Doug Blackburn

Democrat correspondent

If Florida A&M President Elmira Mangum wasn’t sure how many of the university’s trustees felt about last week’s firing of head football coach Earl Holmes, she knows now.

The newly created Board of Trustees Athletics Oversight Committee voted unanimously 3-0 Friday morning on a no-confidence motion regarding Athletics Director Kellen Winslow.

The full board is expected to address issues regarding Winslow during a special meeting next week.

Holmes, with a 6-16 record, was fired four days before FAMU’s annual homecoming game.

The vote of no confidence in Winslow comes one day before the final home football game of the season. FAMU hosts South Carolina State on Saturday.

Kelvin Lawson, chair of the athletics committee, said the trustees’ concerns go far beyond the timing of Holmes’ firing.

“I think it’s a systemic issue in how Mr. Winslow has engaged or not engaged alumni and supporters. I think he has shown a blatant disrespect for the FAMU tradition,” Lawson told the Democrat. “I think it’s behavior the board can no longer condone.”

The FAMU BOT is not empowered to make personnel decisions beyond the office of the president. The 13-member board does not have the authority to hire or fire administrators, coaches, faculty and staff.

“President Mangum obviously would be the person who has to decide how to most appropriately correct the current state of affairs,” Lawson said. “I’m hopeful that by our demonstrated efforts today that the president will take a more hands-on approach.”

The athletics committee, made up of Lawson and Trustees Torey Alston and Tonnette Graham, the student body president, also voted to have two trustees added to the nine-member search committee formed earlier this week to find a new head football coach. Mangum was asked if she would add two trustees and she declined, Lawson said.

Neither Mangum nor Winslow returned phone calls for comment Friday. Jimmy Miller, vice president for communications and external affairs, said Mangum would not be commenting on the committee’s actions.

Alston spoke out last week about the negative reaction to Holmes’ firing days before thousands of alumni returned to Tallahassee for homecoming.

“I think it’s clear many in the Rattler community have truly lost confidence in the athletic director, his ability to lead, his ability to bring people together, his ability to serve as a spokesperson for FAMU,” Alston said Friday. “I think the committee sent a message that it’s time to move in a new direction. We need to reunite the FAMU family.”

Solomon Badger, chairman of FAMU’s board, did not want to comment on the committee’s actions. He said he did not support firing Holmes last week.

“I thought the timing was not positive for the university,” Badger said. “That’s probably as much as I’m going to say about it.”

Winslow was Mangum’s first hire after she took office April 1. She surprised many the following week when she announced his hire, which was done without a search committee. She said she had met Winslow, a member of the NFL Hall of Fame, earlier this year at a Super Bowl party in New York.

Winslow has been tasked with the daunting challenge of turning around an athletics department that has been bleeding money, with an accumulated deficit of more than $7 million over the past six years.

“Athletics is the front porch of our university,” Winslow told FAMU trustees in September. “We’ve got to clean up our front porch.”

Mangum also announced on the day Winslow was hired the formation of the President’s Alumni Advisory Board for Athletics (PAABA). The seven-member panel serves as a liaison between the athletics department and Mangum, but it was not involved in the trustees’ athletics committee meeting on Friday.

“Our board is most concerned right now with stabilizing the football program and getting a new coach,” Lt. Col. Gregory Clark, PAABA chair, said. “I don’t know all of the background of what went on with the vote of no confidence, but I know we’ll try and stabilize the athletics program.”