It is a new era for the Florida A&M Rattlers football program, looking to return to championship prominence, led by team legend Quinn Gray as head coach.
Looming over the Rattlers’ 2026 season, however, are APR sanctions that prevent them from postseason eligibility.
Despite this, Coach Gray ensures that these sanctions are now in the rearview mirror, speaking at SWAC Media Day about the team’s focus on preparing for the start of the season.
“Once we got the news, and we understood what it looked like, we gave our players about a week to deal with their feelings,” said Coach Gray about how his team dealt with the APR sanctions. “We gave them a week so if they wanted to hop in the portal, they could do that. Once they decided to stay, we helped them understand that we aren’t looking back and we aren’t going to allow that to be a crutch for anything that we do moving forward.”
Florida A&M, along with Alabama A&M and Mississippi Valley State were initially banned from postseason play in the 2025 season due to APR sanctions, but a conditional waiver gave FAMU and AAMU momentary relief.
However, FAMU was unable to honor the conditions of that waiver, resulting in its ban from postseason play in 2026.
Regular season still presents opportunity to achieve
With this in mind, Coach Gray makes it clear that they are not looking past the 2026 season, as there are goals his team can achieve this year.
“To be honest with you, what we can’t do is just compete in the SWAC championship game and the Celebration Bowl,” said Gray. We can still be number one in the SWAC East, we can still be number one in the HBCU poll, we can still be ranked in the FCS poll, and all that good stuff as well. So at the end of the day, there are still things we can accomplish; there are still goals and targets we can try to hit and obtain. There’s a lot to play for, and yes, we’re still developing our guys, but we’re not developing for next year; we’re developing for week one against Albany State.”
Coach Gray returns to his alma mater after a three-year stint as head coach at Albany State that culminated in the best season in school history in his final year.
He led the Golden Rams to a 12-2 overall record, setting a season record for wins, an SIAC championship, and a run to the Regional Finals of the Division II Playoffs after wins over Valdosta State and Benedict in the first two rounds.
When discussing what it will be like to face his former team in Bragg Memorial Stadium on August 29, Gray gave a very matter-of-fact answer, touting that this game is about being able to open the season against a really good football program.
“We did a good job as a staff and collectively as an administration, building [the program] back to where it needed to be at Albany State,” said Gray about the opportunity to play against Albany State. “I’m looking forward to opening the season against them because they have some tremendous players over there who are going to be hungry cause they’re playing against their former coach and some of their former teammates. It’s just a great opportunity to bring two universities that are less than an hour and a half, or two hours away from each other, to open the season and see what it is that we have going into the fall season. We’re excited about it, and we’re looking forward to it.”
Last season, these two teams met with Florida A&M coming away victorious, erasing an early 14-3 deficit to escape with a 33-25 win, marking Albany State’s only loss of the regular season.
