OSU Football: More Savannah State candor

I had a chance to chat with Savannah State football coach Steve Davenport last week. We talked about the Tigers’ game this week at Oklahoma State, and if you saw some of his comments in Monday’s paper, you know that the coach didn’t pull any punches.

He was honest.

Brutally honest.

His program has been an FCS team (what most of us know as Division I-AA) for only a decade. Before that, it was an NCAA Division II team much like Central Oklahoma and Southwestern State are from our neck of the woods. Wins have been hard for Savannah State to come by since becoming an FCS program — the past two seasons have both be one-win campaigns – and Davenport knows that beating OSU will be next to impossible.

But I’ll give Davenport, who is starting his second season at Savannah State, this much — if having a clear picture of where you stand counts for anything, he’s got his program on the right path.

Here’s some more of what he had to say about his program and about playing OSU, the first FBS team (Division I-A) program that Savannah State has ever faced:

“It’s a building process. We took a step last year in what we think is the right direction. We’re nowhere close to where we need to be. We’re only going to bring four seniors to Stillwater, so we’re still a very young football team and program. But you’ve gotta take baby steps at some point.

“We think from an athletic perspective that the revenues that are created from this game will allow us to do some things that’ll get this program going in the right direction in terms of facilities upgrades and coaches, in the terms of the numbers of them. The money will be applied to help the program, and … some things that may not be present when we walk off the filed at Oklahoma State or walk off the field at Florida State (Savannah State’s opponent in Week 2) … will be present five years from now with those monies being applied.

“Without a doubt, no matter who else you put on our schedule, we weren’t going to be able to raise those kind of monies if it’s a I-AA or if it’s a Division II at our home. But we jumped at the opportunity to get this revenue that those two games are going to give us.