PING: FBCB players

[Ben E Lou]

With them being the lowest-prestige school in the game, I know that many of us have started out coaching them. I thought you'd appreciate this article, from this morning's AJC.

The college record no one wants
In the world of sports, somebody's got to lose. Sadly, that job more often than not falls to Savannah State teams.

By MIKE KNOBLER
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Published on: 2/11/04

Savannah -- Signs throughout this historic city alert tourists to the many wonders Savannahians have given the world: the Girl Scouts, the first steamship to cross the Atlantic, even the song "Jingle Bells."

You'll find no boast, however, to this distinction: home to the losingest university in major college sports.

Savannah State shares the nation's longest Division I football and men's basketball losing streaks. The women's basketball team set an NCAA record for fewest points in a half. The softball team was 1-53 over the last two seasons, and the women's volleyball team went 3-29.

Baseball's American League has the Detroit Tigers. The Democratic presidential campaign had Joe Lieberman and Dick Gephardt. Someone always has to lose. In Division I college athletics that has been Savannah State, a 2,700-student historically black university in South Georgia's Lowcountry.

"It's like a curse or something," said Kenneth Cullens, a sophomore civil engineering major from nearby Hinesville, one of hundreds of students who show up regularly to root for the blue and orange.

"Sometimes," mused sophomore quarterback Clyde Tullis, "you just sit in your room at night and think why you're playing these games."

When Tullis feels down, he can reach for a videotape from Oct. 19, 2002, the last time his team won. The opponent, Morris Brown, went 1-11 that year and has since dropped its athletics program. That doesn't matter to Tullis.

What matters is that on that day, on that field, Tullis was a winner.

"Sometimes I just go in my room and watch that game, because it brings back such great memories of how I played under pressure," he said.

Few Savannah State game tapes have such happy endings. The football losing streak has reached 15; the men's basketball losing streak is 17. The football team has won just once in two years; the men's basketball team's 1-22 record is the worst in Division I.

Other schools have had worse stretches in specific sports. Prairie View A&M lost 80 consecutive football games in 1989-98, and Rutgers-Camden lost 117 consecutive men's basketball games in 1992-97.

But NCAA record books don't show whether any school ever lost so many games in so many sports as Savannah State has the last 18 months, said Jim Wright, the NCAA's director of statistics.

Hard to be upbeat

"Ac-cent-u-ate the Positive," Savannah-born lyricist Johnny Mercer advised, and that's just what many at Savannah State strive to do. It's not always easy.

"When you're losing, nobody wants to be with you," said Caroline Moore, who scored Savannah State's only basket in a 54-3 first half at Florida State. "Even the people on the team have negative things to say."

Negativity follows offensive lineman Hosea Tatum home to Orangeburg, S.C., where the first question is always the same.

"What was your record?" friends ask.

"We didn't do too good," Tatum responds.

Then, if he's lucky, the subject will change.

Football coach Richard Basil knows Savannah State can win. He wears the evidence, a ring he earned as quarterback of an 8-1 team in 1989.

"It's good for kids to see that, where your goals are set, and that you've reached them sometime in your life," said Basil, whose college teammate, tight end Shannon Sharpe, went on to star in the NFL. "When I walked out of here as a senior, I walked out with a smile on my face."

Some athletes succeed

There have been a few athletic bright spots on this campus of palms, oak trees and Spanish moss. Sprinter Jerry Mathis participated in an NCAA regional last year as a freshman. Last season's baseball team went 34-15, and two of its players were drafted to play professionally. The 2000 baseball team set an NCAA record by winning 46 consecutive games.

School President Carlton Brown lists some of Savannah State's other successes during his seven-year tenure, including improved student housing, an 80-point boost in the average SAT scores of incoming students, a growing enrollment and a 75 percent increase in the number of graduates accepted to professional and graduate schools.

In 1999, Brown shifted Savannah State athletics from Division II, a level for smaller schools with fewer coaches and scholarships, to Division I, where the largest schools play. Division I brings increased prestige, greater opportunities to share in the revenues generated by big-time college athletics -- and stiffer competition.

Competing at the higher level also means increased costs. By the time Savannah State joined Division I in 2002-03, the economy had soured. Some supporters who had pledged money needed for the move up were forced to renege on their commitments, Brown said.

The men's and women's basketball teams operate without full-time assistant coaches, although NCAA rules allow each team to have three. The football team operates with about two-thirds of the 63 scholarships the NCAA allows in Division I-AA. The less scholarship money a school has, the fewer top-notch players it can recruit.

Not all problems are financial. Athletics director Hank Ford learned when he arrived in 2000 that Savannah State didn't have enough varsity sports for Division I membership. So five new teams materialized from nowhere -- women's softball, golf and bowling, and men's golf and tennis.

"The school was opening in September. The budget was set. We went into the dormitory and found kids to play," Ford said. "Were we good? No."

The Tigers do have a winning band. The Coastal Empire Sound Explosion was one of 10 outfits nationwide selected to play in the Honda Battle of the Bands last month at the Georgia Dome.

"If we don't have fun, the crowd doesn't have fun. There's no need for everybody to be disappointed," said trombonist Decoven Barthell.

So close to victory

Fans dance and strut when the Tigers go up by 14 points in the most recent home basketball game, against Maryland-Eastern Shore. It looks like Savannah State has found an opponent it can beat.

Then the lead disappears. The visitors go up by a point with 9.5 seconds left. Josh Barker misses Savannah State's one last shot, and Jamal Daniels, the coach's son and the Tigers' leading scorer, collapses face-first on the court. He lies motionless until a teammate picks him up and walks him to the locker room.

"It's been a very disappointing season," he explained later. "We felt this is one we could've gotten."

Someday, Savannah State's athletes, fans, coaches and administrators say, the losing will stop.

"This school has no choice but to go up," Tullis said. "We've already been down to the bottom. I try to stay strong. I know that one day it'll turn around."

Cullens, the civil engineering student, plans to go out for football. He wants to do whatever he can to help his school win. The status quo, he says, is unacceptable.

"Hopefully, they'll get it together," he said. "If not, they should be shut down."

[SirFozzie]

fun read.

[Peregrine]

Nice find Skydog! Running that team was just as depressing for me as playing for them appears to be.