Almost one year ago to the day, I wrote a story about the void of Black coaches during college football’s hiring season that came and went at warp speed.
It mirrored the annual January NFL head coaching hiring period where Black head coaching candidates are left humiliated and frustrated.
In 2020, there were 14 Black head coaches helming FBS programs. At the FCS level, the big hire was Deion Sanders at Jackson State.
At the end of 2021, Washington had fired Jimmy Lake after he basically assaulting a player on the field. But then Notre Dame named Marcus Freeman their head coach, and things were looking up.
Then 2022 arrived.
While Tony Elliott (UVA) and Stan Drayton (Temple) joined the FBS party, gone were Herm Edwards (Arizona St.), Karl Dorrell (Colorado) and Willie Taggart (Florida Atlantic). Then last week, David Shaw (Stanford) retired.
To top it all off, Deion Sanders left Jackson St. and took his talents to Boulder, Colorado this past Saturday.
So as of today, there are only 11 Black head football coaches at FBS programs. That represents a little over 9% of the 131 member institutions.
That’s a major problem.
Donte Williams (USC), Mickey Joseph (Nebraska) and Cadillac Williams (Auburn) making history by becoming their program’s first Black head coaches ever were temporary celebrations as recycled white coaches Lincoln Riley, Matt Rhule and Hugh Freeze took over those teams.
Don’t think that this is a recent phenomenom.
No, the dearth of Black coaches has been a simmering problem for years and now it’s boiling up and over.
“Who are the top 10 African American candidates?” said Ohio State athletic director Gene Smith. “Back in the day, I could have rattled off names left and right. I could give you four or five now, but I can’t give you the depth that should be there, who we should all know.”
But it’s not just the Black coaching pipeline that’s the issue.
It’s also the hiring process and mindset of those doing the hiring.
Last year multiple media outlets listed their favorite candidates to land big jobs at USC and Oklahoma. Out of the almost ten names mentioned, not one was Black.
Not even Deion Sanders was mentioned.
We just witnessed the return of Rhule (Nebraska) and Freeze (Auburn) to P5 college football. We saw Luke Fickell get snatched away by Wisconsin and South Florida sign Alex Golesh.
There were rumors that Ed Orgeron might return to coaching at UNLV, but he said no. The other candidates noted are former Arizona head coaches Mike Stoops and Kevin Sumlin, the latter who is Black.
That means that only two Black coaches were mentioned for 19 original FBS head coaching openings.
And to date, Sanders is the only one to sign with a team.
So where are the Black coaches? Have they suddently disappeared or are they systematically being denied?
While both are true, the latter tips the scales for the talent exists.
There’s Oklahoma St. offensive coordinator Kasey Dunn, Michigan co-offensive coordinator Sherrone Moore and the aforementioned Cadillac Williams.
Teams could also consider Marshall’s Charles Huff. Afterall, he did beat Freeman’s Irish Squad on the road at Notre Dame.
And what about giving an HBCU coach like Eddie George (Tennessee St.) some consideration?
The system hurts Black coaches for it too often fails to even consider them for big time coaching opportunities. Just look at the SEC for proof of that. The conference doesn’t currently have a single Black head coach. And while smaller SEC programs like Vanderbilt, Kentucky and Mississippi State have had Black head coaches, traditional powerhouses like Florida, LSU, Alabama and Georgia haven’t.
And it’s not like there haven’t been vacancies.
According to ESPN’s Chris Low, the SEC blanked Black coaches “despite 10 jobs having come open in the past three years.”
“The SEC is the only Power 5 conference without any minority head coaches,” said former Mississippi State coach Sylvester Croom. “Look at how disproportionate it is, the large percentage of players and assistant coaches who are Black. And yet, here we are in the hotbed of college football, and there are no Black head coaches in the SEC.”
To add insult to injury, last week UAB hired Trent Dilfer as their new head coach. His qualifications? He’s a former NFL quarterback and part-time media analyst whose only coaching experience is at the high school level with the Elite 11 quarterback camp and at Lipscomb Academy in Nashville.
If this is the norm going forward, Black high school coaches should get their resumes and interview tapes together now.
Now before the defensive responses erupt that the ADs and prorgams aren’t racist, pay close attention.
Most of those individuals and insitutions aren’t racist.
But the system they foster is for it coerces the hiring process to consider certain types of coaches first. In some cases, only look at those types of coaches.
And yes, there are exceptions to the rule like Colorado, which has hired four Black head coaches, including three in a row.
Yet with 19 original openings and only one filled by a Black head coach, the absence of Blackness forces the conclusion that the current process and way of thinking are biased.
While the Black coaching pipeline might currenty need replenishing, let’s not forget that a talent pool actually exists.
So to fix the system, all it needs to do is give everyone a fair shot from the beginning.
