Rhody football finally gets some love

SOUTH KINGSTOWN — When Momodou Mbye and his teammates first saw their new field of dreams rolling out over Meade Stadium, they couldn’t contain their smiles.

No longer will the Rhode Island Rams be the ugly duckling of the Colonial Athletic Conference. A new FieldTurf surface highlights a $4-million upgrade that includes lighting for evening use and is in its finishing stages.

“It’s so cool. It looks great,” said Mbye, a senior safety from Shea High School in Pawtucket. “We’re going to have the best field in the conference.”

The upgrades to Meade are the latest evidence that football is trending up in Kingston. After years of awful finishes and apathetic support both on campus and around the state, the tide is turning. A year ago the Rams secured their first winning season in 17 years by knocking off some of the CAA’s elite programs and celebrating a 6-5 finish. This summer Rhody has earned a few votes in preseason top-25 polls and is picked eighth in the CAA’s media poll. This is progress, albeit in small steps.

“We had the permanent spot in the cellar in the preseason,” head coach Jim Fleming said. “We’ve ratcheted it up a little bit but it means nothing now and it meant nothing then.”

The Rams’ stadium upgrade was sparked by two $1-million gifts from donors and followed by an additional $1 million in University fundraising. That’s the type of support that’s needed at any school, be it URI, Alabama or Virginia Tech. At Rhody, where budgets are always being squeezed, those numbers are game-changers.

The school is also set to award Fleming an extension to his contract. Entering his sixth year on the job, Fleming has proven he can move the ship in the right direction.

“Jim’s a great coach to work with and he’s building a program the right way,” said athletic director Thorr Bjorn. “It takes time and I love the way he’s going about doing it. When you have success like we did last year, and knowing that it doesn’t happen overnight, it makes you appreciate that he’s doing it the right way.”

So can the Rams keep moving forward and string together winning seasons? That’s the charge but it won’t be easy. The CAA placed five teams in the top-25 poll with five more receiving votes. Adding better, deeper talent is the only antidote in the fight against so many good foes.

“We can be better,” Fleming said. “The scrimmage we had (Sunday) was probably the best scrimmage I’ve been a part of here. We have depth and competition and some significant playmakers out there. So can we be better? Yes. We could have been better last year.”

Perhaps the key to the season is at — where else — quarterback. Quarterback JaJuan Lawson is gone so it’s an open competition for a replacement. Vito Priore stepped in last year when Lawson was banged up and looked good. The red-shirt junior tossed three TDs with no interceptions in the team scrimmage and looks like the guy, but as Fleming says “we have some depth there now.”

Here’s two examples that point to that depth and how many rocks the Rams need to turn over to hunt for players. One is graduate senior Alin Edouard, a Miami native who was on a junior college team featured in the hit Netflix documentary "Last Chance U."

Another is Darius Perrantes. There are a lot of college football programs between Pasadena, Calif., and Kingston but that’s the route the newest Ram freshman QB traveled. Assistant coach Will Fleming (Jim’s son) has worked the California junior college scene for a few years, began taking a look at prep prospects, and fell for this dual-threat quarterback who is the younger brother of London Perrantes, the former Virginia basketball star.

“We look for cheap places to stay and Will’s got a brother and a sister out there so he can stay for free,” Fleming said. “He found Darius, recruited the heck out of him and delivered him.”

Pinching dollars is a constant battle at the FCS level and especially at a place like URI, which is always fighting uphill in search of support. That necessitates creativity and this year the program’s resourceful move is both high reward and high risk. After already scheduling a $400,000 buy game (received by the Rams) to play at Ohio University, Fleming jumped at a chance to travel to Virginia Tech on Oct. 12 for a $500,000 fee. After expenses, those pay days are invested into the program.

“Money doesn’t buy you wins, but we had 10-year old computers and needed video equipment and make sure the kids can eat the right way,” Fleming said. “It costs money to operate at a winning level.”

That’s the thing about football at URI. The program is rightly due the scorn and apathy that comes its way if the Rams are seemingly always finishing 1-11 or 2-10 in front of crowds of 3,000 or less. That act gets real old.

Winning changes everything. Winning excites donors, attracts recruits and ignites commitment. That’s Jim Fleming’s vision.

“We’ll see if we can find our way to the Promised Land,” Fleming said. “I’d think the magic number is eight (wins). That would be pretty special.”