Blacks Find Few Offers for Top College Football Coaching Jobs
By PETE THAMEL
As college football’s hiring season winds down and the number of African-American head coaches remains embarrassingly low, the sport faces another year of staring at a familiar problem with no easy solutions.
There are four African-American head coaches among the 119 Football Bowl Subdivision teams in college football, with the possibility of five, if Ron English is hired at Eastern Michigan. That means in a sport in which 50 percent of the players are African-American, currently only 3.4 percent of the coaches are black.
The hiring problem was underlined when two white coaches who had failed spectacularly in their previous jobs — Lane Kiffin with the N.F.L.’s Raiders and Gene Chizik at Iowa State — landed plum positions. Kiffin went to Tennessee, Chizik to Auburn.
Meanwhile, the country’s hottest young African-American coach, Turner Gill of Buffalo, was passed over. Gill took one of the worst programs in college football and turned it into a Mid-American Conference champion in three seasons. But he was overlooked for the marquee openings.
“It’s more frustrating than anything that I can think of right now,” said Myles Brand, the president of the N.C.A.A. “I can’t see my way clear to the solution.”
Charles Barkley, the former N.B.A. All-Star, called Auburn, his alma mater, racist for taking Chizik over Gill. Chizik is a former Auburn defensive coordinator who was 5-19 in two seasons as the coach at Iowa State. His record included 10 straight losses at the end of this season, going 0-8 in conference play, and losses last season to Kent State, Toledo and Northern Iowa.
At the time of the hiring, Auburn Athletic Director Jay Jacobs defended his decision at a news conference by telling reporters, “I was picking the best fit for Auburn.”
Floyd Keith, the executive director of the Black Coaches Association, said, “The Auburn situation certainly could be a model of the issue we’re facing.”
The problem is not a new one for college football, and solutions are not easy to come by.
College basketball reached a crisis point on this issue more than 20 years ago. But leaders in that sport, where 28.5 percent of head coaches are African-American, said potential solutions were at the administrative and grassroots levels.
Georgia Tech’s basketball coach, Paul Hewitt, who serves as the president of the Black Coaches Association, said African-American recruits and their families should make a conscious decision to play for universities that advocate the hiring of blacks as head coaches, athletic directors and in other positions of university leadership. Hewitt said that recruits should be concerned about attending colleges that do not advocate such opportunities.
“If the top five defensive linemen and the top five offensive linemen in the country went to play for Randy Shannon at Miami and they won a national championship in two years, watch how fast this thing would change,” Hewitt said. “These kids need to say, ‘If my alma mater doesn’t display a record of hiring people who look like me, why should I go and help them?’ ”
A lack of diversity also exists at the administrative levels of F.B.S. universities, according to a study released in November by the Institute for Diversity and Ethics in Sports at the University of Central Florida. It found that just 2.5 percent of college presidents and 9.2 percent of athletic directors were African-American.
Another factor in college football is the layers that a candidate has to navigate during the hiring process. University presidents, athletic directors, search firms and boosters have enough influence to sway a decision.
“It’s all related to the fact that we want to make sure that we keep it safe and stay safe,” said John Chaney, the former Temple basketball coach who is regarded as a pioneer among African-American coaches. “And they do that by recruiting people that look like them and think the same way they think.”
The N.C.A.A. and different conferences have run programs to better prepare African-American assistants for head-coaching jobs. The Black Coaches Association reports on how diligent colleges are about interviewing minority candidates. But all that effort has not led to the hiring of more African-American coaches.
The problem lies in two distinct areas. The first is African-American assistants and coordinators are not getting opportunities.
James Franklin, 36, is Maryland’s offensive coordinator and an assistant head coach. He is considered one of the brightest young African-Americans in college football. He had a successful stint as Kansas State’s offensive coordinator and has N.F.L. experience as the receivers coach at Green Bay. Franklin said he had had interest and interviews in the past few years, but had not been able to land a head job.
He said that there was a perception among young African-American coaches in college football that going to the N.F.L. was a better career option. At least N.F.L. decisions are based on results, he said.
“All I’d like to see is everyone on the same playing field, and the university hires the best person for the job,” Franklin said. “People are hiring the safe bet, as you go out and hire a guy who has been a head coach or has coached in the conference. That way, people aren’t going to be as upset if that person doesn’t do as well.”
There also seems to be an unwillingness among universities to rehire coaches who have failed in their initial stints as head coaches. Aside from Tyrone Willingham, no African-American coach who has lost his job has been rehired as a head coach at the F.B.S. level.
“I never anticipated getting but one shot,” said the former Mississippi State coach Sylvester Croom, who resigned in November. “That’s the reality of the times.”
The former Oklahoma coach John Blake knows that reality. He coached Oklahoma from 1996 to 1998 and compiled a 12-22 record. He also recruited more than half of the starters that went on to win the national championship after the 2000 season under Bob Stoops, his replacement.
Blake has established himself as a top-notch recruiter during stops at Mississippi State, Nebraska and North Carolina. He noted that Bill Belichick and Mike Shanahan thrived on second chances in the N.F.L.
Blake said that few black coaches were brought into programs with a strong tradition. Of the four African-American coaches today, Shannon at Miami is the only one at a program capable of competing for a national title.
“The answer is to just give us a chance,” Blake said. “Give us an opportunity for us to be successful. Give us the support that we need to be successful. Treat us like anybody else. When we do get the opportunity, be excited about it. Not just a situation where we’re there to fix a situation that’s been really bad for so long.”
When Gill took over at Buffalo, the program had not won more than five games in a season in the previous nine years. Its facilities and academic support staff lagged well behind its conference brethren. But Gill, who has gone 8-5 this season, said that it was important to take advantage of every opportunity.
“When you get a chance, you need to make the best of the opportunity and the people who give you hope,” he said. “The importance of all this, for minorities in particular, is to give all these people, young or old, hope.”
And while Gill has given hope to African-American coaches coming through the ranks, another year passes with college football wondering why administrators have not followed suit.
William C. Rhoden and Thayer Evans contributed reporting.
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