A week ago, the United States took one of its biggest steps toward equality, electing our first black president in Barack Obama.
The same progress can’t be said for college football.
Another study on minority coaching hirings has been released, and the results are not encouraging.
Of 31 openings in Division I college football this past year, only four coaches hired were minorities.
Coupled with the recent firings of Washington’s Tyrone Willingham and Kansas State’s Ron Prince, who will both leave their schools at the end of this season, only four minority coaches will be roaming NCAA FBS sidelines when all is said and done.
That number seems remarkably low, especially for a sport whose base of athletes is 55 percent minority.
For a solution, the NCAA needs to look no further than its pro counterpart.
In 2003, the NFL instituted its Rooney Rule.
Named after Pittsburgh Steelers owner and chairman of the league’s diversity committee, Dan Rooney, it requires teams to interview at least one minority candidate for a head coaching opportunity. Teams that fail to comply are fined.
It was prompted by a similar situation to what the NCAA is currently facing.
Back in 2002, defense attorney Johnnie Cochran Jr. and labor law attorney Cyrus Mehri commissioned a report that showed that 70 percent of NFL players were black. Head coaches, on the other hand, were only six percent black.
The Rooney Rule has been tabbed by critics as an unruly form of affirmative action, pigeonholing teams into interviews with unwanted candidates.
Besides, shouldn’t all coaches be hired on merits other than the color of their skin?
Performance was undoubtedly a factor in the firing of the latest pair of NCAA black football coaches.
On the day of Willingham’s firing, I was not at all surprised. Beyond his team’s winless record, the Huskies had removed his face from an AT&T stadium ad on the south end of Husky Stadium in late August.
He was replaced by a pack of husky dogs fighting through a snow drift. It was hardly a vote of confidence for the upcoming 2008 season.
The firing of Willingham and Prince has brought a lot of new questions to fruition about the ethics of hiring practices by NCAA athletic directors.
NCAA vice president of diversity and inclusion Charlotte Westerhaus said the NCAA has no authority to place restrictions on hiring minority coaches.
“The athletic directors are responsible for hiring and thus responsible for the hiring process and results,” Westerhaus told the Associated Press Wednesday.
But Willingham’s tenuous status had everything to do with his 20-46 record over four-plus years with the Huskies. Maybe Willingham’s greatest success has been managing to stay afloat as a black head coach since 1995.
If that’s the case, shame on college football.
The problem lies in every NCAA black coach being labeled “high-profile.” High-profile is often an illusionary term, usually applicable to something that there isn’t a lot of.
College football has never seen more than eight black coaches wearing lead headsets, a peak reached in 1997.
For the NCAA to shed that label, more opportunities must be present. Since instituting the Rooney Rule, the NFL’s percentage of black head coaches has jumped to 22 percent.
With the one coach requirement, teams have at least opened their eyes to black candidates. Based on the jump in hiring percentages, qualified candidates have been found.
Rooney himself took a huge step in hiring Mike Tomlin last season. Tomlin was not only the first black coach in Steelers’ history, but also the youngest coach in the NFL at 36 years old.
Tomlin had a tough act to follow in predecessor Bill Cowher, who achieved 149 wins and a Super Bowl title in 239 games with the Steelers. But 27 games into his career in Pittsburgh, Tomlin is making waves for his hard-nosed style producing wins, and not being black.
A year after winning the AFC North, the Steelers are in first place again. It is further proof that success is what defines players and coaches.
Committed owners like Rooney have demonstrated that a change we need can be made to football. Less committed owners have shown otherwise.
The first violation of the Rooney rule came in 2003, when Detroit Lions president Matt Millen was fined $200,000 for not interviewing a minority candidate before hiring Steve Mariucci.
We all know how unsuccessful Millen was in Detroit. It is not every day that a general manager makes “The Onion” the day after he was fired with a story entitled “Lions owner claims he fired Matt Millen three years ago.”
There’s a talent pool of black college coaches out there waiting for a chance. And with a shove in the right direction to its individual programs, the NCAA can do its part to make history.
