Major college football programs are making steady headway in selecting Blacks and other racial minorities for prized head coach positions, says a new survey of hiring practices issued by the Black Coaches and Administrators (BCA) association.
Still, it is easier to become a general in the U.S. Army than to become a major college football coach, says veteran former college football coach Floyd Keith, the group’s executive director.
“While we have made progress, is the task finished?” asks Keith, in a statement and telephone interview after the report’s release. “No, but we are headed in the right direction to eventually realize an acceptable ratio in the number of head coaches to the number of participants on the playing field,” says Keith.
The BCA survey, which studied off-season hiring of 34 major college football programs between November 2009 and October 2010, awarded letter grades based on four criteria: communications with BCA, diversity of coaching candidates, the time frame for making decisions, and diversity of search committees. It focused on schools in the NCAA Division I Football Bowl Subdivision (FBS) and Football Champion Subdivision (FCS).
Based on those criteria, 20 of the schools surveyed earned an “A” grade, nine earned a “B” grade, and one (an FBS school) earned a “C.” Four schools were awarded an “F’ grade, including the University of Southern California, Georgia Southern and Western Illinois. Those schools were given the low rating based on non-participation in the survey, the association said.
The BCA report found that six African-Americans were hired by the surveyed schools at the end of the year. Joining a Latino and Polynesian coach, those hires boosted the total number of major college coaches of color to 15, six more than ever before. As recently as 2007, there were only five coaches of color at Division I schools with football programs, the report said.
The BCA report cited as “critical” to its overall encouraging report the hiring of African-American head football coaches at colleges in several conferences—Kentucky in the SEC, Kansas in the Big 12, and Louisville in the Big East—that had no coaches of color as of the end of the 2009 season.
