The University of Arkansas at Pine Bluff announced Monday morning it will not renew the contract of 10-year head football Coach Monte Coleman, whose contract will expire Dec. 31.
The announcement came two days after the Golden Lions concluded their fifth consecutive losing season.
“It wasn’t something that we had thought of until the end of the season,” UAPB Athletic Director Lonza Hardy Jr. said. “As the season progressed, we had high expectations for Coach Coleman and the team. We held onto our hope they’d be turning in some victories down the stretch. Ultimately they didn’t, and it was just time to make a change.”
Hardy said a committee has been formed to find a new head coach before the start of the December holiday break. Offensive coordinator Ted White will serve as interim head coach until then.
“Ideally, we want somebody who knows something about our mission and our vision,” said Hardy, who said two UAPB players will be named to the search committee. “Somebody ideally coming from a winning background who knows how to go out and win ballgames.”
On Saturday, UAPB (2-9, 1-6 Southwestern Athletic Conference) lost its season finale 24-10 to Texas Southern, which marked the seventh consecutive loss of the season.
Coleman said Hardy texted him that evening and scheduled a 2:30 meeting Sunday. They met, and Hardy handed Coleman a termination letter.
Coleman told his coaching staff and players in a meeting Monday morning, which Hardy said was followed by “a very long standing ovation.”
“I do understand the position that we’re in as coaches,” said Coleman, who is a Pine Bluff native who played at the University of Central Arkansas and won three Super Bowls as a linebacker for the Washington Redskins from 1979-1994. “We’ve got to win to stay around. It’s been frustrating for us as a coaching staff and as a team these last years since 2012.”
Coleman, who made $150,000 per year, was first hired in 2003 as UAPB’s linebackers coach, became defensive coordinator in 2006 and was named the Golden Lions’ head coach Nov. 19, 2007. He replaced Mo Forte, who had coached UAPB to a 4-7 season a year after reaching the SWAC championship game.
Coleman led UAPB to its first outright SWAC championship in 2012, when he was named SWAC Coach of the Year, but the Golden Lions have gone just 11-44 in the past five seasons. His overall record is 40-71.
Coleman said “it’s gonna take more than just the coaches” to turn the program around, including an increase in scholarships that have not yet reached the 63 maximum the football program is permitted each year.
Hardy acknowledged the scholarship issue, and he said fundraisers in the past two years permitted the team to have 61 scholarship players this season.
“We have good, quality student-athletes,” Hardy said. “Just getting a new coach in with new ideas, new strategies bodes well for them next year.”
Coleman said he believed UAPB was “just one good recruiting class away to do some damage, to win some football games.”
“It was one that I was hoping to get the chance to do with the guys we have, along with the coaches,” he said. “I think if I had another year on my contract that it would have worked out.”
Coleman said he and his wife will take the Thanksgiving and Christmas holidays to consider their future, and his immediate plan was “to go fishing.”
He said he would consider coaching again “if the opportunity comes.”
“I want to challenge all the people who stopped supporting the players, who didn’t support my efforts and my dreams with the team,” he said. “I’m gone now. I hope all the naysayers will come back and contribute. Not just with their mouth but with their pocketbook.
“The players truly deserve that. They deserved that when I was there, and they deserve that now.”