At one of your first public appearances in Tallahassee this
summer you said that the FAMU athletic department was beyond fixing and what it
really needed was to be torn down and rebuilt from scratch. Is that the way you
meant that to come out?
In just talking to our other partners on campus, athletics
was so isolated. It was really just out there by itself. What I’m trying to do,
and what the staff I’m putting together is trying to do, is we want to go from
being the worst department on campus to the best department on campus. I think
the best thing I’ve done since I’ve been there is I’ve painted three walls
orange. All the walls were tan. They were old, beige, might have been painted
in 1975. The carpets were old with tears in it. It wasn’t a place to do
business. I asked people what do you think of our orange wall? And they’d said,
‘Well, it’s bright,’ or some would come in and say ‘Wow.’ And I’d say, ‘Thank
you.’ It’s a reaction. I didn’t have that reaction when I walked in here.
Do you have anything new planned for Bragg Memorial Stadium this season, which opened for FAMU football games in 1957 and got its last renovation more than 30 years ago?
We’re starting a new premium experience that we’ve never had
at the stadium before, where you can buy an upgraded seat and have a
climate-controlled space and have access to adult beverages. It’s in the north
end zone. It’s a limited amount of tickets and that’s going to be our
value-added ticket experience that I think our fans have been clamoring for.
When will this be available?
We’re up and running. We’re laying the concrete now. The
tents are going up. We’ll be ready for our home opener against Coastal Carolina
(Sept. 20). We’re looking at the need to build facilities. That’s either a
major renovation of Bragg Stadium with FieldTurf or it’s a relocation of Bragg
Stadium and building a totally new stadium. There’s a couple of places on
campus to put it. We’re going to look at all probabilities that make sense working
with our county, state and city partners from an economic-development
standpoint.
With all this talk of new things, will there be an effort
made to preserve the tradition of Rattler excellence going back to all those
national championship teams from 50 years ago?
One thing we’re doing right now is bringing over the
director of the Black Archives museum on campus and she’s guiding us through
how we take care of our trophies. We call it our legacy project. Now we’re
going to take all those trophies with all the reverence that they should be
treated with, and polish them up, clean up those cabinets, paint those cabinets
and then she’s going to instruct us on how we display these things so that when
you walk in that fieldhouse, you feel the legacy. We just haven’t taken care of
that.
Read the full interview here.