Florida A&M athletic director Kellen Winslow has been opened about the school’s financial woes since taking over the job in April.
In a report by a college consulting firm detailing FAMU’s so-called inefficiencies, it suggests that the school consider moving to the SWAC in an effort to reduce athletic operation costs.
The 149-page report, which was prepared last fall for former interim AD Michael Smith, details many of the obvious problems that plague FAMU’s athletic department.
It also recommends that FAMU consider changing conference to the SWAC, suggesting that such a move would reduce the cost of travel. The recommendations in the Collegiate Consulting Report have been mentioned by Winslow several times but never discussed publicly in detail.
On average, the report said, Mid-Eastern Athletic Conference schools are 700 miles from Tallahassee compared to the average of 518 miles for schools in the SWAC.
Further illustrating its point, the consulting group noted the difference in budgets between the 10-team SWAC programs and the 11 schools in the MEAC.
SWAC programs average an athletic budget of $6.96 million, compared to the average of $8.6 in the MEAC.
FAMU’s athletic budget at the time the report was being prepared was $11 million.
During a public meeting in June, Winslow described the athletic department as being “broken” and maintained that the only way the school could rebound is to “tear it down, start over build it the right way.”
“We all know what happens to a house that doesn’t sit on a strong foundation,” he said. “It doesn’t hold up to pressure. So let’s strip it down, restructure it in a way that it should be done so we can get the value of FAMU athletics that we’re supposed to.”
