Sean ‘Diddy’ Combs Makes Hefty Donation to Jackson State Athletics

The hip-hop icon made good on his public pledge from a year ago.
Sean ‘Diddy’ Combs Makes Hefty Donation to Jackson State Athletics
Sean ‘Diddy’ Combs Makes Hefty Donation to Jackson State Athletics /

Jackson State made headlines in recent months by losing football coach Deion Sanders to Colorado. However, the Tigers have made up in part for that loss—with the help of a music icon.

Hip-hop great and entertainment mogul Sean “Diddy” Combs is giving $1 million to Jackson State’s athletic department, university president Dr. Elayne Hayes-Anthony announced at a monthly meeting of the Mississippi Institutions of Higher Learning board of trustees on June 15.

“P Diddy, as our students call him, and as we probably know him as Sean Combs, has released $1 million dollars to Jackson State for athletics,” Hayes-Anthony said. “And we are very, very pleased about that. We will be receiving $332,000 by June 23 as a first installment and we get another installment in 2024 and another in 2025.”

Combs publicly pledged to donate the money at the 2022 BET Awards, a little over five months before Sanders’s departure. Now, Combs has followed through on his promise even though Sanders has moved on to a Power 5 job.

“Before I leave, I want to donate $1 million dollars to Howard University,” Combs said. “Also, I’m going to drop another million dollars on Deion Sanders and Jackson State because we should play for us.”

Combs attended Howard, dropping out during his sophomore year but later receiving an honorary doctorate in 2014.


Published
Patrick Andres
PATRICK ANDRES

Patrick Andres is a staff writer on the Breaking and Trending News team at Sports Illustrated. He joined SI in December 2022, having worked for The Blade, Athlon Sports, Fear the Sword and Diamond Digest. Andres has covered everything from zero-attendance Big Ten basketball to a seven-overtime college football game. He is a graduate of Northwestern University's Medill School of Journalism with a double major in history .