Winslow puts his foot in his mouth, again, with childish remarks to student-athletes

big rattler
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Back in June, new FAMU athletic director Kellen Winslow showed his ignorance of the recent history of FAMU’s athletics department in a set of comments he made before the 220 Quarterback Club.

“It’s broken,” Winslow said of the FAMU athletics department. “It can’t be fixed. Tear it down, start over build it the right way.”

The statement showed that Winslow had not taken the time to find out what really happed to the athletics division.

Twelve years ago, FAMU had one of the best financially-managed athletic departments among all the nation’s historically black colleges and universities. Ken Riley, who started serving as FAMU’s athletic director in 1994, left the department with an estimated surplus of more than $3M when he stepped down in 2002.

That surplus went away as a result of the disastrous financial management of an incompetently planned move to Division I-A led by the following interim AD, a long-time friend of the then-chairman of the FAMU Board of Trustees. A state audit said that: “The Department's expenses, as of May 2004 for the 2003-04 fiscal year, exceeded revenues by approximately $3.45 million. After spending available reserves, this left a deficit of approximately $950,000.”

The deficit got worse in the years after and is more than $7M now. But it wasn’t caused because the department wasn’t built “the right way.” FAMU had a financially strong athletics department until the under-the-table dealing on the Board of Trustees got in the way.

Winslow still doesn’t seem to have any idea why his poorly-informed “start over build it the right way” statement was a problem. When the Palm Beach Post asked him about it, he avoided the issue and rambled about painting some of his department’s office walls orange. 

The AD put his foot in his mouth again this week with a childish comment he made toward a group of FAMU football players who visited him to express their disagreement with his decision to terminate Head Coach Earl Holmes.

According to Tallahassee Democrat, Winslow tried to shoo them away by saying “Don’t y’all have a book to read?”

The student athletes had every right to be concerned about what was happening to the football program. The choice of a head football coach directly affects their health and well-being since that individual supervises their physical training. A head coach also performs an academic advisement and support role that is important to their classroom studies. Many players thought Holmes handled those particular responsibilities well despite the team’s painful losses and those were some of the reasons why they asked Winslow to let him stay on until the end of the season.

Before talking down to FAMU students again, Winslow should also think about how critical student athletic fees are to funding the department and his own six-figure salary.

The FAMU student-athletes have handled themselves well during this week’s football program shakeup. Winslow is the one who needs to grow up.

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