Bethune-Cookman’s rebuild under Raymond Woodie Jr. has reached the point where the results are no longer hard to find.
After three seasons spent laying the groundwork, the Wildcats put together their best year under Woodie in 2025, finishing 6-6 overall and 5-3 in Southwestern Athletic Conference play. That marked a four-win jump from the previous season and kept Bethune-Cookman in the SWAC East conversation late into the year, capped by a 38-34 win over rival Florida A&M in the Florida Classic.
Now the challenge changes. The Wildcats enter Woodie’s fourth season picked to finish third in the SWAC East, carrying six preseason All-SWAC selections and several national preseason honors into a schedule that starts Sept. 3 at UCF and ends Nov. 21 against FAMU in Orlando.
Woodie isn’t interested in the paper part of the conversation.
“On paper is on paper. Now we gotta do it on the field,” Woodie said during SWAC Media Day. “No weight.”
There’s plenty from last season to back up the optimism. Bethune-Cookman averaged 410.8 yards per game on offense, good for fourth in the SWAC. The Wildcats rushed for 171.3 yards per game and led the conference with nearly 240 passing yards per game.
A lot of that production begins with Christian Loving, the veteran offensive lineman who returns as one of the program’s most accomplished players. The 6-foot-3, 315-pound graduate student earned first-team All-SWAC honors last season, landed on the 2026 Preseason All-SWAC first team and was also named to the BOXTOROW HBCU College Football Preseason All-America Team.
The defense brings its own share of recognition, and maybe even more of the preseason buzz. Bethune-Cookman has four defenders who earned preseason All-SWAC honors, a sign of how much the unit has raised its profile.
Stephen Sparrow headlines that group. The linebacker was picked to the first team after posting 62 tackles, 3.5 tackles for loss, two sacks and two pass breakups last season.
Loving sees Sparrow as the kind of presence that makes everything around him cleaner.
“When you have a vocal linebacker like Sparrow, and that can cover, they can fill a gap, and it just makes everything way better on the defensive side of the ball,” Loving said during SWAC Media Day.
Up front, Isaiah Washburn returns after finishing sixth in the SWAC with 4.5 sacks. He added 17 tackles, two quarterback hurries and a pass breakup last season, and one of his most eye-catching games came on one of the biggest stages: two sacks against FAMU in the Florida Classic.
Bethune-Cookman also has a proven piece in the secondary in Naim Lassiter, who was named one of 16 defensive backs on the preseason watch list for the Aeneas Williams Award and earned Preseason All-SWAC second-team recognition. Last season, Lassiter finished with 56 tackles, an interception, three pass breakups, a forced fumble and two fumble recoveries.
Those honors say plenty about where the program stands now. Woodie says the bigger shift is harder to measure, but easier to feel around the team.
“It’s been a blessing just to see these student-athletes grow from year to year,” Woodie said. “Now these guys are player-led.
… You ride by during their spare time on Fridays or Sundays, and you see about 80 guys on the field without coaches. That’s telling us that these guys really want to be great.”
Bethune-Cookman has already shown it can make real progress. It has not yet shown it can turn that progress into a championship run. The Wildcats have never reached the Celebration Bowl since the game began in 2015, and getting there would mean winning the SWAC, something they have not done since joining the conference.
Woodie thinks the standard inside the program is moving in the right direction.
“The standard is the standard,” Woodie said. “If you don’t do it, you won’t be around.”
For Bethune-Cookman, 2026 is about making sure last season was not the peak. It’s about making it the start.
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