SCHEDULING MISTAKE LEAVES UAPB SEEKING SETTLEMENT

By Troy Schulte/OF THE COMMERCIAL STAFF

Skip Perkins thought he had Arkansas-Pine Bluff’s 2009 football schedule completed last December. With a signed contract from Central State, a Division II school in Willberforce, Ohio, for Sept. 12 at Golden Lion Stadium, UAPB had four nonconference games to go along with its regularly scheduled seven Southwestern Athletic Conference contests.

But sometime last winter, Central State athletic director Kellen Winslow also made an agreement to play Southern on Sept. 12 in Baton Rouge, La., making it so one of those games would be impossible to play. That turned out to be UAPB’s game against the Marauders, who compete in the Great Lakes Football Conference.

“(Winslow) double-booked the date,” said Perkins, UAPB’s second-year athletic director. “Really, that’s all it comes down to.”

Perkins has since filled the hole in UAPB’s schedule with Langston (Okla.) State, an NAIA school in central Oklahoma. That game will be played at 4 p.m. Sept. 12 at Golden Lion Stadium, and the process of finding another opponent went quicker than Perkins expected. He has also since had UAPB’s schedules and promotional materials reprinted and notified ticket holders of the schedule switch.

The situation regarding Central State, however, is not over, Perkins said.

In the eighth paragraph of the game contract signed by Perkins Dec. 5, 2008 and by Winslow Dec. 12, under the heading “violation of terms,” the contract stated that if either party failed to play in the contest the party at fault would pay the other a sum of $20,000.

Perkins said he didn’t know that Winslow, who was inducted into the NFL Hall of Famer after a career with the San Diego Chargers, had scheduled Southern for the same date until Greg LaFleur, the athletic director at Southern, noticed the conflict and notified Perkins.

“(LaFleur) said he had a contract (with Central State),” Perkins said. “And I said ‘No way, I have a contract, too.’”

Perkins has since turned the matter over to UAPB Chancellor Dr. Lawrence A. Davis Jr., who turned it over to the office of general counsel for the University of Arkansas System. Fred Harrison, an attorney for the University of Arkansas, said he is handling the case for UAPB but declined further comment.

In a letter sent by Harrison to Andrew Hughey, an attorney for Central State, dated June 11, UAPB is offering a settlement sum of $8,050, which represents the $5,000 increase in payment to Langston State, the cost of 35 hotel rooms and the printing costs for schedules and other promotional materials. In the letter Harrison wrote the payout to Langston State is $50,000, the cost of the hotel rooms is $2,450 and the printing of promotional materials is $600.

Several calls made to Winslow and Hughey seeking comment were not returned.

Perkins speculated that Winslow’s motivation to play Southern rather than UAPB could have stemmed from a larger guarantee from the Jaguars. UAPB had guaranteed Central State $45,000, a standard payout for a Division II opponent, Perkins said.

“I don’t know how good Southern is paying them but they’re paying them more than we did,” he said. “It might be $10,000 more.”

The game against Central State is not the only contest on UAPB’s original schedule, which was released in January, that won’t be played this fall. Earlier this spring Perkins and organizers of the Chicago Classic had an agreement for the Golden Lions to play Mississippi Valley State Sept. 19 at Soldier Field. Neither side signed a contract to play that game and when the NFL released its 2009 schedule and the Chicago Bears were to play a game at Soldier Field the day after, the date for that game had to be moved.

UAPB couldn’t find another date to play that game in Chicago, so instead the Golden Lions will play the Delta Devils on the same date in Itta Bena, Miss. A disappointing development, but one Perkins said he could live with considering the way in which it was handled.

The most frustrating thing regarding Central State, for Perkins, was that he felt mostly in the dark. He signed a contract in December, said he spoke with Winslow at an NCAA meeting of athletic directors in January and never heard anything again until LaFleur contacted him.

“(Winslow) was more or less ‘UAPB should just fix it,’ and once we fixed it we were supposed to go away. I’m not going to go away. We had a signed contract,” Perkins said. “I thought it was kind of tacky. That’s my opinion.”