As a 26-year collegiate athletic administrator and former student-athlete, I have witnessed and been a part of the evolution and transformation of college sport during the past 30 years. However, the past 12 months have basically been indescribable to a certain degree. Some use the descriptors “unprecedented,” and “watershed moment” as an attempt to define what we have all gone through this past year. No matter what words you use, we can all definitely say that we have never experienced anything like this in our lifetimes — an international social justice movement sparked by the horrific killing of a Black man during a national and worldwide pandemic.
Like many other people, the isolation we have experienced this past year has caused me to be extremely introspective and retrospective.
I grew up in the Deep South on the heels of the Civil Rights movement as the son of a courageous, pioneering mother who along with a handful of other Black students in 1965 integrated a high school in Alabama. My wife — who is also a Southerner/native Nashvillian — and I often reminisce about how great it was to grow up in the 1970s in the South surrounded by family members who did an amazing job of shielding us from the cold, harsh, brutal realities that they and our ancestors had survived only months prior to us being born. Involving us in sports at an early age was one of the main ways our parents helped normalize things for us then.
Sports has often been viewed as the “great equalizer” in our society, where no one sees color or race and focuses on teamwork and collectively building success. However, at the same time, throughout history and especially currently, athletes of color are being told to “Shut up and dribble” and to avoid social justice and political involvement.
Although some call for those competing in sport to be silent on social justice issues, a large number of college student-athletes have doubled down and have become outspoken advocates for positive change. Many administrators and coaches support student-athletes’ and other students’ right to free expression. After all, if you cannot express yourself in college, where can you express yourself? Some of the student-athlete voices and calls to action include:
Of course, the final bullet point includes the hiring of more head coaches of color, which historically has been a daunting task. As a former athletic director who hired 16 head coaches (nearly 50% who were either of people color or women), I know first-hand how difficult it is to hire people from underrepresented populations into powerful, influential positions such as head coach, particularly on the highly competitive Football Bowl Subdivision (FBS) Division I level.
There are currently 130 FBS athletic programs that operate high level football programs. Of these 130 programs, less than 15% of them currently employ a head coach of color. This number recently went down after the firings of three “Power 5” Black head coaches soon after the 2020 football season ended.
