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UD wrote these words about Florida A&M in 2014.

FAMU is a really interesting case right now. Like a lot of universities, it has for decades acted on the belief that a big noisy sports program is the front porch of the university. What do you do when the sports program at your school turns out to be the university’s front funeral parlor?

There’s no question that a program that beats people to death puts a damper on things. Fewer students apply. Very few students go to games. You’re losing so much sports revenue that you increase tuition big time, which turns off yet more applicants.

You remember. Its marching band beat a band member to death in a hazing ritual.

In 2015, there was no postseason play, because both football and basketball were under academic sanction.

Also at that time:

There have been four athletic directors and three head football coaches in the past 12 months.

For an approximately two-week overlapping period, the university had two entire football coaching staffs; this resulted in an additional $55,000.

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How are things now?

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Well, the marching band hasn’t killed anyone else. That’s the good news.

Otherwise, personnel turnover remains amazing, with a brand new prez and brand new athletic director and TONS of other departures.

And of course the perennial tendency of this jockshop as well as many other jockshops to use the athletic budget for … whatever… remains firmly in place. Let’s see…

[T]he university’s athletics department is facing $1 million in “unbudgeted expenses” for this fiscal year …

[These include:]

FAMU paying out $400,000 in annual leave money due to [its former AD], fired Head Football coach Alex Wood, eight assistant coaches, the budget coordinator/facility manager, compliance coordinator and others who left last year in athletics.

$300,000 in unexpected expenses incurred during last September’s FAMU Tampa Classic against Tennessee State.

$300,000 in added “miscellaneous” expenses.

… The department has de-activated purchasing cards, but it is not clear if that is effective across the board.

Read the whole article. You kinda have to piece things together, don’t you?

Bottom line: FAMU, a scandalously bad university, hands out purchasing cards to any random person they’ve just hired for an athletics department that’s tanking the school’s budget, and ignores whatever “miscellaneous” things they buy with it.

Margaret Soltan, April 26, 2018 7:16AM
Posted in: sport

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