Perhaps because keeping score is an intrinsic part of competitive sports, the NCAA has tracked diversity by the numbers, counting how many minorities and women work as coaches and athletic directors, particularly at schools in big-time Division I.
With the organization taking that singular approach, member colleges and universities overall have moved the ball on diversity more by inches than entire playing fields. In Division I, 7 percent of athletic directors are Black and about 10 percent are women. On men’s basketball teams, 61 percent of players are Black, while 23 percent of head coaches are.
Two years ago, new president Dr. Mark Emmert came up with another play for the NCAA’s offense on diversity. Besides collecting statistics, the national office in Indianapolis would promote change in campus culture as a way to increase the diversity of athletic directors, coaches and players.
“If we can change the culture, then we think that the numbers, the increase in representation, will be a direct by-product of a more inclusive culture,” explains Dr. Bernard Franklin, the NCAA’s executive vice president of membership and student-athlete affairs, who has taken on the additional role of chief inclusion officer.
Franklin, a former president of Virginia Union University, oversees a new Office of Inclusion that has broadened and consolidated the NCAA’s diversity efforts. The combined office brings together staff focused either on minorities or women, operations that were previously separate. Beyond race and gender, the expanded mission encompasses the LGBT community and athletes who are disabled, as well as international students.
“We are now probably functioning more as a choir than as soloists,” Franklin says.
So far, the new office has been laying the foundation for changing campus culture, by taking suggestions from member schools about what they need from the NCAA and about best practices they have in place already. A diversity summit last September attracted more than 175 people to Indianapolis and another 200 to the webcast.
