T1B

Black coach urges greater progress in hiring practices
By KEN KUSMER, Associated Press Writer
September 21, 2006

INDIANAPOLIS (AP) -- A leading group of black football coaches is pleased Division I schools are considering more minorities for coaching jobs, but it says improvement is too slow and applying civil rights laws might be a way to speed progress.

"I think we'll have to put a magnifying glass on searches," said Floyd Keith, executive director of the Black Coaches Association. "Change is not something that has been as quick as we'd like to see it."

There are now only 11 minority head coaches among the more than 200 NCAA Division I-A and I-AA schools that are not historically black institutions.

The BCA, in a report card released Thursday, says universities must appoint more minority coaches and more diverse search committees. The group says evidence shows more diverse committees leads to more consideration of minority coaches.

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, Keith said during a conference call.

The third annual report card showed mixed results. While a record 12 of the 26 Division I-A and I-AA schools that hired head coaches 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 assistant coaches from within their 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 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.

Of the 11 current minority head coaches, five are in I-A and six are in I-AA, and 10 are blacks. In I-A they are Mississippi State's Sylvester Croom, UCLA's Karl Dorrell, Buffalo's Turner Gill, Kansas State's Ron Prince and Washington's Tyrone Willingham. Gill and Prince were hired this year.

Division I-AA's minority head coaches are Valparaiso's Stacy Adams, Northern Arizona's Jerome Souers, Indiana State's Lou West, Columbia's Norries Wilson, Southeast Missouri State's Tony Samuel and St. Peter's Chris Taylor, an American Indian.

Killian wrote:Grad assistant positions are about 90-95% white. Pile on me for saying this, but there are more white guys trying to cut their teeth than black guys. You have to go through a lot of shit to be a head coach. It also doesn't help when your poster boy sucks balls and doesn't do shit for the advancement of black coaches.

Cicero wrote: You have to pay your dues in order to become a HC. I know more black kids are on college rosters, but also more go on to play professional football i.e NFL, CFL, NFL Euro and Arena. More and more back up QB's, slow footed OL and LB's go on and get graduate degrees and then ascend through the coaching ranks. The reason more and more black coaches arent being hired is b/c the pool isnt large enough.