Forward in 2020: AD Banks Weighs In on What’s Ahead

Athletic director Roman Banks spoke with the Office of Student Media to talk about the achievements, improvements, and goals, to look forward to in sports in 2020.
As the athletic director, Mr. Banks has many aspirations to fulfill for the student-body, alumni, NCAA, and the university to accomplish. Being back at Southern University for the past eight years, and going into his fourth full year as head athletic director, his reasoning for coming back to SU after leaving in 2003 was for his dream of becoming Southern University’s basketball coach. After coming back to coaching in his first season, Banks resurrected the men’s basketball team from its lowest point ever, to winning more games that year than the program had won in the previous three years. That very same season the Jags went  to the NCAA tournament, and won the conference title twice. 
Roman Banks believes that “as everyone accept’s their roles, the better the program can become for the athletic department. When we become that within ourselves then we can serve the student athletes better.” 
From a fans standpoint coming into the 2020 football season having an all HBCU schedule, came with rave excitement from the faithful Jaguar Nation. Traditionally, Southern fans and HBCU fans come out during rivalry games for themselves. Over the years however, that landscape has changed due to the budget, which causes the football team to go play in what are widely regarded as “money games” against bigger schools. According to Banks, there has to be a reasonable mix, until Southern University’s budget can stand on its own. Banks philosophy is that we can have those “money games” and get in return a half of a million dollars, the rivalry game can be  made better for the fans.
 For instance, bringing rival HBCU FAMU back, playing Tennessee State in the Fall, along with other institutions that Jaguar Nation has traditionally played has Banks excited about  his goals. 
As for the numbers that shows a director where we can improve and where you have declined, Southern University used to have 10,000 students and the state education has been cut over $30 million because of the huge budget cuts, one could ask how will athletics make their money off of students and fees? With the budget being cut 50% from the state, to be able to sustain ourselves, which part of the problem that lead to the series of situations with going under the unusual data ban. 
It’s a constant fight of trying to find the right mix of pleasing fans, alum, and supporters along with keeping ourselves whole so that there won’t be another financial situation again. 
With recent news spreading the world with the NCAA approving, approved teams to play athletes, Banks feels that first you to define paid, and two college athletes build on amateurism, and amateurs don’t get paid so it should be in the form of a stipend. The main word being fairness, at the end of it all a school such as Southern University can’t pay student athletes, trying to award the right amount of scholarships is top priority and getting that funded. With other schools having the proper funds to be able to give students every month and you university can’t, where do you think the student is likely to go?
Student athletes are doing a worldly job for universities and there should be some kind of stipend given, but if it should happen the NCAA whom makes a lot of money off of student athletes should be able to come in and help the low resource institutions. If not trying to still being able to function as a Division 1 NCAA membership program.  
The success of his series “Overtime with Roman Banks” has been extremely successful. Wanting to bring that “old SU” vibe back, it spoke to Banks to try and bring people together with also bringing in revenue. A lot of people say that the Overtime series was created because he has everybody coming early and staying late, but that’s the concept of making sure that a centralized place is created for people to have a good time,socialize, and being around other SU supporters and family. Getting the data to start inviting others to events, communicating through emails mostly to get a family environment started.