The latest report card from The Institute for Diversity and Ethics in Sport (TIDES) gives Football Bowl Subdivision (FBS) schools an F for gender hiring, but improvement may lay ahead.
“The 2020 DI Football Bowl Series College Racial and Gender Report Card: The Lack of Diversity within Collegiate Athletic Leadership Continues” made clear that despite some improvement over the past year in racial and gender categories, the 130 FBS institutions continue to show underrepresentation of women and people of color in campus leadership positions. FBS schools received a B- for racial hiring practices and an F for gender hiring practices. This resulted in an overall grade of D+.
For the report card, the leadership positions examined include college and university presidents and chancellors, athletic directors and faculty athletic representatives as well as head football coaches and assistant coaches. The report indicates that White people hold 327 (82%) of the 399 campus leadership positions reported in the study.
“If there are no people of color or women at the top decision-making positions, then they are going to be less aware and less sensitive to the need to include candidates of color as an ongoing priority,” said Dr. Richard E. Lapchick, director of TIDES and lead author of the report.
“Those leaders, particularly presidents, chancellors and athletic directors, have to have that consciousness in mind,” he added. “The reason we keep doing this report is we want to show that the lack of diverse leadership in the highest ranks of colleges and universities results in the small number of coaches of color and staff within athletic departments.”
Three additional women were hired as athletic directors in 2020, which is a 2.3% increase over 2019, but men still hold 118 of the 130 athletic director positions at FBS schools.
African American men made up only 10% of head football coaches while African American student-athletes were 48.5% of the players. Overall, 61.6% of football student-athletes were men of color.
