Growing up in a single-parent home on Chicago’s West Side, Northwestern guard Jitim Young had to look elsewhere for a father figure.

He recalls finding it in Mr. Baskeiville, his elementary school basketball coach who was, like himself, black.

“He really related to me – knowing the things I faced in everyday life,” Young says. “He really understood how important it was to be a father figure. I trusted what he was saying, and it made me work harder to become a better basketball player.”

Young now plays for Bill Carmody, one of a disproportionately large number of white coaches in college basketball. And since arriving at NU, he’s had a harder time finding the kind of relationship he had with Baskeiville.

While good coaches are measured by their records and not their race, Young’s story is just one example of the impact that diversified coaching staffs can have on basketball. And although there are still hurdles, the numbers show that the men in suits on the sidelines are now starting to look more like the players on the court.

small steps

Just 21.6 percent of Division I-A men’s basketball coaches are black, while more than half the athletes are black. But the number of black coaches in college basketball has risen significantly over the past few years. And this positive trend has caught the attention of many in the world of college hoops.

“Certainly, it’s been apparent in college basketball that many minority coaches have gotten terrific opportunities,” Michigan head coach Tommy Amaker says.

Amaker is one of three black head coaches in the Big Ten, along with Penn State’s Jerry Dunn and Indiana’s Mike Davis.

Despite the large gap between the percentage of black head coaches and the players in college basketball, the number of blacks in head coaching positions has increased by an average of about two percent each year, according to Kevin Matthews of the Center for the Study of Sport in Society at Northeastern University.

The Center’s 1995-96 study showed that just 17.4 percent of Division-I basketball coaches were black – 4.2 percent less than in the 2000 survey.

And what’s even more promising, Matthews adds, is that 33 percent of Division-I assistant basketball coaches are black, creating a talent pool for future head coaching positions.

“I believe that in college basketball there’s been a barrier that’s been broken,” says Matthews, the Center’s Director of National Diversity Programs. “It’s largely responsible to the outspokenness of a couple of coaches in the past … like (former Georgetown head coach) John Thompson and (Temple head coach) John Chaney.”

A long WAY TO GO

Despite the positive outlook for black basketball coaches, quality minority candidates are still being overlooked, says Floyd Keith, the executive director of the Black Coaches Association.

Keith points to three factors contributing to the lack of black head coaches: knowledge of the candidates, the politics involved in selecting a coach, and the criteria that most major schools use for new hires.

One problem is that the interviewers themselves are overwhelmingly white – as of 2000, only 2.4 percent of Division-I athletic directors were black. Keith says that black athletic directors would try harder than whites to recruit minority coaches.

And when filling coaching positions, athletic directors may sometimes steer their decisions toward what the contributing alumni want, Keith adds.

Most importantly, Keith says, when schools require prior coaching experience, many minorities are eliminated from the running because of the institutionalized racism that existed in the past.

The accumulated effect is disheartening for minorities.

“They become discouraged,” he says. “If you don’t think you have an opportunity to win, you don’t get in the race. That glass ceiling has a dehumanizing effect.”

While NU Athletic Director Rick Taylor agrees that blacks may be at a disadvantage in the hiring process, he says that the most feasible and fair way for them to earn major coaching positions is to work from the bottom up. There is too much at stake in Division-I athletics, Taylor says, to hire a head coach without any prior head- or assistant- coaching experience.

“I’m not sure anybody making a decision now wants to be held responsible for anything that happened 30 years ago,” Taylor says of the past institutional racism. “You’re going to pick the best person for the job. I think in basketball we’re getting close to colorblind.”

POSITIVE IMPACT

But NU currently has no black head coaches in any sport. The lone black head basketball coach during the program’s 98-year history was the late Ricky Byrdsong, who coached from 1993-97.

Taylor says he recognizes this disparity, but he adds that it’s not the result of an apathetic athletic administration.

“We’ve got a representative group of minority student-athletes,” Taylor says. “I think it’s important that we get minority representation in coaching staffs.

“There’s a plan to make an effort (to hire minorities). Any plan is dependent on somebody saying yes to your (offer).”

NU assistant men’s basketball coach Craig Robinson is the only black coach currently on NU’s basketball staff. But the Chicago native says he’s not bothered by the lack of black faces around NU. After all, Robinson says he’s been the only black person in many of the things he’s done throughout his life.

“I know that there is institutional racism,” Robinson says. “When you’re trying to figure out what you want to do, you can’t let the numbers discourage you.”

The Princeton graduate, who was once an investment banker with Morgan Stanley Dean Witter & Co., says he eventually hopes to work his way into a head-coaching job, acting as a role model to young black athletes.

“I want to let them know that there’s more to life than just playing basketball,” Robinson said. “They can use basketball to get to places they could never imagine going to.”

And although black coaches like Robinson are a valuable asset in helping young black males succeed off the court, Young says that, regardless of skin color, the most important aspect of a player-coach bond is trust.

“Trust has to develop,” Young says. “Growing up you know a lot of people who say they can do this and do that for you. They can use you. When I meet a coach I ask, ‘Does he care about me just because I can hoop, or does he care about me as a person? If I wasn’t a ballplayer, would he still care about me?'”