NCAA must act on coach hirings
Suggesting that the NCAA add another rule to college athletics makes me want to wash my mouth out with soap.
Add a rule? The NCAA? The good folks there come up with rules as often as most of us breathe. But the truth is, the NCAA needs to legislate one more thing — the hiring of head football coaches.
With the dismissals of Tyrone Willingham at Washington and Ron Prince at Kansas State, the number of head football coaches in Division I-A football is four. Four. With 119 programs, that comes out to 3.36 percent. That’s appalling. More, that’s unacceptable.
Sad thing is, it’s been that way for decades. The Institute for Diversity and Ethics in Sports released a study this week that said there have been 199 available head coaching jobs since 1996. Only 12 of those spots have been filled by black men.
I used to think it was just a matter of time before the numbers improved, before they better mirrored the percentage of minority players and assistants in college football.
Now, I’m not so sure.
Something needs to be done, and while I hate to think diversity needs to be legislated in college football, apparently, it does. College football needs to implement a Rooney Rule-like statute. The NFL uses the Rooney Rule, requiring its teams to interview minority candidates for head coaching jobs. It fines teams who don’t do so. The NCAA could do the same thing. The pocketbook, after all, seems to be the place that big-time college programs feel the most pain.
Listen, even though I’m suggesting this, I’m still not comfortable with the idea. The thing is, I’m even less comfortable with college football having only 3.36 percent of its head coaches be black.
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Comments
Jenni,
I would encourage you to do more research and learn “the rest of the story”. You are looking at the NCAA in a microcosm without considering that is not the only job destination for quality coaches.
In the progression of being a NCAA position coach to a NCAA coordinator to a NCAA Head Coach, MANY very good black coaches get hired by NFL teams.
Look at former OSU defensive line coach Karl Dunbar. He had an opportunity to go to the NFL for a big $ raise. He took it. Go look at the NFL coaching staffs, there is a much higher % of Black football coaches in the NFL compared to the population of the United States (12%). Quite frankly, if you are a very good black coach in the NCAA, the NFL is going to hire you.
Look at the past Super Bowl – both were coached by black head coaches.
The United States just elected a black president.
This notion that somehow racism exists in the NCAA is crazy. NCAA member schools are not color blind, but the color they care about is not white or black – it is green. Winning brings money and that is more important to most schools than the color of the skin of the coach.
Find one single case in the NCAA where a black head coach was fired that wasn’t for lack of success on the football field. You point to there being 6 of 119 black head coaches this season. That is about 5%. On the Chicago Bears alone, there are 8 black coaches (including the head coach) and 1 asian coach. That means that 42% of the Bears coaching staff is black coaches compared to 12% of the General Population in the USA being black.
What is that giant sucking sound? It is the NFL sucking up a lot of good black coaches out of the NCAA. Would you be in favor of a rule in the NFL limiting the number of black coaches being hired so those coaches would be forced to stay in the NCAA to make the NCAA’s numbers look better?
Of the 6 subject head coaches in college football this season, only 3 will be returning to their positions this year. All three who are returning had 7-5 seasons; not stellar, but at least winning and keeping their jobs.
The 3 leaving had losing records of 5-7, 4-8, and 0-11 – an average of 3-9.
Does any of this sound discriminatory? Notice, I didn’t mention color.
Jenny, i think the truly interesting math here is that 2 out of 6 were fired leaving the 4 you speak of. What does that say assuming they were let go due to poor programs? 33 percent of those holding a coaches job could not win so it would seem quite rediculous to force schools to hire anybody from such numbers. Let them hire whom they feel will make them winners no matter the color!