While much attention has been paid to ensuring that the coaching staffs of men’s college and professional sports teams reflect the diversity of the teams they lead, a review of the racial composition of women’s collegiate basketball coaches reveals a surprising and disturbing lack of diversity.
Among the most glaring findings:
The findings beg one question: How can such a disparity exist in women’s college basketball when other sports and leagues are falling over themselves to address diversity? To much fanfare, two Black head coaches faced off in Super Bowl XLI, a first for the league. Black head coaches have paced the sidelines in men’s college basketball for decades, and in the ACC, Black coaches outnumber White ones 7-5. No other league boasts such a proportion.
Most experts say the situation for Black women won’t change without aggressive action by NCAA leaders. Many point to the NFL’s Rooney Rule as an effective model. Named after the legendary owner of the Pittsburgh Steelers, the rule requires each NFL team to interview at least one minority candidate during any head coaching search. In a similar vein, most college teams participate in the Black Coaches Association protocol, whereby they agree to at a minimum interview potential Black head coaches.
“Unless they do something like [the Rooney Rule,] nothing is going to change for Black women,” says Cathy Parson, the head women’s basketball coach at Howard University. But NCAA officials say the Rooney Rule won’t be coming to the college ranks.
“We’ve looked at and discussed the Rooney Rule but it’s not the route we want to take. We are a voluntary membership association and we are taking other approaches,” says Charlotte Westerhaus, the NCAA’s director of diversity and inclusion. “We are aware of the disparity in basketball coaching and we are taking a pipeline approach to addressing it. You’d think that with over 40 percent of the players being African-American that the coaching numbers would be more representative.”
A Diversity Game Plan
