It’s been five decades since Alabama, which will play Notre Dame in January for college football’s national crown, hired its first Black football coach, John Mitchell, who, before becoming an assistant, had been its first Black football player. It’s been almost 10 years since the Fighting Irish fired its first and only Black head football coach, Tyrone Willingham, three years into a five-year contract.
Yet, not much has changed in between when one looks at diversity in the leadership of college athletics.
“College sport still lags behind professional sports with opportunities for women and people of color for the top jobs,” declared Richard Lapchick, director of the Institute for Diversity and Ethics in Sport at the University of Central Florida, upon issuing his annual report card last week on hiring in college athletics. “The percentages remained stagnant in most categories of [top division college athletic] leadership, highlighting the general picture that White men run college sport.”
Lapchick’s research found that 90 percent of college presidents, 87.5 percent of athletic directors, and all of the commissioners of the 11 major conferences, representing 120 schools, were White.
And while there were 18 minority head coaches among those 120 schools in 2012, down one from a record the previous year, the number of Black coaches slipped last week when Colorado fired Jon Embree after just two seasons.
“I believe Black men have less opportunity [to coaches], shorter time if you will,” former Colorado coach Bill McCartney told ESPN 102.3 FM listeners last week in a prepared letter protesting Embree’s dismissal. “(Former coach) Dan Hawkins got five full years. Why not give … Embree five years? You signed him to a five-year contract.
“Men of color have a more difficult road to tread. It didn’t happen to me. Why should it happen to a Black man?”
