Winston-Salem State's move to Division I may have claimed another casualty in its head football coach.
Kermit Blount resigned as head of the Rams football team after 17 seasons last week after incoming athletic director Bill Hayes and Chancellor Donald Reaves conferred. The move took effect following the Rams' season-ending loss to Norfolk State Saturday. He will be reassigned to other duties until his contract expires in December 2010.
"This wasn't about just wins and losses," Reaves told Winston-Salem Journal reporter John Dell. "We need to re-energize the program, and that became obvious this season."
Blount won two CIAA titles and made two Pioneer Bowl appearances while guiding WSSU to a 91-87-3 record. This season, however, was the school's worst since 1975. The 28-21 loss to Norfolk State left the Rams with a 1-10 finish.
His resignation, along with the firing of Percy "Chico" Caldwell as athletic director last February, leaves a huge hole in a program that is trying to find its way back to where it came from.
Hayes, a former Rams head coach will take over as WSSU AD from interim AD Tonia Walker on January 1 needing a new football coach. Hayes is not without controversy. He resigned as athletic director of Florida A&M in September, though that may have been due to yet another FAMU overhaul that will have it searching for its fifth AD in seven years.
Hayes will have to deal with a financial mess left by Caldwell, the architect of the ill-fated move to Division I-AA. Financial woes from the added obligations of trying to join the Mid-Eastern Athletic Conference forced the Rams to abandon the move and re-apply for membership in Division II CIAA. WSSU was accepted back into the CIAA in October.
If anyone can figure out WSSU's problems, it should be Hayes. One of the first black assistant coaches in the ACC when he worked under Chuck Mills at Wake Forest in the 70s, Hayes took over as Rams head coach in 1976. He transformed a doormat into one of the most powerful programs in CIAA history, compiling an 89-40-2 record in 12 seasons (10 of which he achieved records of .500 or better). His 1977 and 1978 teams (ironically quarterbacked by Kermit Blount) went undefeated in the regular season and finished 11-1 each year.
He left WSSU in 1987 for North Carolina A&T. After 15 seasons, he was the Aggies' career leader in victories. After 2002, he spent the next few years in athletic administration, first at his alma mater, North Carolina Central, a program also transitioning to Division I, and then for the past two years at FAMU.
One of his assets appears to be fund-raising, which Winston-Salem desperately needs after drawing student anger with an attempted increase in student fees to pay for the Division I move.
"I do know that Coach Hayes has the ability to raise funds and that's what you need," WSSU alumnus and NBA Hall-of-Fame member Earl "The Pearl" Monroe told the Winston-Salem Journal in October. "There was all that talk about trying to raise money for the Division I thing, but you still need to raise money, and that's part of bringing the alums together."
Perhaps, the move back to the CIAA, the return of Bill Hayes and endorsements from alumni like Monroe will bring the swagger and the money back to Winston-Salem.
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