Coach Shaka Smart speaks during a news conference at the University of Texas-Austin.
Officials say that planning, which got underway in 2013 largely by African-American coaches of Division I men’s basketball teams, resulted in the formation of the Lansing, Mich.-based National Association of Coaching Equity and Development (NAFCED). With more than 40 charter members, the new association officially launched this past January and its presence has already helped bring media attention to the declining number of African-Americans holding head coaching positions of Division I men’s basketball teams.
Roughly 18 months ago, a group of African-American head coaches “came [together] and said ‘Black coaches don’t have a voice. Things are being done to us, about us, for us, but not by us, and that needs to change,’” said Dr. Merritt J. Norvell, the NAFCED executive director.
NAFCED was established in part to advocate on behalf of minority candidates seeking head coaching jobs. The group also plans to help groom younger coaches to succeed in those jobs and help student-athletes gain admission to and succeed in college, according to Norvell, a former athletic director at Michigan State University.
“We plan to work collaboratively with the colleges and universities in terms of improving the hiring process and to make sure that the process is fair and equitable and that there’s a diverse and equal environment created in these colleges and universities,” he added.
The new group is expected to fill the void left by the former Black Coaches & Administrators (BCA) organization, which during the 1990s and 2000s successfully advocated on behalf of Blacks in the college coaching and sports administrator ranks. In 2014, the NCAA absorbed the BCA and renamed it the Advocates for Athletic Equity.
Joseph R. Lefft, the NAFCED general counsel and University of South Carolina faculty member, said the old BCA, which originally stood for Black Coaches Association, drew much of its influence and prominence from high-profile members that included basketball coaches John Thompson, Tubby Smith, George Raveling, Nolan Richardson, and John Chaney. As an attorney, Lefft represented pioneering Black basketball coaches such as Tubby Smith and recalled the BCA’s heyday period in the 1990s and early 2000s.
