Group Hires Lawyer To Address Dearth of Black College Football Coaches

Diverse Issues in Higher Education
by Lois Elfman
Nov 13, 2008, 05:50

The number of Black college football coaches is going in the wrong direction, according to the latest hiring report card issued Wednesday by the Black Coaches and Administrators (BCA).

Hiring committees are more diverse and coaches of color are being interviewed for football head coaching positions, but the number of hires is still dismal, the report card shows.

“Interviewing is not the measure of true success. Interviewing is not hiring. The true measure of progress and success will be when athletic directors stop merely interviewing candidates of color, and when athletic directors actually hire head football coaches of color,” said Charlotte Westerhaus, vice president of diversity and inclusion of the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) .

For the 2007-08 season examined in the fifth BCA hiring report card, there were only four head football coaches of color hired to fill 31 job openings. The 2008 season in both the Football Bowl Subdivision and Football Championship Division, began with eight coaches of color, six of whom were African-American.

When compared with the representation of head coaches of men’s Division I college basketball the statistics are striking. In basketball 58 percent of the players are African American and 25 percent of the head coaches are African American. In college football, African Americans make up 50 percent of the players but only 6.7 percent of the head coaches. [Full story: http://diverseeducation.com/artman/publish/article_11964.shtml]