New York Times, October 9, 2004 Florida A&M Tries to Recover From Failed Bid By ROBERT ANDREW POWELL TALLAHASSEE, Fla., Oct. 5 - On game day, an hour before kickoff, Florida A&M University does not look like a school divided. The parking lot is a typical football tailgate. Alumni flip hamburgers and down bottles of cold beer. The university's famous marching band files past, drummers slapping sticks as they head into Bragg Memorial Stadium. Paul Robinson, a booster from Valdosta, Ga., ladles chunky seafood gumbo into a red plastic cup. "We're going through some tough times," Robinson said. "We'll get through it. It's a situation where we're trying to keep the university as one." This year was not supposed to be tough. It was supposed to be glorious. This was to be the year Florida A&M became the only historically black college or university playing at football's highest level, N.C.A.A. Division I-A. For a school founded on a slave plantation and marginalized by decades of segregation, the chance to compete on a national stage against teams like Notre Dame and Florida State was a great source of pride. But the rise from Division I-AA, which happened on a track so fast it could have been wind aided, was stopped just as abruptly when the university's president decided the resources of Florida A&M trailed its ambition. The athletic director who hatched the I-A dream resigned last spring. On Sept. 28, Fred Gainous, the university president who approved and then delayed the upgrade, effectively lost his job. The mishandling of football is one of the primary reasons for his dismissal. As fallout from the aborted upgrade continues, the football team plays out a seemingly lost season. It is back at I-AA, playing without a conference affiliation. Over the summer, Florida A&M admitted breaking N.C.A.A. eligibility rules, which depleted the number of scholarships available. Further hurting the team, the jump to I-A and back down caused 20 transfer students to be declared ineligible to play this year. "The program now is at its lowest ebb in the history of the institution," Coach Billy Joe said at a news conference before the season. Five games later, the Rattlers are 2-3, the losses coming to Illinois, Tulane and Temple, all I-A teams scheduled in the initial excitement of the program upgrade. Visions of Division I-A When he took office a little more than two years ago, Gainous argued that Florida A&M could have top-tier programs on the football field and in the classroom, and named J.R.E. Lee III as the interim athletic director. Lee's grandfather, a former Florida A&M president, established the university's national reputation. He beefed up the football program, turning it into a historically black-school powerhouse. When he traveled, he often brought Florida A&M's famous marching band with him. Lee's father also served the university, as business manager. When Lee III came in, Gainous asked him to chart a vision for the athletic program. Lee wasted no time unleashing an ambition befitting his lineage. He announced he had signed a television contract that would generate more than $1 million annually. Naming rights for Bragg Stadium were to bring in an additional $20 million. Lee planned to leverage that guaranteed money toward stadium upgrades needed to move up to I-A. "This was a move that I felt should've happened a long time ago," Lee told the Florida A&M student newspaper when the elevation to Division I-A was announced in 2003. "I've always known since I first got here that Florida A&M has all the necessary tools to move this program up the highest level of competition. "We are not accustomed to following," he added about the university. "We're accustomed to leading, to being in the forefront. " Such ambition was welcomed by at least half the alumni. Florida A&M was founded more than 100 years ago as a blacks-only college on the former slave plantation of Florida Governor W. P. Duval. Through decades of segregation, while being chronically underfunded, Florida A&M produced generations of surgeons, political leaders and other professionals. Athletically, Florida A&M harnessed the state's black high schools to establish a football dynasty and won 12 historically black-college national championships. Then the Rattlers won the inaugural I-AA title in 1978. But desegregation gradually diluted their success. Large, previously white-only universities like Florida State and Florida tapped the black talent pool to become national powers. Florida A&M, with its small stadium and aging facilities, was left behind. A Proud Tradition Yet, to many alumni, Florida A&M remains a tantalizingly attractive brand. The university's Marching 100 is considered the most creative collegiate band in America. (At halftime last Saturday, the band formed a hypodermic needle on the field that sprayed the word "TOXIC" while playing a Britney Spears song.) Florida A&M alumnus (Bullet) Bob Hayes won two Olympic gold medals in track. Tennis player Althea Gibson won Wimbledon, the French Open and the United States Open. Many boosters insist that if the university could upgrade its facilities to compete with the state powers, Florida A&M could shake up elite football. "When you're a former Rattler athlete, there's a major emotional charge dealing with going to Division I-A," Gainous said. "You see all the prospects out there, see all the glitter out there. As administrators, we needed to analyze it with some perspective. There has to be a holistic approach to moving to Division I-A. It can't be based on emotions alone." To qualify for I-A, Florida A&M must expand Bragg Stadium. More scholarships must be awarded. More coaches must be hired. Florida A&M must schedule at least four home games against I-A opponents, a challenge in an era when football schedules are often set years in advance. And that is just for football. Florida A&M intended to be the only university in America that played as an independent in all sports. It needed to fill schedules in volleyball, women's basketball and the other varsity sports. Not even Notre Dame attempts to pull that off. Still, acting upon the recommendations of Lee and Gainous, the university's board of trustees approved the application for I-A membership in June 2003. Within a month, the N.C.A.A. approved the application, and Florida A&M became the country's only historically black Division I-A college. "That was a day of great elation," Alvin Hollins Jr., the assistant athletic director, said. "We felt we'd finally arrived, that we were big time. Then all these problems began to surface." It All Falls Apart As feared, Florida A&M could not persuade four I-A teams to travel to Tallahassee for the 2004 season. The television contract fell through without generating a single dollar for Florida A&M. The lucrative stadium naming rights that Lee had touted turned out to be more of a goal than a done deal. When Gainous began looking at the numbers, he did not see how Florida A&M could afford to jump to the higher level. In February, he petitioned the board to postpone the upgrade indefinitely. In a 7-5 vote, the board agreed. Lee resigned as athletic director. "We decided not to mortgage the academic integrity of the institution for the advancement of the football program to Division I-A," Gainous said last week in a telephone interview. "I thought of all those millions who died crossing the Middle Passage," referring to the transport of slaves from Africa to North America or the West Indies. "Our primary intent is to honor them not with an athletic program but with a quality academic program." The problems did not stop. In June, new administrators discovered and reported 196 violations of N.C.A.A. eligibility rules. The violations stretched back to before the tenures of Gainous and Lee, and are widely considered to be paperwork mistakes rather than cheating. Still, the Mid-Eastern Athletic Conference stripped Florida A&M of thirteen conference titles in football, volleyball, men's tennis and track. As further punishment, the university had to pay the conference a six-figure fine and reduce the number of scholarships. The football team will return to the conference next season, and the university's other athletic teams never left it. Not Giving Up Yet The board of trustees voted last week to remove Gainous. He can keep his job only if the 13-member board unanimously agrees to retain him when they meet in December. Such agreement is considered all but impossible, but Gainous does not plan to resign. When he talks about the football program, he still talks of moving up to I-A, and the benefits the move can bring. "Athletics provides a level of exposure that no other activity can," Gainous said. On the field last week, Florida A&M easily defeated Virginia Union, a Division II school from Richmond. When the game ended, Rattlers players gathered in a corner of an end zone that was sprayed with orange and green paint. As players mingled with family members and friends, The Marching 100 belted out "The Florida Song," a postgame tradition. Senior defensive end Jeff Green held hands with his 6-year-old cousin. "I came here to play for F.A.M.U., not to play for I-AA football or I-A football," Green said. "We face whatever comes at us, and we're doing a fine job so far." Joe, the coach, gave interviews to Tallahassee television stations. When he finished, he looked up at the scoreboard, on which an animated snake rattled in celebration of Florida A&M's first home game, and second victory in a row. Neither victory came against a I-A team, which was not lost on Joe. "I thought it was great that they delayed our move up, personally," he said. "I did not look forward to competing at the I-A level without the proper facilities, resources, equipment and support. I was not looking forward to it at all." Back out in the parking lot, the party continued into the night. The air hung still and uncomfortably hot. Four hurricanes have swept through the Panhandle in the past month, none of them carrying the cooler air of autumn. Making the Best of It Along Perry Street, a candidate for property appraiser lowered a banner in the bed of his pickup truck. A foursome at a card table played bid whist while keeping tailgaters off their land. In rows of tents, as at a carnival or street fair, vendors continued to sell candied apples and cans of soda. The mellow aroma of garlic crabs was spiced by the tang of pepper sauce splashed on fried catfish. A woman spooned doughy conch fritters into hot oil. Smoke rising from her caldron floated into the skeletal branches of tall green pine trees. George W. Pittman Sr., 78, slowly forked yellow rice off a paper plate. He was wearing a Rattlers hat and a baggy white F.A.M.U. T-shirt. He is a retired educator and the former president of his local alumni association. "It would have been lovely," he said of Florida A&M's aborted rise to I-A. "We would have been happy to have it. It would have been an enhancement for public relations, better exposure in the state of Florida and throughout America. A Division I team would really enhance F.A.M.U., but at what price?" He was here with his extended family, as he was at every home game. Sons, granddaughters and their husbands, some of whom attended Florida State, all of whom claimed to bleed Florida A&M green and orange. "I don't think it was a well-thought-out plan," he said, sitting up on his lawn chair and extending a long index finger to make his point. "They had the best of intentions. We're just going through some turmoil right now, which we'll overcome. People don't want change, but we'll survive." Copyright 2004 The New York Times Company