The Myth of the Black Coach

With the recent firing of Karl Durell, the number of Black Coaches at the Division I or Bowl Champion Division just dropped from 6 out of 119 positions to 5 out of 119 positions. Whether Durell’s firing was fair is inconsequential because a University has the right to hire and fire a coach as they see fit. Durell, in fact did have a respectable record at UCLA, 35 win and 27 losses in 5 seasons with 5 consecutive Bowl appearances counting this season. Durell also, appeared to operate a fairly clean ship with no major infractions or incidents against his program. But the firing or hiring of an individual coach wont impact the numbers of minority coaches at the Division I level.
The pattern of hiring African American Head Coaches has more to do with Social Stratification than finding “qualified candidates. Though when College Administrators are asked about the dearth of African-American Coaches at their schools, you hear a lot of excuses; i.e. reasons for this lack of hiring :(1) they have to go through the proper chain of jobs, head coach at smaller schools, assistant coach, defensive or offensive coordinator at a larger school., (2) this process takes a long time, once a generation of coaches become qualified assistants then, the pool of qualified candidates will grow. On the surface these reasons sound reasonable but there are flaws in this logic. If these reasons are legitimate why do some white coaches come directly from Division 1AA or ((Bowl Subdivision Schools), straight into head coaching jobs in Division I football. Examples are Jim Tressell, Youngstown St. to Ohio St. or Brain Kelly, Division II Grand Valley St. to Central Michigan Jerry Faust from High School to Notre Dame... None of these coaches had to serve as a Defensive or Offensive Coordinator at a big school or in the NFL before landing a Division Head Coaching job. Could you imagine a successful head coach from a school like Grambling, Hampton or Delaware St., being hired as the head coach at LSU, Virginia or Virginia Tech or Maryland after being successful at their schools? No, but that’s because there is a caste system in Division I College Football, just like in other areas of our society. Black Coaches, especially the ones from Historically, Black Colleges lie at the bottom end of this caste system. Experience is not really the issue. Black coaches have plenty of experience, from grade school to high school through the College Level. This experience is gained primarily at predominately African American Institutions where these coaches they have been the primary teachers for many of these top level athletes that are now being coached by white head coaches at Division I schools. So whether they can coach is not really the issue. I believe that the underlying reason lies with the stratification of roles and status in our society, which assigns more value to things that are from the dominant culture. The position of head football coach is aligned directly to that of an institutional and community leader. Millions of dollars are funneled through these programs and most College Presidents and Trustee Boards at these Major Universities are not willing to turn over the reigns of their programs to African American Coaches. It comes down to the racial caste system that still is prevalent in our society. The African American Professional and their institutions are still viewed as inferior, and the head football coach is just the visible tip of the iceberg. If we go further to the root of the problem we see that these same institutions have less than 3% of their School Presidents who are African American and African American Professors only account for about 4% of the faculty at predominantly white institutions. So what it really comes down to is whether African American Coaches and their skills, knowledge and experience are valued by these majority white institutions. At this moment the answer is a resounding no. We have a long way to go before we can alleviate the caste system that prevents the hiring of capable African American Coaches.