Fort Valley State has announced that they have renewed their agreement with head football coach Shawn Gibbs to continue leading the Wildcat football program, taking him out of the running to be the next head coach at FAMU.
Fort Valley State University Director of Athletics Dr. Renae Myles Payne announced that Gibbs will remain a Wildcat in a message posted on the Fort Valley Sports X (formerly Twitter) page at almost 10 pm on Monday, January 15th, 2024.
The news of Shawn Gibbs renewing his agreement at Fort Valley officially takes him out of the running to become the next head coach at Florida A&M, where his candidacy was met with a swift backlash by FAMU fans and alumni.
Since the departure of Willie Simmons as FAMU head coach, the internal battle between the FAMU National Alumni Association and Florida A&M University Director of Athletics Tiffani-Dawn Sykes, has had second-year Fort Valley State head coach Shawn Gibbs directly in the middle.
As AD Sykes’ top candidate to take over as head coach of the FAMU football program, Shawn Gibbs has found himself embroiled in the FAMU family drama as the Rattlers continue to butt heads in their search for a head coach.
The FAMU NAA has made it clear that they want to keep the Celebration Bowl momentum going with an internal coaching hire and on January 10th, 2024 the FAMU National Alumni Association held a nearly two-hour emergency meeting where the executive board returned a vote of “no confidence” in Shawn Gibbs as the candidate in a motion that passed 19-1.
The announcement of Gibbs’ commitment to Fort Valley comes only 15 hours before a Tuesday 1 pm Florida A&M Board of Trustees meeting that has an agenda item of “Head Football Coach Update, VP Tiffani Dawn-Sykes.”
While no contract details have surfaced at the time of this report, Shawn Gibbs’ commitment to Fort Valley ends his candidacy for Florida A&M head coach.
Adding a layer of intrigue to the upcoming January 16th FAMU BOT meeting as Tiffani-Dawn Sykes is also coming off of a vote of no confidence from the Florida A&M National Alumni Association Executive Board herself in regards to raising prices on ticket and parking packages, pulling out of the Orange Blossom Classic, and the search that led to Gibbs being identified as the top candidate.