Black Coaches in NCAA Football
February is black history month and it only seems appropriate on a college football blog to address some positive changes occurring at the collegiate coaching level. With the departure of Mississippi State’s Sylvester Croom last season, the NCAA division 1A found itself with only 3 black head coaches out of 119 programs; Miami’s Randy Shannon, Buffalo’s Turner Gill and Houston’s Kevin Sumlin. It appeared that while boosters and program directors were more than willing to have black assistant coaches few programs seemed comfortable turning the keys over to a man of color. Even when they did, all too often it was an awkward affair as witnessed with the clumsy firing of Tyrone Willingham at Notre Dame. Fortunately, as Bob Dylan would say, times they are a changing.
Turner Gill has been promoted to a major program at Kansas. Former Florida assistant coach Charlie Strong is the head honcho at Louisville. Mike London is the head coach of Virginia. East Carolina has Ruffin McNeill and Joker Phillips is captain of the ship at Kentucky. In less than a month the amount of black head coaches has more than doubled. Obviously more can be done but considering how long it has taken to see this type of progress it truly is remarkable.
Many will ask, “Why does it matter”? Some may even question blog’s like this one saying that pointing out a person’s race is, in itself, racist. I would argue otherwise and give you an example why. It is crucial for people of all races to see black men and women in leadership roles. This alone destroys negative stereotypes. As an example I will refer to comments I heard while living in Kentucky in 1997 after Tubby Smith was hired to take over the basketball program at UK. It was not uncommon to hear comments like “Adolph Rupp would be turning over in his grave”. Tubby was judged harshly and even his successes (including a national championship in 1998) where often attributed more to Rick Pitino’s recruiting than to Tubby’s coaching.
Sadly, one of the biggest detractors of Tubby was my own brother in law, and many of his comments where based solely on Tubby’s race which is why I found it ironic that while discussing Joker Philips he was almost giddy. He discussed how Joker was the right man for the job and how much Rich Brooks had relied on him over the past few years. Then he went on to discuss how concerned he was that Charlie Strong was taking over at Louisville, one of his bitter rivals, because he is a “helluva coach.” Not once in the conversation did race come up. He was just an Eastern Kentucky boy judging a man based on the strength of his character and not the color of his skin, just as Martin Luther King Jr. requested so long ago.
Happy Black History Month everyone.
Very well written..thanks!
I wonder if Eddie Robinson stay at Grambling because he wanted to…..or was he never given a chance to coach at a major college…..that would be a travesty…