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Look closely when Alabama and Clemson take the field Monday night in the FBS National title game. You are going to see black athletes playing key roles on both teams.
And that should be expected, considering the legacy of African-American football players since schools began integrating their teams, means now 54 percent of today’s college football players are black.
However, what you won’t see Monday, or probably in any other FBS title game, is an African-American head coach. Quite simply, the deck is stacked against blacks becoming head coaches in big time college football.
Consider, at the start of the 2015 season, there were 12 African-American head coaches:
Derek Mason, Vanderbilt ; Ruffin McNeill, East Carolina; Trent Miles, Georgia State; David Shaw, Stanford; Charlie Strong, Texas; Kevin Sumlin, Texas A&M; Willie Taggert, South Florida; James Franklin, Penn State; Darrell Hazell, Purdue; Curtis Johnson, Tulane; Mike London, Virginia; and Dino Babers, Bowling Green.
McNeill, Johnson and London lost their jobs since the season ended. Exactly 27, of the 128 FBS job have come open since the season ended.
Babers (Virginia Tech) and Taggert (Tulane) have accepted positions at new schools. Two new African-American coaches Mike Jinks (Bowling Green) and Scottie Montgomery (East Carolina) are replacing black coaches.
When the dust settles it looks like there will be 11 African-American coaches heading into the 2016 season. While they could still change, it won’t be a change of any significance. The numbers are just woeful. Of course, that is really nothing new because they have always been woeful.
A recent study by renowned sports scholar, Dr. Richard Lapchick, director of ‘The Institute for Diversity and Ethics’ puts facts behind what a lot of people may have already considered:
The men who run college athletics are white, and they almost always hire white men.
A staggering 86 percent of athletic directors at FBS schools are white. These are the people who play instrumental roles in bringing in coaches the hiring process.
“This year’s increase is so discouraging,” explains Lapchik. “At a time when almost All colleges and universities say they emphasize diversity and Inclusion as core values, the fact is that in the 2015-16 report, 89.8 percent of our presidents were white, 86.7 percent of our athletics directors were white, and 100 percent of our conference commissioners were white.
“In those positions, 78.9, 79.7, and 90 percent were white men, respectively,” adds Lapchick. “Overall, whites held 342 (88.8 percent) of the 385 campus leadership positions reported in this study, which was an increase from 88.2 percent in 2014. ”
“College sport remains behind professional sports regarding opportunities for women and people of color for the top jobs,” said Lapchick.
It is laughable to read statistics like the TIDE report, and consider that there are actually some white people who feel black folks are trying to take over everything.
But, hey, those people will have to deal with their own paranoia.
Hire practices are so concerning now that a proposed “Eddie Robinson Rule”, named after the legendary Grambling football coach, would require schools to interview African-American candidates for head coaching jobs. It would be along the lines of the “Rooney Rule” in the NFL that requires NFL owners to interview minority candidates. The Rooney rule impact is questionable in the NFL, the Robinson rule would probably be the same. (More about the Eddie Robinson Rule)
The only places _ today, yesterday, and tomorrow _ where African-American athletes can go and play football, and return with a real opportunity to lead football teams, are at HBCUs.
The only thing that will change hiring practices at the FBS schools is when the five star recruits begin to look beyond the glamour of big time football, televised games, packed stadium, and nice facilities, and decide there are also other substanative things to consider.
One thing is a fact. If an African-American kid wants to go to college and play football, and perhaps come back to his alma mater to coach one day, it will happen a lot faster at Florida A&M than it will the University of Florida.
Linked is the TIDE report, and a poll asking if you think blacks get fair opportunities for coaching jobs. TIDE Report
