New Report Finds Lack of Diversity in College Football Coaches

Football_player The Institute for Diversity and Ethics in Sports (TIDES) of the University of Central Florida has put up this press release entitled: The Buck Stops Here: Assessing Diversity among Campus and Conference Leaders for Football Bowl Subdivision (FBS) Schools in the 2008-09 Academic Year.

Here’s a taste:

With the firing of Ty Willingham at the University of Washington and the resignation of Ron Prince at Kansas State, the 2008 regular season of college football will conclude with the controversy over the poor record of hiring African-American Division IA (Football Bowl Subdivision – FBS) head football coaches still continuing to make headlines. Their departure will leave only four African-American and two other head coaches of color. College football is still far behind other college and professional sports.

The Institute for Diversity and Ethics in Sport (TIDES) at the University of Central Florida today released The Buck Stops Here: Assessing Diversity among Campus and Conference Leaders for Division IA (FBS) Schools in 2008-09. This study examines the race and gender of conference commissioners and campus leaders including college and university presidents, athletics directors, and faculty athletics representatives for all 120 FBS institutions. The study also includes head football coaches, offensive and defensive coordinators, assistant coaches, and football student-athletes. Finally, the faculty as a whole is examined.

Richard Lapchick, who is the primary author of the study as director of The Institute, said, “The leadership which is the power structure in college sport remains overwhelming white. In FBS institutions, this includes 92.5 percent of the presidents, 87.5 percent of the athletics directors, 92.6 percent of the faculty athletics reps, 83.3 percent of the faculty and 100 percent of the conference commissioners. Only 3.5 percent of the faculty are African-American and 3.4 are percent Latino.”

These are not surprising findings, but still nonetheless troubling.  In a sport that has a large number of black and Latino participants, it is hard to believe that there are not more qualified minority coaches out there for the picking.

This is not my field of concentration, so I would be interested to hear from the sports law community whether there are initiatives being undertaken, similar to the Rooney Rule in the NFL that Jeremi Duru (Temple) has written about, that seek to address this problem.

Hat Tip: Jack Sargent

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