Colleges let tradition
block black coaches from football Colleges let tradition
block black coaches from football
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Colleges and universities have sent squads of lawyers into battle to defend their use of affirmative action to admit students. And on many campuses, the search to fill top faculty vacancies must include minorities and women. But schools are fumbling in bringing diversity to football coaching. Of the nation's 117 major-college teams, only four are led by black head coaches.
That's unlikely to change soon. As USA TODAY reported, a mere 12 major college programs -- just 10% -- have even one African-American among their chief assistant coaches, the feeder pool for tomorrow's top jobs. The lack of diversity in coveted football jobs mocks the image of colleges as bastions of enlightenment and equal opportunity. Instead, it reveals a shocking lack of advancement potential for minorities in a sport where 43% of the players are black.
The embarrassing job picture in football sours an otherwise earnest track record in other areas and exposes universities' willingness to sacrifice principle to outdated fears that hiring a black coach will offend the comfort levels of generous alumni. Since affirmative action became part of the civil-rights lexicon four decades ago, a combination of anti-discrimination laws and aggressive outreach has given thousands of once-lily-white institutions a public face more like the U.S. population at large.
The college enrollment of minority students has increased 57% since the 1980s. Women now earn 55% of all bachelor's and master's degrees and are nearly half the students in medical and law schools. Even in big-time college basketball, the second most important sport on many campuses, nearly 30% of the coaches are black. But football management remains largely an old-white-boys club.
A National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) study released last week shows that among athletic directors, who have the primary responsibility for hiring coaches, the number of blacks dropped to less than 3% at big-time institutions in 2001, down from 4% in 1995. The NFL is a similar story; the 32-team league has only two black head coaches. Colleges don't like to talk about the issue, citing the privacy of the hiring process.
But University of Kansas Chancellor Robert Hemenway, board chairman of the NCAA's major schools division, says correctly that privacy can't be an excuse for business as usual. Retiring NCAA President Cedric Dempsey, who has boosted the number of blacks in NCAA staff management to 20%, pinpoints one explanation for the lack of progress: Many white administrators won't hire black football coaches because they worry about how alumni and donors will react. When black basketball coaches were scarce 30 years ago, the same argument was used -- and proved wrong.
The NCAA can prod, but it doesn't hire coaches. Positive changes in intercollegiate athletics occur only when college presidents provide leadership, refusing to let athletic directors and alumni boosters call the shots. On Tuesday, the Black Coaches Association, a national group encompassing all sports, will issue a three-year plan aimed at pressuring colleges to increase the hiring of black coaches. Its challenge is valid. Affirmative action has been a boon both for higher education and the nation at large. Football should benefit from it, too.
Today's debate: Diversity among coaches Major schools fall back on excuses instead of pushing for progress.
© Copyright 2002 USA TODAY, a division of Gannett Co. Inc.
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