LOUISVILLE, Ky.— Joker Phillips thought his longtime friend Charlie Strong would get the opportunity to be a head coach years ago.
It didn't happen.
Each offseason would follow a similar pattern: Jobs would come open, the former Florida defensive coordinator's name would emerge as one of the top minority candidates and each time the offer would be made to someone else. Someone hite.
"I thought he would be the guy," Phillips said of Strong.
The tide, however, finally appears to be slowly turning.
Both Phillips and Strong are among a dozen Black head coaches at FBS schools, triple the number of Black head coaches two years ago. It's the most there have ever been, but still just 10 percent of the 120 FBS coaches.
"It's coming," said Tony Dungy, who led the Indianapolis Colts to the Super Bowl and remains a leading advocate of diversity. "Now is it fast enough? Is it everything we'd like to see? No. But these new guys will come in and do a great job, and they'll pave the way for others."
Dungy knows there's still plenty of work to do.
Of the 12 Black head coaches in the FBS, only five coach at Bowl Championship Series schools: Strong, Phillips, Randy Shannon in Miami, Turner Gill in Kansas and Mike London at Virginia.
And there are only 17 minority offensive or defensive coordinators among the six major conferences.
Is it racism? The 47-year-old Phillips says it is simply about finding the right opportunity. Strong, who recently turned 50, won't even broach the subject, though his tearful introductory press conference last December left little doubt how the long road to his first head job weighed on him.
The two will face off on Sept. 4 when Phillips leads Kentucky into Louisville, where Strong will try to rebuild a program that's slipped from burgeoning national power to Big East doormat.
It's a historic game in Kentucky, a state where nine out of every 10 residents are White according to the U.S. Census Bureau. Race relations in the Bluegrass have historically been spotty at best, particularly in college athletics.
