Black Coaches: Hiring Process Improved

NCAA Division I universities improved this year in considering minority candidates for head football coaches, but more progress is needed, and resorting to civil rights laws might be necessary, the Black Coaches Association said Thursday.

With only 10 minority head coaches currently among more than 200 Division I-A and I-AA schools that are not historically black institutions, universities must appoint more minority coaches and more diverse search committees for vacant positions. Evidence shows the latter leads to more minority coaches being considered, the BCA said.

And if that means applying Title VII of the 1964 Civil Rights Act, which makes it illegal for employers to discriminate on the basis of race, so be it, BCA executive director Floyd Keith said in a teleconference with reporters.

"I think we'll have to put a magnifying glass on searches," Keith said. "Change is not something that has been as quick as we'd like to see it."

The third annual report card, released Thursday, showed mixed results. While a record 12 of the 26 Division I-A and I-AA schools received overall grades of A, a record six schools also received F's, including five who received the failing marks for not reporting to the BCA on what steps they took to consider minority coaches. They included perennial Big Ten power Wisconsin and two other I-A schools, Rice and Boise State.

Among 414 coaching vacancies in Division I-A since 1982, only 21 blacks have been hired, a huge disparity given the number of minority athletes on the playing fields, the BCA said.

"The BCA wants the best candidate to be chosen irrespective of race," Richard Lapchick, director of the Institute for Diversity and Ethics in Sport at the University of Central Florida, said in the report's forward. "With only five African-American head coaches in the 2005 season, college football is emphatically the most segregated position in all of college sport."

Three of the 12 schools that received overall A grades this year — Buffalo, Columbia and Southeast Missouri State — hired black coaches. Kansas State, which also hired a black coach, received a B.

The 12 A's were nearly as many as the previous two years combined (13), and Buffalo and Southeast Missouri State each earned perfect scores — A's in each of the five categories. Kansas State received a lower overall grade because it received an F for the composition of its search committee.

Schools received automatic F's in categories they did not report on. In some cases, Keith said, the attitude among those schools was one of "Well, we'll just take the F."

"You still have people that are resistant to the process," Keith said.

Four of the schools that responded to the BCA still received F's for their choice of final candidates.

Among the schools that failed to report at all to the BCA, Wisconsin and Boise State promoted from within their previous coaching staffs. Rice hired Todd Graham of Tulsa.

"What policy will it take to change the attitudes of institutions that do not feel the need to have open searches or compete for diversity as they do on the field, with stadiums packed to watch diverse athletic participants?" the report asked in its conclusion.

Scores reflected factors such as the number of minority candidates interviewed for jobs, composition of search committees, and compliance with schools' affirmative action policies. Schools that hire minority coaches received bonus points.

This year's results improved some over last year, which produced the worst scores in the three years the report card has been released.

More than half of the 26 schools in the new study received either A's or B's in the four categories other than the composition of search committees.

The Indianapolis-based organization found that only 34 of 134 search committee members nationwide — a quarter of the total, and an average of 1.3 per school — were minorities.

Findings on minority representation on search committees included: