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Football A-Listers Join Drive to Hire More Black College Coaches

Football A-Listers Join Drive to Hire More Black College Coaches

Just 13 of the head coaches at the top 65 college-football programs are non-White. One of them, Mike Locksley of the University of Maryland, is taking steps to change that.

Football A-Listers Join Drive to Hire More Black College Coaches

Locksley created the National Coalition of Minority Football Coaches as a way to prepare, promote and produce candidates that can make the coaching ranks look more like the players, more than 60% of whom are men of color. To help, he’s brought on some of the biggest names in football, such as Nick Saban, his former boss at the University of Alabama, and Super Bowl champion head coach Mike Tomlin of the Pittsburgh Steelers.

“I get calls all the time asking for names of minority coaches,” Locksley said. “I just wanted to find a way to respond to the outcry for equality that we’ve seen.”

Locksley’s brainchild comes as the U.S. grapples with its history of racial inequality. The May 25 death of George Floyd at the hands of Minneapolis police triggered street protests across the country that have thrust the unfair treatment of non-White citizens into the mainstream and garnered wide support for the Black Lives Matter movement.

It was only natural that scrutiny would find its way to college football, where administrators are mostly White, players are mostly Black and the top 65 teams, known as the Power Five conferences, generated $4.86 billion in 2018, according to data provided by Ryan Brewer, an associate professor of finance at Indiana University-Purdue University, Columbus.

Football A-Listers Join Drive to Hire More Black College Coaches

The Power Five conferences are the SEC, Big 12, ACC and the Pac-12 and Big Ten, both of which canceled play this fall due to the coronavirus pandemic.

Pay for college-football players is once again a hot-button issue. In an Aug. 2 letter in the Players’ Tribune, Pac-12 athletes called out the National Collegiate Athletic Association for its support of Black Lives Matter while at the same time fighting legislation that would allow players to be compensated for the use of their names, images and likenesses.

Football A-Listers Join Drive to Hire More Black College Coaches

College football is like any business, where getting that key job interview is as much about who you know as what you know. Locksley says minority coaches often find themselves outside of the social circles that can help get them into positions of leadership.

His plan is to identify, train and promote minority coaching candidates. That includes holding clinics to teach the X’s and O’s as well as training on soft skills, such as how to deal with the often hostile college-football media and mercurial fans. When a candidate passes muster, Locksley’s coalition plans to activate its well-connected board of directors, consisting of A-list coaches and football executives, to promote that person to decision makers.

“The difference with the coalition is that with the board of directors we’ve put together, they’ve hired great coaches already, the vetting process we’ll do, these guys will be guys we can put our names on,” he said. “The influencers in the football world will know that when we put our names behind these candidates they can do the job.”

Last week, a group of Democratic U.S. senators released a plan for a “College Athletes Bill of Rights” that would allow compensation and health-care coverage for the players who power the $16 billion college-athletics industry.

Football A-Listers Join Drive to Hire More Black College Coaches

In his support of the proposal, Connecticut Senator Christopher Murphy criticized the disparity between unpaid Black athletes and White executives who profit.

“Early last year, I set out to expose the inequities and civil-rights issues in college sports, and Covid-19 has only exacerbated them,” Murphy said. “We can’t return to business as usual, where a multibillion-dollar industry lines the pockets of predominately White executives all while majority-Black athletes can’t profit from their labor.”

At the next level of competition, the National Football League has been less than successful in promoting minorities for head-coaching positions. Despite the so-called Rooney Rule, which for the last 17 years has required teams to interview non-White candidates for coaching jobs, only four of the 32 franchises currently have non-White head coaches. That’s down from a peak of eight in 2017. About 70% of NFL players are Black.

Locksley embraces what he sees as his responsibility to clear the path for the next generation.

“Minority coaches need mentors and role models,” he said. “If you don’t see guys that look like you in the roles, how can you see yourself working in those positions?”

©2020 Bloomberg L.P.