Florida A&M to Move to the SWAC?

Kellen Winslow has hit the ground running as the Athletic Director for the Florida A&M Rattlers and is working to make a difference for the struggling program. Recently, Collegiate Consulting released a 149 page report on the Rattlers that noted the inefficiencies, mostly on a financial level, of the Tallahassee based school. One note in the report was particularly interesting though:

On average, the report said, Mid-Eastern Athletic Conference schools are 700 miles from Tallahassee compared to the average of 518 miles for schools in the SWAC.

Further illustrating its point, the consulting group noted the difference in budgets between the 10-team SWAC programs and the 11 schools in the MEAC.

SWAC programs average an athletic budget of $6.96 million, compared to the average of $8.6 in the MEAC.

FAMU's athletic budget at the time the report was being prepared was $11 million.

It also recommends that FAMU consider changing conference to the SWAC, suggesting that such a move would reduce the cost of travel. The recommendations in the Collegiate Consulting Report have been mentioned by Winslow several times but never discussed publicly in detail. via Tallahassee Democrat

Florida A&M has been in the MEAC since 1979, and actually took a hiatus from 1984-86 before rejoining the conference. The MEAC has only lost one member ever which came in 2010 when Winston-Salem State reversed course from Division I to Division II. If the Rattlers were to find their way into the SWAC then they would be the first addition since Alabama A&M in 1999.