Southern University Richardson’s last hurrah?

By JOSEPH SCHIEFELBEIN, Advocate sportswriter

SU taking wait-and-see approach on coach’s contract

Southern University football coach Pete Richardson’s three-year contract ends Dec. 31.

That could be the last day Richardson, the second-most successful coach in SU history, is an employee of the school.

The school wants to see if Richardson can still win, after two straight losing seasons since in January 2005 he signed a deal paying him $200,000 annually.

“I think coach Richardson knows he has to deliver,” said Tony Clayton, the chairman of the Southern University Board of Supervisors’ athletic committee.

Richardson, who will turn 62 on Oct. 7, said he’d like to stay at Southern. He also said he’s already shown what he can do.

“I was told they were going to make an assessment at the end of the season. Just to sit back and wait on the discretion of somebody else, I’m not going to do that,” Richardson said. “If that’s the game you want to play, then fine.

“I want to coach. It’s not the idea I have to prove to anybody I can coach. I don’t know how one year is going to make a difference.”

Richardson said SU Athletic Director Greg LaFleur has told him the school will let the season play out before discussing his status.

“Greg just said, in passing, that they were going to take a look at it at the end of the season,” Richardson said.

Richardson and LaFleur said no other contact has been made between the school and either Richardson or his attorneys, Wade Shows and Jim Wayne.

Richardson said he has not talked to any other schools about jobs and that no schools have been in touch with him or his representatives.

“I’m in the process of probably having to get with the attorneys and telling them exactly what the situation is here and respectfully what decision, direction I want to go in,” said Richardson, who said he’s invigorated after having knee surgery a few years ago. “That will be happening pretty soon.”

Richardson is 114-49 in 14 seasons at Southern (69.9 percent) with four black college national titles, five Southwestern Athletic Conference titles, four Heritage Bowl victories and an 11-3 mark against arch-rival Grambling State in the Bayou Classic. He is 156-63-1 (71.1 percent) with three Central Intercollegiate Athletic Association titles when his five seasons at Winston-Salem State (1988-92) are included.

By comparison, SU won two SWAC titles, sharing one of those with Grambling, and no black college national titles while going through 10 coaching changes from 1962 to 1992, the era bridging College Football Hall of Fame coach A.W. Mumford and Richardson.

Southern won four of those SWAC titles in the 1990s, including three straight from 1997-99, and one this decade.

After winning the SWAC and black-college national titles in 2003 and the SWAC’s Western Division in 2004, accomplishments which earned Richardson his latest contract, Southern went 4-5 in 2005 and 5-6 last season.

The Jaguars started last season 2-0 before blowing a fourth-quarter lead and losing to Prairie View 26-23 in overtime, the first loss to PV since 1971.

In the current preseason SWAC poll, Southern was picked third in the Western Division, the first time it has been picked as low as third since divisions were created in 1999.

“I’m concerned about this season, and what concerns me is, during the 1990s, coach Richardson set the bar in terms of (black colleges), how they should play the game,” Clayton said. “Southern University was dominant. Now, other schools have caught on to what we’re doing and caught up to him.

“We should dominate. We’re a superior football program.”

Winning this season won’t be easy. The program has lost at least 14 players since the end of the spring semester — a trend in line with the university’s student retention difficulties that are a concern of SU Interim Chancellor Margaret Ambrose. The bulk of those losses are along the offensive and defensive lines, and at least three more offensive linemen are in jeopardy of not playing this season.

The cloud of Richardson’s status will hang over this season, his 15th at SU, beginning against Florida A&M on Saturday in Birmingham, Ala.

“I don’t want to put any pressure on (the players), saying they’re trying to save my job,” Richardson said. “That’s asinine for what I’ve already accomplished at this school as far as riding everything on one year. But the administration has made that decision; I have to live with it.”

Falling season-ticket sales

One indication of a coach’s success is traditionally season-ticket sales, and while Southern’s numbers have declined in the last two seasons, they’re only continuing a downward slide this decade.

“I’m looking at it from the perspective of selling tickets,” Clayton said. “We have not sold the number of season tickets I’d like to see be sold.”

SU sold 9,496 season tickets in 2000, the year after the football team went 11-2 and won its third straight SWAC title.

From there, those sales dropped to 9,358 in 2001, 8,760 in 2002, 7,854 in 2003, 7,140 in 2004, 6,443 in 2005 and 5,985 in 2006.

“This (trend) happened before we had the two losing seasons,” LaFleur said. “We can contribute that to a lot of different things, but there has to be something that’s causing that. It certainly was not the football team, because we won a national championship and the following year we went to the (SWAC) Championship Game.”

LaFleur said SU has sold more than 5,500 season tickets for this season and has a target goal of 6,000.

“We’ve got to figure out what that common denominator is and hopefully turn that around,” LaFleur said. “We need to start marketing to the young crowd now.”

Combining those figures with a decline in enrollment — with student fees automatically paying for their tickets — and the athletic program’s budget is in a crunch.

The declining season tickets notch up the pressure to win.

Richardson said he understood losing seasons and declining ticket sales are hurdles for all football coaches, regardless of previous achievements.

“That’s the nature of the beast that I chose to make money in,” Richardson said.

Stalled end-zone project

One of the troubling points to fans — and, to many, a hindrance to those season-ticket sales — is the school’s failure to build a $14.5 million north end zone enclosure that will include football offices and other needs for the program.

To fund that project, the school raised ticket prices by $12 (with $10 dedicated to the end zone project) as well as tuition and fees to students in 2004. However, SU has blown through timetable after timetable to start the construction.

No construction has begun as yet, although Clayton said “by October, we should have bulldozers in the end zone.”

Clayton said Southern’s administration should have the “final documents from the architect” by Friday. SU will then submit those plans to the state for approval, Clayton said.

The October date is in line with the projection last month by Southern University System Foundation Executive Director Ernie Hughes, who came under fire during an April board meeting. The project is expected to take 18 months.

“We also have a part of the blame,” Clayton said of the football team’s recent struggles. “We have not given Pete exactly what he needs. We expect Pete to win games, but we haven’t given him the necessary tools.”

Richardson wrote the board in 2002 about the school’s declining facilities. And during a recent recruiting gala, he told fans, “(Recruiting) was a hard sell. Unless we improve our facilities, we’re in deep trouble.”

A promise to equip the practice fields with lights has never come through. The athletic department has been housed in dingy Owens Hall since 2001. The team worked out of temporary buildings from 2002 until last season, and Mumford Stadium still has no working locker rooms (other than for pregame and halftime meetings) for either teams.

“It’s a process, because we don’t have huge endowments,” Richardson said. “It takes time because of the politics of this state in order to get things completed. They’re in the process now at least of trying to get started, and I have a lot of faith in (System President Ralph) Slaughter and Interim Chancellor Ambrose.”

Richardson said he’d like to coach at Southern long enough to work out of the facility he’s been promised for years.

“I want to coach,” Richardson said. “I want to be in position to see the results of the end zone complex.”

There’s a bittersweet realization that may not happen.

“If it comes to fruition that I’m not here, then I’m quite sure it’s going to have a profound effect on this program, because that’s what’s sorely needed in order to maintain an adequate program at Southern University,” Richardson said. “If you look at the other teams in the conference, every one has made that commitment to facilities because they know it’s valuable to enhance the athletic program.”


Wait to see

Clayton said he has no specific win total Richardson needs to reach in order to be offered a new contract, that he wants to see progress. And LaFleur said there are “no scenarios” the school has in mind.

Said Clayton, “Let’s give Pete a chance. I’m for Pete. If he does (win), the fans are not going to let us get rid of him.”

Said Ambrose, “We’re not concentrating on it right now. I’m sure it’s going to come up. We’ll see how it plays out.”

Said LaFleur, “Right now, all we’re going to do is evaluate the situation and see what happens. This is just something that you just have to wait to see. We’re all pulling for Coach. You never want to have to make a change in football staff. That’s one of the toughest decisions you have to make as an athletic director.

“Coach Pete has been great for Southern University, and we’d like to see him leave here on his own terms, because he’s done so much for Southern.”

Richardson remains the most visible face of the university.

“I’m going to support Coach this year, and support him 100 percent,” Clayton said.

“It’s not personal. I like him. I love his wife. Unfortunately, if you don’t win in this game, change happens. “We want him to stay, but he understands we have to win.”

Richardson and the school agreed to a three-year deal in December 2004 as a compromise. Richardson didn’t want a re-assignment clause in his contract and, to accommodate that, the school trimmed the contract from five years to three.

The first two losing seasons of his career later, Richardson has arrived at this point on the eve of his 15th season at SU.

“It’s a shame it has to get to a point that I have to prove to individuals I can coach after I’ve been here for 14 years,” Richardson said. “They made that decision, and I have to live with it.”