphasizes that the new staff will be tested by a "tough schedule and more national attention in 2026," and frames South Carolina State as "the team everyone wants to beat" heading into the defense of the HBCU national championship.

The timeline in the available material shows a string of related content on the SCSU athletics site dated late January and early February 2026, including labels "ChennisBerry2 01.26.26," "BerryWashington 01.27.26," "2025 HBCU NATIONAL CHAMPIONSHIP 01.30.26," and "natonalchampsHBCU 02.05.26." Those items precede the spring-drills page timestamped March 2 and the March 3-4 staffing window reported in aggregate coverage.

What remains absent from the supplied material is a named staff roster. There are explicit references to coordinators, position coaches and operational staff, but no hire-by-hire listing, no bios and no contract or role breakdowns in the documents provided. South Carolina State's athletics site confirmed spring drills began March 2 and coverage by Kyle Mosley captured Berry's comments, but the full public roster of new coaches was not included in the extracts reviewed here.

As SCSU moves through spring practice following the March 2 athletics posting and the March 3-4 staff-finalization reports, Chennis Berry's assessment captures the program's tone: energy and turnover paired with continuity. With the Bulldogs set to defend the 2025 HBCU national championship and coming off a Celebration Bowl loss to Jackson State, Berry and the newly assembled staff will carry the program into a high-exposure 2026 campaign.