Bro. Askia
New Member
From: News & Observer Published: Jul 4, 2004
Modified: Jul 4, 2004 6:18 AM
http://www.newsobserver.com/sports/v-printer/story/1396431p-7519785c.html
A game plan for change
The push continues for more minority head coaches, diversified staffs
http://www.bcasports.org/
Staff Photo by Scott Lewis
The NCAA Coaches Academy, which is divided into three tiers, could open doors for assistant coaches, such as 47-year-old first-year Duke associate head coach David Kelly.
By LUCIANA CHAVEZ, Staff Writer
When Sylvester Croom was hired as the head football coach at Mississippi State in December 2003, the 17-year NFL coaching veteran became the first black head coach ever in the 71-year history of the Southeastern Conference.
Coupled with Notre Dame's hiring of Tyrone Willingham in 2002, the moves seem to signal that more minority coaches are on the brink of landing high-profile jobs.
But heading into the 2004 season, after 12 other vacancies were filled, there still will be just five head coaches out of 117 in Division I-A football who are black -- Croom, Willingham, Karl Dorrell of UCLA, Tony Samuel of New Mexico State and Fitz Hill of San Jose State. Wisconsin's Barry Alvarez and West Virginia's Rich Rodriguez are Latino.
While Division I-A football squads are still predominantly black on the field, they're mostly white on the sidelines.
According to the most recent NCAA statistics through 2002, Division I-A football squads were 58 percent black and coaching staffs were 95.7 white.
Hill has made the issue his academic life's work, studying it for the past 15 years, including for his master's and doctoral theses.
"One thing I've found in the research is there really is no intent to discriminate," Hill said. "It's not the overt bigotry of the pre-Civil Rights era. It's very subtle in nature. In the United States, everyone believes they should have the right to do what everyone else does. But you can look at where [coaches] play or go to school or their NFL experience or their coaching history, the one thing that keeps surfacing ... is the race card."
The road to change clearly runs uphill. That was evident at the 2004 NCAA Convention at Nashville, Tenn., in January.
At the beginning of a forum on minority hiring, Carlyle Carter, executive director of the Division III Minnesota Intercollegiate Athletic Conference, quickly defined the challenge with a sweep of his arm.
The only black conference commissioner in the NCAA -- excluding conferences made up of historically black colleges -- he told the assembled to look around.
Carter, who will resign from his current post in June 2005, pointed out that none of the people -- specifically university presidents who have the power to force policy changes and make sure policies are put into practice -- were even in the room.
Enter the NCAA
The NCAA is trying to address the gap. NCAA president Myles Brand took office in January 2003, and later that year the NCAA Coaches Academy, a three-tiered program to assist minority coaches with career advancement, was formed.
"He gave us the money," said Keith Gill, NCAA vice-president for membership services. "He took it head-on in a report. The numbers don't lie. We have a problem here."
The academy will include head-coach training for minority assistants, networking with university administrators and other head coaches, and an active push to encourage minority players to consider coaching as a career.
Clemson assistant Thielen Smith participated in the first academy but went in wary about the NCAA's intentions.
"When I first applied, I was like, 'Why do I have to apply for this?' " Smith said. " 'Why can't my 25 years of experience be good enough?' But if this is what it takes, then I'll do it."
Gill said the NCAA didn't want to underplay any coach's experience.
"I would say our committee acknowledged that the candidate pool was not devoid of skills," Gill said. "But at the same time, we're [trying] to get them exposure and access to opportunities."
The Black Coaches Association backs the program but BCA executive director Floyd Keith said there will be progress only "when there are hires made. But [the academies] are good exposure."
NFL attempt
Exposure can equal progress, if the National Football League's Minority Coaching Fellowship Program, which began in 1987, provides any evidence.
The NFL has never had more than three coaches of color in a given season but will have four in 2004. The NFL program also has coincided with an increase in the number of assistants and coordinators who are black.
In 1980, there were 14 NFL assistants who were black but no head coaches and no coordinators. In 2003, 167 of 574 NFL assistants were black, compared with 141 in 1997. Also in 2003, there were a record 14 coordinators, compared with five in 1997.
Has the NFL progressed quickly enough?
Not for a league in which black athletes made up 72 percent of the player population in 2003, according to a group headed by attorneys Johnnie Cochran and Cyrus Mehri. In October 2002, the attorneys threatened legal action if more coaches of color were not hired.
In response, the NFL did agree to fine teams that didn't interview at least one minority candidate for head coaching jobs. When the Detroit Lions failed to interview a minority candidate before hiring Steve Mariucci, the NFL fined the club $200,000 in July 2003.
Bottom-up approach
The NCAA program, which focuses on training and networking for potential candidates, doesn't appeal to everyone.
NFL Hall of Famer Kellen Winslow, who has a law degree and is also a college football analyst for Fox Sports, said, "I think [the NCAA has] it all backwards.
"It's the administrators; they're the ones having trouble making decisions," Winslow said. "By creating an academy and asking coaches who are black and Hispanic to go, that's saying that you're not qualified."
Richard Lapchick, director of the Institute for Diversity and Ethics in Sport at the University of Central Florida, said that the NCAA's approach is not the only way to get more minority coaches into Division I-A jobs, just a popular way.
"I've always been fascinated by the response by organizations when the issue of diversity is pointed out as failing to meet any reasonable goals," Lapchick said. "They always start internship programs. As if, and I'm not saying this specifically about the NCAA, but about the concept in general, that we have to prepare a certain group of individuals ... as if they couldn't have developed those skills with some other experience."
Former Grambling football coach Eddie Robinson is a great example of someone who developed his skills elsewhere. Robinson went 408-165-15 at historically black Grambling from 1941-1997 but said in his autobiography that he never was asked to interview for a Division I-A head coaching job.
"That alone tells a lot about the resistance to change [in college athletics]," Lapchick said.
Sociologically, a diverse university work force, whether you're talking about faculty or other staff, is important for all races, Lapchick said.
"For white kids of [college] age, they're probably coming from high schools that weren't very integrated," he said. "Then they come to college and there probably are not many black or Latino professors on campus. But to go through four years of college and to never be in a position to experience that kind of diversity means that that person's education isn't really complete."
But white coaches may believe the push for diversification comes at their own expense, according to a survey of Division I-A coaches of all colors that Hill completed in 2000.
Forty-four percent of the black coaches and 21 percent of the rest responded to the survey. One comment from a white Division I-A assistant from the Big East included in the report said, "I have personally been excluded from a job due to affirmative action. A job should be filled with the most qualified individual, excluding no one on the bases of color, race, or nationality."
Hill said his research also showed most black coaches who took part in the study believed that a maximum of two positions on a nine-member staff would be available to minorities, so they're being excluded from seven positions. Conversely, whites believed they shouldn't be excluded from taking those two positions that may be closed to them.
"There is a racial stratification there," Hill said. "It makes both races feel like they're left out in some way, when it's not necessarily the reality for anybody."
BCA report card
http://www.bcasports.org/
Keith, the BCA's executive director, said he believes that the only way to show that progress is being made toward beating down those beliefs is to have more minority candidates successfully get head coaching jobs.
Even in the past eight years, the numbers have been discouraging.
According to Hill's research, there have been 142 Division I-A head coaching vacancies since 1996. Black coaches have taken eight, or 5.6 percent, of those jobs.
The BCA is attempting to push universities to diversify their football staffs by putting together a hiring report card for each Division I-A school. The first set could be issued this fall.
A low grade would indicate a university may not be a friendly environment for an athlete of color. Keith said he hopes the report card would influence which school a recruit chooses.
Another BCA goal tied to the report card is to see 20 percent of the Division I-A football vacancies over the next five years filled by minority candidates.
The NCAA does not penalize football programs that don't follow through like the NFL does, but the BCA's approach has the potential to force schools to be more open about the process.
C. Keith Harrison, director of the Paul Robeson Research Center for Academic and Athletic Prowess at the University of Michigan, worked with the BCA to develop the report card.
"We have a long ways to go," Harrison said. "The problem is that the search hasn't always been open when some administrators might have that short list in his or her back pocket. So we want to evaluate the process. That's all we can do. That's why we do not give any credit or take away credit for the final hire. We're evaluating the process and it's important to know that."
Since 2002, the BCA also has annually distributed a list of viable job candidates to every university president and athletics director in Division I. The list has nearly tripled from 39 in 2002 to 113 in 2004, based on a preliminary 2004 list obtained by The News & Observer.
Ron Stratten, NCAA vice-president of education services, said if the pipeline of qualified applicants is full, it comes down to whether universities care about diversity. Too often, he said, the cause gets muddled as administrators want to move too quickly to fill an opening.
"In many cases, because they don't want to hurt recruiting, schools lose or fire a coach and it's hurry up to get a new one," said Stratten, a former Oregon assistant who was the first black head football coach in NCAA history at Portland State in 1972. "The short list may or may not have minorities on it. Now you need to have a process, the way you do for any other university position."
Added Bernard Franklin, the highest-ranking officer of color in the NCAA as senior vice-president for governance and membership services, "We have to be able to hold institutions accountable. That's why the collaborative effort with the BCA and their hiring report card is so important. The search process is not always open and it needs to be."
Staff writer Luciana Chavez can be reached at 829-4864 or lchavez@newsobserver.com
Modified: Jul 4, 2004 6:18 AM
http://www.newsobserver.com/sports/v-printer/story/1396431p-7519785c.html
A game plan for change
The push continues for more minority head coaches, diversified staffs
http://www.bcasports.org/
Staff Photo by Scott Lewis
The NCAA Coaches Academy, which is divided into three tiers, could open doors for assistant coaches, such as 47-year-old first-year Duke associate head coach David Kelly.
By LUCIANA CHAVEZ, Staff Writer
When Sylvester Croom was hired as the head football coach at Mississippi State in December 2003, the 17-year NFL coaching veteran became the first black head coach ever in the 71-year history of the Southeastern Conference.
Coupled with Notre Dame's hiring of Tyrone Willingham in 2002, the moves seem to signal that more minority coaches are on the brink of landing high-profile jobs.
But heading into the 2004 season, after 12 other vacancies were filled, there still will be just five head coaches out of 117 in Division I-A football who are black -- Croom, Willingham, Karl Dorrell of UCLA, Tony Samuel of New Mexico State and Fitz Hill of San Jose State. Wisconsin's Barry Alvarez and West Virginia's Rich Rodriguez are Latino.
While Division I-A football squads are still predominantly black on the field, they're mostly white on the sidelines.
According to the most recent NCAA statistics through 2002, Division I-A football squads were 58 percent black and coaching staffs were 95.7 white.
Hill has made the issue his academic life's work, studying it for the past 15 years, including for his master's and doctoral theses.
"One thing I've found in the research is there really is no intent to discriminate," Hill said. "It's not the overt bigotry of the pre-Civil Rights era. It's very subtle in nature. In the United States, everyone believes they should have the right to do what everyone else does. But you can look at where [coaches] play or go to school or their NFL experience or their coaching history, the one thing that keeps surfacing ... is the race card."
The road to change clearly runs uphill. That was evident at the 2004 NCAA Convention at Nashville, Tenn., in January.
At the beginning of a forum on minority hiring, Carlyle Carter, executive director of the Division III Minnesota Intercollegiate Athletic Conference, quickly defined the challenge with a sweep of his arm.
The only black conference commissioner in the NCAA -- excluding conferences made up of historically black colleges -- he told the assembled to look around.
Carter, who will resign from his current post in June 2005, pointed out that none of the people -- specifically university presidents who have the power to force policy changes and make sure policies are put into practice -- were even in the room.
Enter the NCAA
The NCAA is trying to address the gap. NCAA president Myles Brand took office in January 2003, and later that year the NCAA Coaches Academy, a three-tiered program to assist minority coaches with career advancement, was formed.
"He gave us the money," said Keith Gill, NCAA vice-president for membership services. "He took it head-on in a report. The numbers don't lie. We have a problem here."
The academy will include head-coach training for minority assistants, networking with university administrators and other head coaches, and an active push to encourage minority players to consider coaching as a career.
Clemson assistant Thielen Smith participated in the first academy but went in wary about the NCAA's intentions.
"When I first applied, I was like, 'Why do I have to apply for this?' " Smith said. " 'Why can't my 25 years of experience be good enough?' But if this is what it takes, then I'll do it."
Gill said the NCAA didn't want to underplay any coach's experience.
"I would say our committee acknowledged that the candidate pool was not devoid of skills," Gill said. "But at the same time, we're [trying] to get them exposure and access to opportunities."
The Black Coaches Association backs the program but BCA executive director Floyd Keith said there will be progress only "when there are hires made. But [the academies] are good exposure."
NFL attempt
Exposure can equal progress, if the National Football League's Minority Coaching Fellowship Program, which began in 1987, provides any evidence.
The NFL has never had more than three coaches of color in a given season but will have four in 2004. The NFL program also has coincided with an increase in the number of assistants and coordinators who are black.
In 1980, there were 14 NFL assistants who were black but no head coaches and no coordinators. In 2003, 167 of 574 NFL assistants were black, compared with 141 in 1997. Also in 2003, there were a record 14 coordinators, compared with five in 1997.
Has the NFL progressed quickly enough?
Not for a league in which black athletes made up 72 percent of the player population in 2003, according to a group headed by attorneys Johnnie Cochran and Cyrus Mehri. In October 2002, the attorneys threatened legal action if more coaches of color were not hired.
In response, the NFL did agree to fine teams that didn't interview at least one minority candidate for head coaching jobs. When the Detroit Lions failed to interview a minority candidate before hiring Steve Mariucci, the NFL fined the club $200,000 in July 2003.
Bottom-up approach
The NCAA program, which focuses on training and networking for potential candidates, doesn't appeal to everyone.
NFL Hall of Famer Kellen Winslow, who has a law degree and is also a college football analyst for Fox Sports, said, "I think [the NCAA has] it all backwards.
"It's the administrators; they're the ones having trouble making decisions," Winslow said. "By creating an academy and asking coaches who are black and Hispanic to go, that's saying that you're not qualified."
Richard Lapchick, director of the Institute for Diversity and Ethics in Sport at the University of Central Florida, said that the NCAA's approach is not the only way to get more minority coaches into Division I-A jobs, just a popular way.
"I've always been fascinated by the response by organizations when the issue of diversity is pointed out as failing to meet any reasonable goals," Lapchick said. "They always start internship programs. As if, and I'm not saying this specifically about the NCAA, but about the concept in general, that we have to prepare a certain group of individuals ... as if they couldn't have developed those skills with some other experience."
Former Grambling football coach Eddie Robinson is a great example of someone who developed his skills elsewhere. Robinson went 408-165-15 at historically black Grambling from 1941-1997 but said in his autobiography that he never was asked to interview for a Division I-A head coaching job.
"That alone tells a lot about the resistance to change [in college athletics]," Lapchick said.
Sociologically, a diverse university work force, whether you're talking about faculty or other staff, is important for all races, Lapchick said.
"For white kids of [college] age, they're probably coming from high schools that weren't very integrated," he said. "Then they come to college and there probably are not many black or Latino professors on campus. But to go through four years of college and to never be in a position to experience that kind of diversity means that that person's education isn't really complete."
But white coaches may believe the push for diversification comes at their own expense, according to a survey of Division I-A coaches of all colors that Hill completed in 2000.
Forty-four percent of the black coaches and 21 percent of the rest responded to the survey. One comment from a white Division I-A assistant from the Big East included in the report said, "I have personally been excluded from a job due to affirmative action. A job should be filled with the most qualified individual, excluding no one on the bases of color, race, or nationality."
Hill said his research also showed most black coaches who took part in the study believed that a maximum of two positions on a nine-member staff would be available to minorities, so they're being excluded from seven positions. Conversely, whites believed they shouldn't be excluded from taking those two positions that may be closed to them.
"There is a racial stratification there," Hill said. "It makes both races feel like they're left out in some way, when it's not necessarily the reality for anybody."
BCA report card
http://www.bcasports.org/
Keith, the BCA's executive director, said he believes that the only way to show that progress is being made toward beating down those beliefs is to have more minority candidates successfully get head coaching jobs.
Even in the past eight years, the numbers have been discouraging.
According to Hill's research, there have been 142 Division I-A head coaching vacancies since 1996. Black coaches have taken eight, or 5.6 percent, of those jobs.
The BCA is attempting to push universities to diversify their football staffs by putting together a hiring report card for each Division I-A school. The first set could be issued this fall.
A low grade would indicate a university may not be a friendly environment for an athlete of color. Keith said he hopes the report card would influence which school a recruit chooses.
Another BCA goal tied to the report card is to see 20 percent of the Division I-A football vacancies over the next five years filled by minority candidates.
The NCAA does not penalize football programs that don't follow through like the NFL does, but the BCA's approach has the potential to force schools to be more open about the process.
C. Keith Harrison, director of the Paul Robeson Research Center for Academic and Athletic Prowess at the University of Michigan, worked with the BCA to develop the report card.
"We have a long ways to go," Harrison said. "The problem is that the search hasn't always been open when some administrators might have that short list in his or her back pocket. So we want to evaluate the process. That's all we can do. That's why we do not give any credit or take away credit for the final hire. We're evaluating the process and it's important to know that."
Since 2002, the BCA also has annually distributed a list of viable job candidates to every university president and athletics director in Division I. The list has nearly tripled from 39 in 2002 to 113 in 2004, based on a preliminary 2004 list obtained by The News & Observer.
Ron Stratten, NCAA vice-president of education services, said if the pipeline of qualified applicants is full, it comes down to whether universities care about diversity. Too often, he said, the cause gets muddled as administrators want to move too quickly to fill an opening.
"In many cases, because they don't want to hurt recruiting, schools lose or fire a coach and it's hurry up to get a new one," said Stratten, a former Oregon assistant who was the first black head football coach in NCAA history at Portland State in 1972. "The short list may or may not have minorities on it. Now you need to have a process, the way you do for any other university position."
Added Bernard Franklin, the highest-ranking officer of color in the NCAA as senior vice-president for governance and membership services, "We have to be able to hold institutions accountable. That's why the collaborative effort with the BCA and their hiring report card is so important. The search process is not always open and it needs to be."
Staff writer Luciana Chavez can be reached at 829-4864 or lchavez@newsobserver.com
