Jan 7, 2009
Few Strong Minority Coaching Prospects in College Football
Florida's Charlie Strong
A few weeks ago, the Sports Law Blog ran a generally solid post detailing the problem of NCAA Division I-A (I refuse to call it FBS) football programs hiring a disproportionately low number of minorities (read: African-Americans) to be head football coaches. This isn’t a new story—it’s been happening for years, and has been in the news recently surrounding the stories of Turner Gill (passed up for the Auburn job for a less qualified candidate) and Charlie Strong (perpetually overlooked Florida defensive coordinator). Unfortunately, the Sports Law Blog post overlooks one of the biggest issues here: the lack of qualified minority candidates.
There are plenty of quality African-American assistant coaches in college football, but athletic directors rarely hire people without well-established qualifications (Buddy Teevens excepted). For a BCS conference program, this means a new coach will likely be an established collegiate head coach or a top NFL assistant. For a lower-level D1 program, you’re looking at a failed head coach or a top collegiate assistant. Under these parameters, yes, there’s no good reason that someone with Strong’s resume shouldn’t have a decent head coaching job. But the bigger problem is that minority coaches with Strong’s resume are rare, because it remains difficult for a young black assistant to progress through the coaching ranks to a level where he would even be considered for a coaching job. As Matt Hinton, the best college football writer in the world, says here, compare Strong’s history to that of new Mississippi State boss Dan Mullen or Tennessee’s Lane Kiffin. Programs need to do a better job of hiring minority head coaches, but that can’t happen as often as we’d like until they first get opportunities at the lower levels of the coaching ranks.