http://www.meacfans.com/ubb/ultimate.../t/003674.html
posted 03 December, 2004 18:14
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FAMU football gets its money
Trips for recruiting, search for defensive coordinator back on
By Randy Beard
DEMOCRAT STAFF WRITER
Good news really does travel fast.
The first thing Florida A&M football coach Billy Joe did after getting off
the telephone with athletic director Joseph Ramsey II Thursday morning was
to tell his assistant coaches to hit the road.
"I told them to get their itineraries together because we can go recruiting
again," said Joe. "They can go to Miami. They can go out of state now. As a
matter of fact, they are all gone on the road now."
Joe also received permission to start lining up candidates for his vacant
defensive coordinator job.
The news brought to a close a divisive couple of days in the FAMU athletic
department. Ramsey had told Joe during a Monday morning meeting that the
football program's $100,000 recruiting budget - guaranteed in Joe's
contract - had been frozen.
However, Ramsey said he told Joe the money was only on hold until after he
met with Larry Reese, FAMU's vice president for administrative and financial
services, to address the athletic department's revenue shortfalls. Joe said
he was told there would be no money available for the football staff to do
any recruiting. He said there was never any mention of it being a temporary
freeze of the budget.
But bottom line, the money is now there.
"(Ramsey) said that we do have recruiting money. I asked him if it was
$100,000, and he said I had what was in my contract," said Joe. "That's all
I wanted to hear."
The athletic department still has some tough choices to make, but Ramsey
said the football budget was intact.
"Even though our financial situation looks pretty bleak ... we are going to
try to keep football intact," said Ramsey. "Football is our money-maker when
everything goes well, so you really don't want to tamper with it too much."
Ramsey said that the athletic department budget, which had a $700,000
shortfall last year, took another hit when the school rescinded its plan to
move to NCAA Division I-A. He said that when FAMU announced it was returning
to I-AA status, that Illinois, Tulane, Temple and Virginia Tech each cut
their revenue guarantees in half. Attendance at the games also failed to
kick in a revenue-sharing agreement.
"We knew we were off in our projections by about $400,000 after the Tulane
and Temple games," said Ramsey. "All the I-A schools cut their guarantees by
half. The only one that didn't was FIU (Florida International)."
As for the defensive coordinator position, Joe said he has at least three
candidates in mind that he wants to contact. The expected salary for the
position will be in the $72-75,000 range.
We've lost to BCC for a record 3 years in a row.
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