Savannah State's Winston Martinez drives around Florida A&M's Darius Glover during the Tigers' loss Monday night. AP

CLICK HERE FOR PART I OF LUKE WINN'S INSIDER

Feasibility, or lack thereof

How did it happen? How did this 2,752-student, historically African-American school become the doormat of D-I?

This season merely represents a string of small failures. The school's jump from D-II to D-I in 2002 -- a move that one booster says was "unilaterally" made by SSU president Dr. Carlton Brown -- was the tragic misstep.

As the game began on Monday, Brown was sitting alone, watching from a vantage point in the first row of raised seats behind the scorer's table.

He bore witness to an event that put his university in the national spotlight for all the wrong reasons. And while he addressed the team in the locker room afterward -- thanking them for hanging in through a difficult season -- he has a mess on his hands that won't disappear just because the season is in the books.

Allured by the trappings of D-I athletics -- namely national exposure and increased revenue -- Brown petitioned the NCAA to elevate his school's program in 1999, a year when the basketball team finished 9-18.

Traditionally, the first step for any NCAA institution eyeing a move to D-I is to conduct a feasibility study outlining the pros and cons of the decision, as well as the available finances, facilities and support staff. SSU bucked the tradition. According to Hank Ford, the Tigers' AD from 2001-04, a feasibility study was never conducted.

"When I got in [to SSU in 2001], I found out that they had never done a feasibility study," Ford told SI.com. "The president told me that he just made the decision to move to D-I. He was disillusioned with the old conference they were in [the SIAC] and wanted to go D-I."

Brown would neither confirm nor deny the existence of a feasibility study, only telling SI.com, "The numbers we put together have always existed. We're kind of done with that now."

To orchestrate the transition, Brown brought in Ford, whom he had formerly worked with at Hampton University, despite the fact that Ford had been fired from his previous position as AD at Howard University after The Washington Post reported that the NCAA had charged the school with lacking institutional control over its men's basketball and baseball teams.

Job No. 1 for Ford was to add five new varsity sports to compete in D-II for 2001-02, so SSU would meet the D-I minimum upon its next NCAA review. There was no time or money to recruit outside talent, so Ford had 30 days to create teams in women's softball, women's bowling, men's and women's golf and men's tennis -- from the existing student body.

"We put up fliers in dormitories, the cafeteria and Tiger Arena, asking for people to participate," Ford told SI.com. "We went into the dorms and got the students, we found coaches on campus, and ran them right to the varsity level, because there were no club teams. And once the teams were running, the budget for them still hadn't been put in place by the school. I had to pay for the teams out of my pocket until the budget came on line."

"I thought the president and I were friends. I wanted to help him so that he didn't fall on his face, because they were not going to make it to D-I."

He repeatedly told Brown that to survive in D-I, the program needed more money: it operated on a budget of just $1,788,516 in 2003-04. That pales in comparison to fellow state public school Georgia Southern, which defeated the Tigers twice in men's basketball this season. GSU has an athletic budget of $8,238,083.

"I cried out every day that we needed help. We needed finances and support. And it fell on deaf ears," Ford told SI.com. "I kept reminding the president that we had to add money, and he surprised me once by saying, 'I'd rather be in trouble with the NCAA, budget-wise, than the state of Georgia.' That's when I got wind that the money wasn't going to be there."

Ford was fired by SSU on July 16, 2004 -- his 58th birthday -- in the wake of an incident involving Daniels' son, Jamal, who was the basketball team's leading scorer in 2003-04. SSU was forced to forfeit the four games it won that season, after it was revealed that Jamal had played without being officially registered for second-semester classes.