He promised them a college football oasis in Calif. They got goose poop and red-eyes.

It’s a bright and sunny October morning at the old Oakland Raiders practice facility in Alameda when Desmond Gumbs gets ready to talk with this reporter about the story of Lincoln University football.

We shake hands and make our way through the building, with its windows still tinted black from its NFL days, that Lincoln athletics operates out of, thanks to some cooperation from the Oakland Roots. Even with the new tenants, the hallways remain decorated with images of Raiders greats who played or coached for the since-departed franchise. He offers small comments about his personal favorites, before pointing to John Madden to proudly say, “That’s the man right there.”

Nothing about the interaction indicated that this man was the head football coach and founding athletic director of a program whose football team hasn’t won a game in over three years. At that moment, it had been 5.5 weeks since his team, the Oaklanders, had even scored a point, a streak that continued for two more games after the interview — with a total margin of defeat of 287-0 in the final five games on the season. All of those games took place on the road, just like each and every game the team has played in its five-year history. Within that time frame, just one contest has taken place inside California’s borders.

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FILE: Portland State Vikings defensive tackle EJ Ane gets a sack on Lincoln University’s quarterback during a nonconference game between the Vikings and the Oaklanders at Hillsboro Stadium in Hillsboro, Ore.

But to Gumbs, it’s more about the journey and less about the state of the path the Oaklanders have traveled on. He sees his program as a land of opportunity, one that can provide dreams for kids who can’t find them anywhere else, without the institutional or financial backing, or even oversight, of an athletics department in the NCAA or other college sports association.

“Our season is not being measured on wins and losses,” Gumbs said after settling into his office just outside the Oakland Airport. “I think our season is measured on growth. When we first started, we didn’t have a football field, we didn’t have a training room, we didn’t have anything. When we started, the idea was to get to this destination.”

For Gumbs to achieve this, he needs one thing more than all else: players to buy into his dream with him. According to several former Lincoln players who spoke with SFGATE, Gumbs has effectively sold players on the idea of being willing to sacrifice just about everything — their health, their comfort, even their dignity — to keep Lincoln going.

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“They got me there on lies, to be honest with you,” said Elliott Johnson, a defensive lineman for Lincoln in 2022, revealing his belief that he was sold a false bill of goods. “They’re saying that we’re going to take over the Raiders facility after a year, things like that. So I’m going there with the hopes and expectations of us having a better year after my first year playing there.”

The former Raiders training facility that now houses the Lincoln University football team offices and practice facilities in Alameda, Calif., on Dec. 3, 2025.

In February 2024, USA Today reported that the program did not properly meet the needs of its student-athletes. These allegations, which former Lincoln players SFGATE spoke with reiterated in interviews, included a lack of water at practices, haphazard red-eye travel itineraries, barely receiving any food from the program, and inadequate medical and training services.

“It’s hard to go into detail because some of the stuff is actually embarrassing to talk about,” Shamon Gennes, who was a wide receiver for Lincoln in 2023, told SFGATE. “He kind of made us feel less than men sometimes. We’re grown men, and we just needed certain things. As men, we need certain things or we’re not even able to work.”

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As powerhouse programs spend over $200 million firing underperforming coaches, this story looks at how a threadbare Bay Area team keeps operating — and what Gumbs’ response to criticism reveals about his vision for an Oakland football program.

Lincoln University’s athletics department dates back to fall 2020 — at the height of COVID-19, as Gumbs reiterates throughout our conversation — when the Oaks opened up shop as a way to combat the school’s declining enrollment rates in the wake of the pandemic. Mikhail Brodsky, Lincoln’s president and also the owner of Archimedes Banya bathhouse in San Francisco, put Gumbs in charge so the university could attract a more local student body. This would be a departure from Lincoln’s reputation as a business school for international students.

Desmond Gumbs, the athletic director and head coach of football for Lincoln University, points to a photo of former Oakland Raiders head coach John Madden inside the former Oakland Raiders training facility in Alameda, Calif., on Oct. 21, 2025.

Gumbs is a local businessman whose ventures include real estate, movies, and boxing promotion and streaming service BLK Prime Boxing — the last of which he says gives him the financial flexibility to work his dual role without a salary. He also founded a high school in Hayward, Stellar Preparatory High School, where he coached his two sons on their way to playing Division I college football. While some might question how a man with seemingly no experience in collegiate athletics, let alone any experience in a leadership role within that realm, could become a university’s athletic director and head football coach, he saw the program as a new challenge.

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“Why do you plant a seed and water it?” Gumbs asked. “It’s going to grow. You just gotta keep watering it, keep fertilizing it. It’s going to grow in spite of weather conditions. Once you cultivate it, you’re going to get a positive reaction, and that’s what this is, in spite of all the things that have happened. What is the goal? The goal is to get to the destination. I’m not taking my eyes off it. Where others will, I’m not going to.”

When recruiting began, Gumbs and his team preached the magic word of opportunity. For aspiring college football players who might not have a real chance at seeing the field playing for a program with a household name, Lincoln could provide them not only with actual gridiron experience but with experience against Division I competition and a future home field of the Oakland Coliseum.

That last part of the pitch has been something of a recurring theme for Gumbs, as recruits from the 2022 season remember hearing about it, and it was repeated as recently as a February 2025 interview with KTVU-TV.

@oaksfb HC & AD Desmond Gumbs hopes to make the @oaklandcoli their home stadium in the future

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