TALLAHASSEE - Florida A&M's Board of Trustees narrowly voted Tuesday to back President Fred Gainous' recommendation to delay moving the school's program to Division I-A this fall.
They voted 7-5 after an all-day meeting with the afternoon session devoted strictly to the future of the football program.
The trustees asked athletic department officials to see if the Rattlers would be able to stay in the Mid-Eastern Athletic Conference.
"I'm very disappointed," said trustees chairman James Corbin, who pushed for the move to I-A. "I think it was a big mistake for the school."
The vote comes four days after a Corbin ally, J.R.E. Lee III, resigned as the school's interim athletic director under pressure from some trustees dissatisfied with his performance.
Gainous said Tuesday that Joseph Ramsey, a sports management professor at the school, would serve in that role as a special assistant to him until a permanent successor is found.
Florida A&M is without a complete football schedule for the upcoming season but does have contracts with Oklahoma, Illinois, Virginia Tech and Toledo, athletic department officials said. The school also has signed letters of agreement with Tulane for a game to be played in Tampa and for a game in Miami against Florida International.
Corbin predicted Oklahoma would cancel its home date against the Rattlers, who are guaranteed $450,000 for the visit, rather than play a I-AA school.
Oklahoma officials, however, said they wouldn't comment immediately on that possibility.
Getting MEAC schools back onto the schedule for 2004 could be problematical as well, because most have filled the dates created by FAMU's intended departure to I-A.
The NCAA would require FAMU to have three home dates in addition to the neutral-site game against Tulane, but a Nov. 6 game against Toledo is the school's only home game.
Gainous, who took the school's helm in June 2002, has been preoccupied for much of his presidency catching up with longtime sloppy accounting procedures that he finally explained to the trustees' satisfaction last month.
The president also faces his initial evaluation at the board's March 9 meeting. That also has been delayed as the school moves from one crisis to another.
And there is also the issue of a television contract that was supposed to bring the school $1.5-million annually. Corbin predicted that would soon be in litigation.
The school signed an agreement with the Urban Broadcasting Company in June to put as many as nine of its games on television in the 2003 season. An attorney for the New York-based television company that contracted to televise the games says the school was "spectacular" in its failure to meet its contractual obligations.
MISSISSIPPI STATE: Authorities say they intercepted 105 pounds of marijuana allegedly intended for delivery to Derrick Taite, a quarterback. On Thursday police stopped a 1998 Ford Explorer on a traffic violation in Biloxi, Miss., when the driver, later identified as Joel Thomas Wiggins of Beaumont, Texas, exited the vehicle and tried to run. State and federal officials later arrested Taite at a Moss Point, Miss., home. Taite, who played for Mississippi State from 1993-1996 and was one of the school's most prolific passers, ranks third in career passing yards with 5,232.
