A trio of Florida A&M athletic facilities will now carry the names of Rattlers’ legends.
Florida A&M Board of Trustees approves facility name changes for football field, softball field, and football locker room
📰 https://t.co/3maVIz2dRo#FAMU | #FAMUly | #Rattlers | #FangsUp 🐍 pic.twitter.com/q78CZZTmUy
— Florida A&M Athletics (@FAMUAthletics) June 8, 2023
The school agreed on Thursday to name the football field at Bragg Memorial Stadium as Ken Riley Field, the softball field after longtime coach Veronica Wiggins and the locker room at Bragg Memorial Stadium in honor of George “Godfather” Thompson.
The FAMU athletic department said there will be a ceremony to officially celebrate the naming of the facilities at a later date.
Riley — who died in 2020 — was among nine former coaches and players elected to the Hall during the NFL Honors awards show in February.
Riley played quarterback at FAMU and was later drafted by the Cincinnati Bengals in the sixth round as a defensive back. He was later inducted into the Black College Football Hall of Fame in 2015.
During his NFL career, Riley was named All-Pro four times and retired with the fourth most career interceptions, with 65 in 14 seasons.
Riley will be enshrined in the Pro Football Hall of Fame on Aug. 5. in Canton, Ohio.
Wiggins is the winningest coach in FAMU athletics history, with 726 wins in 29 seasons and 13 conference championships. She was inducted into the MEAC Sports Hall of Fame in 2022.
Thompson played football for the Rattlers as a running back and defensive back in the early 1950s and graduated from FAMU in 1954.
Thompson, who worked at FAMU for 49 years, was a close confidant of FAMU’s legendary coach Jake Gaither, who hired him as an equipment manager in 1954. Thompson led a successful fundraising campaign in 2019 to replace the football team lockers and the renovations was completed in the summer of 2021.
