ITTA BENA, Miss. (AP) -Karl Morgan walked down the cracked sidewalk, stepping over players getting dressed for practice, putting on socks and cleats. Then, the Mississippi Valley State coach gestured out toward dilapidated Rice-Totten Stadium, which has been deemed unsafe because of structural damage.
“You can’t sugarcoat our facilities, just like you can’t sugarcoat our record,” Morgan said. “We’re trying to improve both of them.”
The program that produced Hall of Famer Jerry Rice has fallen on hard times.
Earlier this year, an engineer deemed MVSU’s stadium unsafe because of extensive problems with the stadium’s concrete foundation, so the Southwestern Athletic Conference program has played all of its home games 45 miles off campus on a high school field in Greenville.
The school plans to use state funding to bring the stadium up to code and make other improvements, which could cost about $5 million. It’s a big number considering MVSU’s annual athletic budget is around $3.3 million.
While fans may not be able to see the danger lying beneath the stadium and between the support beams, there’s plenty of visible problems. The concrete steps are riddled with cracks, the metal railings are coated with more rust than paint in spots and the tiny scoreboard is faded.
The facility isn’t just unsafe, it has an outdated feel to it.
It’s a stark contrast to some of MVSU’s neighbors. The school stands in the vast shadow of the SEC, where programs spend that much on high-definition video boards or practice facilities. They play in football palaces, but MVSU’s budget wouldn’t even cover Alabama coach Nick Saban’s salary.
The Delta Devils draw meager crowds at their “home” games, a sliver of what the once proud program enjoyed during its heyday – when quarterback Willie Totten was throwing touchdown passes to Rice in the 1980s.
Floyd Pope, from Cleveland, Miss., remembers better times.
He has been going to games for years with friends and family. He was at the game when MVSU “hosted” Grambling, a game the Delta Devils lost 35-14. On the grill, Pope had a huge stack of ribs, sausages and burgers cooking, but there weren’t many fans to share his barbecue. The announced attendance was barely more than 3,000.
“It’s pretty much just the die-hards now,” Pope said. “I still love the school and love coming to the games, but there’s no doubt the fan base has gotten smaller.”
Predictably, such adverse circumstances haven’t led to good football. The Delta Devils haven’t won a game this season, losing nine in a row by an average of almost four touchdowns. Their final chance comes this weekend when they’ll load up the bus, head down U.S. Highway 82 and play one final time against Alabama A&M at Greenville Weston High School.
“It’s certainly not ideal,” Morgan said. “But I’m worrying about football, not construction.”
MVSU quarterback Oliver Hughes said his team’s main focus is winning a game before the season ends to get some momentum for next year, but he acknowledged the stadium issues haven’t helped the situation.
“You just don’t really have the support of the fans and the team,” Hughes said. “It’s tough to convince people to go 45 miles to watch us play, especially when we’re losing.”
Morgan, who will make $75,000 this season in the first year of a three-year contract, makes it a point not to complain about the stadium issues, even though he didn’t know the extent of the problems when he took the job.
He’s seen the high-spending side of football, playing in college at UCLA before a three-year NFL career, but said he’s got the money to win at MVSU.
“Money isn’t the reason we’re losing,” Morgan said. “We’ve got to get some better players. We’re staying in good hotels and eating enough food on the road. Nobody’s starving.”
Then Morgan watched an offensive lineman walking down the hall and a smile crept across his face.
“In fact, maybe some of our guys are eating a little too much,” he said.
At least Morgan has managed to keep his sense of humor.
The decline of the SWAC – a collection of 10 historically black colleges and universities – has been going on for decades. Since integration across the South in the 1960s and ’70s, many of the best black football players have gone to bigger schools with more money and superior facilities. The budgets for Mississippi ($43.6 million), Mississippi State ($37.3 million) and Southern Miss ($19.7 million) dwarf the SWAC’s – and that doesn’t even take into account the money each school’s private foundations bring in each year.
But even compared to their peers, the Delta Devils are woefully short on funds. MVSU’s yearly budget of nearly $3.3 million is less than half of Jackson State’s ($6.8 million) and far behind Alcorn State’s ($5.2 million).
Totten was the program’s football coach from 2002 to 2009 before stepping down last year to become a full-time teacher and fundraiser. He’s uniquely familiar with the tough road Morgan is facing, and is trying to raise money to help the Delta Devils.
But he acknowledges it’s not an easy fix. Not only is MVSU’s athletic program struggling financially, but so is the school as a whole. A year ago, Gov. Haley Barbour even been proposed consolidating the campus into another state school to save money, but legislators quickly rejected his idea.
With so much uncertainty, the money trickles in slowly. Totten’s happy to get a couple hundred dollars here or there.
“I understand the economy’s tough, but what I’m trying to make people understand is you get what you pay for,” Totten said. “Everybody wants our athletic program to be top notch, but it takes money to do that.”
There’s hope for the future, though. Renovations for Rice-Totten Stadium are expected to begin in the next few months, with $1 million already approved for the project by the state. Eventually, the hope is to have 5,000 renovated seats, including chairbacks. The Delta Devils are expected to play a six-game home schedule on campus in 2011, even though all the improvements might not be completed.
“If it’s anything like the drawings they’ve shown me, it’s going to be outstanding,” Morgan said. “Now I’ve got to get a football team together to match it.”
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