A Little More on Minority Hiring In Football

A Little extension on Zennie's Impassioned Plea from the other day. See My take at the end.

Johnette Howard
SPORTS COLUMNIST
Time to get schooled on college hiring
January 24, 2007

When Chicago's Lovie Smith and Indianapolis' Tony Dungy meet with thousands of reporters in Miami next week and field questions about being the first two African-American head coaches to take their teams to the Super Bowl, it would be terrific if both men used the platform they'll have to steer the conversation away from the NFL, and toward college football's most outrageous, longest-running disgrace.

Did you know of the 119 NCAA schools that play Division I-A football, only six head coaches are African-American - one fewer than the NFL had last season despite having only 32 teams?

If that weren't already shameful enough to the NCAA, the NFL has progressed to a point where it has retread black coaches. They are Dennis Green, Art Shell, Herman Edwards and even Dungy, if you want to call him that, for the way Indy hired him after Tampa pushed him aside for Jon Gruden.

Though Green and Shell left their teams in the past month, the last two weeks still have been progressive ones for the NFL. In addition to Smith and Dungy's Super Bowl breakthroughs, the Giants made Jerry Reese their first African-American general manager and the Steelers selected 34-year-old Vikings defensive coordinator Mike Tomlin as their first African-American head coach.

College football's numbers are an outrage, by comparison. While the NFL's progress is directly traceable to the concerted push the league has made in the last decade since its passage of the Rooney Rule on minority hiring, NCAA schools - a notoriously fractious bunch - have plodded along rather than seriously consider an obvious question:

Would some version of the Rooney Rule - in which NFL teams are required to interview minority candidates - work for them?

Eugene Marshall Jr., deputy athletic director at the United States Military Academy at West Point and president of the board of directors of the Black Coaches Association, says the excuses the BCA hears about the lack of minority hires remain the same year to year: "There's not enough people out there ... The pool is weak ... They don't have enough experience ... They've never been a head coach."

"But I can tell you," says Charlotte Westerhaus, the NCAA's vice president of diversity and inclusion, "the lack of hiring is not happening because of a lack of qualified minority candidates."

So what is the holdback?

A few things, it turns out.

"What it really comes down to are schools' funding people and alumni," Marshall said. "Will fundraisers hire people [of color] to run these places where they spend their money? And in some cases, the answer is still no. We are seeing progress. It's just been far slower here."

For the past three years, the BCA has issued an annual Minority Hiring report card for college football's top two divisions to put a greater spotlight on the problem.

The BCA isn't demanding that minorities be hired for every college head coaching position. In the spirit of the Rooney Rule, what the BCA asks is that minorities be considered as head coaching and athletic director candidates, that minorities are included on the search committees that hire them, things like that. And, Westerhaus says, the NCAA leadership supports and works toward the same goals.

But one difference between the NCAA and NFL is significant: NCAA schools have no hammer hanging over them, while the NFL's Rooney Rule has teeth. The Detroit Lions were fined $200,000 when general manager Matt Millen ignored the league's directives and hired Steve Mariucci.

While Marshall believes accountability is needed in the college ranks, Westerhaus disputes the notion - advanced by the BCA, among others - that the fear of penalties is why the NFL is hiring more minorities more quickly. Westerhaus argues that the NFL's progress is traceable to making the hiring process itself "more and more inclusive" rather than "penalties, penalties, penalties - that's not why the Rooney Rule works."

Oh? It's hard not to notice how the NFL has changed since the Rooney Rule came along while the NCAA has made only glacial progress by urging its schools to do the right thing.

Westerhaus goes on to point out that even if the NCAA regarded penalties as important, getting some binding standards adopted would be extremely difficult because all member schools autonomously set their own institution-wide hiring practices.

But look: Exceptions have been made before. All universities set their own academic honor codes, but the NCAA has approved mechanisms to take back bowl money and scholarships when athletic programs cheat. The NCAA already has passed measures in which member schools can lose athletic scholarships if their sports programs don't meet a list of criterion that include acceptable graduation rates.

Why can't or shouldn't the hiring of minorities be treated with the same import? Why haven't incentives or penalties even been put to a vote?

College sports haven't been held to the fire nearly enough on minority hiring.


The sight of Dungy and Smith taking a stand in the next two weeks would be a sensational boost.

Minority report



Six of 119 head football coaches in Division 1-A are black (5%)

Coach School

Sylvester Croom Mississippi State

Karl Dorrell UCLA

Turner Gill Buffalo

Ron Price Kansas State

Tyrone Willingham Washington

Randy Shannon Miami

Six of 32 head coaches in the NFL are black (18.8%)

Coach Team

Romeo Crennel Cleveland Browns

Tony Dungy Indianapolis Colts

Herman Edwards Kansas City Chiefs

Marvin Lewis Cincinnati Bengals

Lovie Smith Chicago Bears

Mike Tomlin Pittsburgh Steelers


and my feelings on the subject: Zennie and I have been going back and forth the last day+ about this. I agree with Both Zennie's Prior post regarding the Raiders' Most recent Hire, and in general that Minority Hiring Practices In the NFL, NCAA, and several other Sports governing bodies are far behind the times. However, most of what Ms. Howard says in this piece above also makes sense. In college, the people holding the purse strings don't always want to embrace change, even if it's the right thing to do. I'm lucky enough to work for one of the Nicest, Smartest football people i ever met. He also just happens to be an African American. But NYC is ahead of the curve on such things, in both the public and private sector.
I also feel that it shouldn't be "Equality" for some, it should be Equality for ALL....
And Yes: there are PLENTY of Capable Minority assistant coaches at the College level(and High School) who are qualified to be head coaches.