College sport received the grade of B for both racial and gender hiring practices in The 2012 Racial and Gender Report Card: College Sport released today by The Institute for Diversity and Ethics in Sport (TIDES). When compared to all the professional sports for which TIDES publishes racial and gender report cards, college sports lags behind all pro sports in racial hiring practices and is only better than the NFL and Major League Baseball for gender hiring practices.
White males still hold 100 percent of the conference commission positions at the 11 Football Bowl Subdivision (FBS) conferences. White males also dominated the position of athletic director (87.5 percent), especially at the 120 FBS schools, where just nine African Americans (7.5 percent), four Latinos (3.3 percent) and four white females (3.3 percent) are athletic directors.
“They need to enact what I’ve been calling an ‘Eddie Robinson’ rule,” said Dr. Richard E. Lapchick, director of TIDES and chief author of the report card, referring to the late football coaching legend at Grambling State who compiled the second best winning record at Division I.
“At the individual school level, when there are coaching hiring decisions to be made as well as athletic director positions and even associate athletic director positions, it has to be mandated that the schools bring in a diverse pool of candidates,” explained Lapchick.
Failure to comply with such a rule would result in the NCAA penalizing the institutions with loss of scholarships. Major League Baseball and the NFL instituted such a rule (in 1999 and 2001 respectively) that resulted in dramatic change in the diversity of hires.
“The implementation of those rules changed the dynamic of professional sport and we need that at the college level,” said Lapchick.
