Sunday, November 30, 2008

Disgrace

With the forced resignation of Sylvester Croom at Mississippi State, the NCAA now has 3 African American head coaches. That's 3 out of 117. To put it into perspective there are as many African-American head coaches in the AFC North as there are in all of big time college football. To add to the disgrace there's only 2 other minorities (1 hispanic, 1 samoan) head coaches through the landscape. To be fair universities as whole are horrifically under representative as 91% of university leadership positions (e.g., presidents, AD) are white. Nonetheless athletics is the starkest example - given the overwhelming number of minorities that play the game. At major programs there's not even the pretense of attempt to break the old boys club. A prime example is that the highly successful Buffalo's Turner Gill won't get a sniff. Whether a Rooney rule or higher demands diversified assistant coaching staffs or whatever is needed to correct this problem I'm unclear and agnostic. But in this day and age its not an oddity or a quirk over the lack minority representation in the upper reaches of collegiate athletics - it is a disgrace.

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