The accumulated debt in FAMU’s athletic department, and the university’s efforts to manage it, has attracted considerable attention in the past few weeks and even cost at least three high-ranking financial administrators their jobs with the potential for more heads to roll pending the outcome of an investigation by an outside firm.
FAMU’s budget challenges in athletic ---projected at around $8 million at the end of the 2018-19 fiscal year--- is something it has struggled with for the past 17 years. However, it wasn’t always this way.
In just 2002, FAMU’s athletic department was flushed with cash and was one of the best managed among HBCUs. A State Auditor General report, showed that FAMU’s athletic department boasted a cash surplus of more than $3 million in December 2002.
By the next fiscal year which began on July 1, 2003, the FAMU athletic department had approximately $2.5 million excess revenue in the bank, a decrease of more than $500,000. By May 2004, the athletic department was not only broke, but $950,000 in debt.
So what happened?
In November 2002, former FAMU President Fred Gainous fired former FAMU Athletic Director Ken Riley, and replaced him with Interim A.D. J.R.E. Lee III, a close friend of former FAMU Board of Trustee Chair James Corbin. By Feb. 10, 2003, Lee resigned amid controversy and a failed moved to NCAA D1.
A large part of the reason FAMU decided to make the jump to I-A was because of a "landmark" TV deal Lee negotiated with a start-up television company --- Urban Broadcasting Company (UBC). The deal was supposed to guarantee FAMU a minimum of $7.5 million and possibly as much as $24 million over five years. None of that money ever materialized.
According to that same Orlando Sentinel article, Lee also allegedly sent out a letter to FAMU boosters claiming that he had a $20 million contract for stadium naming rights that was "under review." One problem: Love Collins III, FAMU's, VP for Advancement (chief fundraiser), and school trustee Barney Bishoptold the Tallahassee Democrat they were skeptical any such contract existed.
"If there is a contract," Bishop said, "I definitely would like to see it."
Both the failed move of FAMU's football team to Division 1A (currently BCS) was the brain child of Board of Trustees Chairman James Corbin. Corbin told the Tallahassee Democrat that he “suggested” that Gainous hire his friend J.R.E. Lee, III as interim athletic director.
Both the failed move of FAMU's football team to Division 1A (currently BCS) was the brain child of Board of Trustees Chairman James Corbin. Corbin told the Tallahassee Democrat that he “suggested” that Gainous hire his friend J.R.E. Lee, III as interim athletic director.
In 2018, FAMU President Larry Robinson tapped former president Gainous from out of retirement to lead the Brooksville Agricultural and Environmental Research Station (BAERS).