The amazing playoff run of the Richmond Spiders will climax in Chattanooga, Tennessee, this Friday against the University of Montana on ESPN at the FCS National Championship. True, the college isn’t known as a traditional football powerhouse, but it is almost within a league of its own.
Not only is first-year Head Coach Mike London taking his team to the National Championship – a feat almost unheard of – but London is also only one of five minority coaches to continue into post-season play.
“I think we belong,” London told reporters after last Saturday’s game. “In the first three rounds, we played conference champions. This is a significant accomplishment for these players.”
London is the second Black head coach to take his team to the FCS National Championship, formerly Division I-AA, since Rudy Hubbard won it with Florida A&M in 1978.
There are currently three Black head coaches and one Samoan who represent just 5 percent of the 68 head coaches in total that are going to bowl games this season. London is not included among the three Black coaches because the University of Richmond competes in a division that contains smaller universities than schools in the Football Bowl Subdivision, formerly Division I-A. The FBS comprises traditional powerhouse schools like the University of Oklahoma and the University of Florida, which will face one another in the BCS National Championship.
Although Blacks account for 46 percent of the players in the FBS, according to the NCAA, that level of diversity is certainly not represented in the division’s coaching ranks.
The 2008 season in the Football Bowl Subdivision began with eight coaches of color, six of whom were African American, according to the annual hiring report of the nonprofit group Black Coaches and Administrators (BCA). Three of the six were fired in the last month, but newly hired Michael Locksley, an African American, was brought on board last week at the University of New Mexico, which brings the number of Black FBS coaches back up to four.
