Athletics Director Earl Hilton to Step Down after 15 Impactful Years

EAST GREENSBORO, N.C. (April 7, 2026) – Longtime North Carolina Agricultural and Technical State University Athletics Director Earl M. Hilton III will step down this summer at the end of his contract, university leadership announced today.

A national search for a new athletics director will begin immediately. Hilton will continue in the role until a successor is identified and seated.

Hilton has overseen North Carolina A&T’s 17 intercollegiate athletics teams since 2011, shepherding the Aggies through four Black college football national championships and dozens of conference championships and steering Aggie athletics through two conference changes. He did that while managing a large Division I program at a time of transformational change in college athletics, including creation of new rules that shook up the NCAA transfer portal and emergence of Name, Image and Likeness deals and direct payments to student athletes.

Hilton’s leadership was nationally recognized in 2019, when he was named an Under Armour Athletics Director of the Year for NCAA Football Championship Subdivision institutions.

“North Carolina A&T is tremendously grateful for the outstanding leadership Earl has provided for our student athletes over the past 15 years,” said Chancellor James R. Martin II. “He created an environment in which more than 300 student athletes each year never lose sight of the fact that they are students first and that success in the classroom comes before competition on the playing field.

“We have especially appreciated his steady hand in a time of unprecedented change throughout the NCAA.”

An athletics administrator who previously spent eight years as a student affairs leader, Hilton assumed the AD position on an interim basis in late 2010 before being named A&T’s permanent athletics leader in February 2011. He inherited a struggling program in “academic and organizational chaos,” as one media outlet described it.

Working with other university administrators, Hilton set about bringing new order and discipline to the program under the banner of “excellence without apology” and recruited outstanding coaches, gifted student athletes and dedicated administrative professionals. A&T student athlete graduation rates increased by more than 51%, annual giving to athletics grew by more than 15-fold and the department earned more than 70 individual, team, conference, national and Olympic championships.

From 2015 to 2019, Aggie football teams won four Celebration Bowls, also known as the Black college football national championship. In 2021, track and field athletes took home three medals — two of them gold – from the Summer Olympics in Tokyo. The following year, the men’s track and field team took second place at the 2022 NCAA Indoor Championships, trailing only Texas. It was the highest indoor finish ever for any Division I historically Black college or university.

In 2020, Hilton led the Aggies’ move from the Mid-Eastern Athletic Conference to the Big South Conference, and two years later, the move to A&T’s current conference, the Coastal Athletic Association. The moves helped A&T better align with other doctoral research universities with similar aspirations while also delivering wider exposure for A&T sports teams and student athletes.

“It has been my singular privilege to have worked with so many wonderful and talented student athletes and the dedicated coaches and staff who support them. I have been blessed to be part of a remarkable community of boosters and fans who have sustained us with unflinching resolve,” said Hilton. “I am honored to have witnessed historic academic and athletic achievement and look forward to our continued success under the leadership of Chancellor Martin and the next athletics administration.”

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