Or, if you prefer, “The Buck Stops Here: Assessing Diversity among Campus and Conference Leaders for Football Bowl Subdivision (FBS) Schools in the 2008-09 Academic Year”, authored by The Institute for Diversity and Ethics in Sport (TIDES) at the University of Central Florida’s Richard Lapchick (above). Said report is a solemn reminder there’s a mere 4 African-American head coaches in Division One football, a statistic Sports On My Mind’s MODI considers proof “an Obama presidency is not symbolic of any greater racial hiring trend in America.”
White BCS commissioners lead way while white presidents hire white athletic directors who hire white head coaches who hire white assistant coaches who soon receive opportunities to be white head coaches tso that they can hire more white assistant coaches. Rinse and repeat. And when African-Americans do get a shot, the margin for error is smaller before being fired.*
Can the media do its job to keep this issue alive? When these annual reports come out, they usually get one website mention and little else. The problem? It starts with the incredible whiteness of sports journalism. Should it shine too bright a light on college football, a mirror may have to come next. ESPN™s most popular show ” Pardon the Interuption ” did not even mention the report today. On Around-the-Horn only Kevin Blackistone brought up the 4-of-119 coaches issue. The ATH show was the blueprint of how TV media addresses the issue. Judging from the coverage, there is no reason to believe that Barack Obama has also inspired a new media.
Systemic discrimination with NCAA coaches is rarely brought up as a pre-selected program topic on sports TV shows. Most of the time it is addressed when an African-American panelist brings it up (Blackistone, Desmond Howard, John Saunders, etc.). Rarely does a white TV journalist passionately initiate any dialogue. Program decisions to ignore the topic, and silence from white journalists has marginalized the issue to a œblack issue instead of a œjustice issue.
(ED NOTE : Modi, accurately enough, cited Ron Prince’s recent firing in Mahattan, KS)
we dont care about the plight of the black college coach. fuck them. they should be lucky to play on the field. now we should give them a job to lead teenage and young adults. please. they shouldnt even be quarterbacks. we dont need black men in our college meetings, events, marrying out white woman and disgracing our campus. black coaches stay at your black colleges where they are in the ghetto and the streets are named martin luther king. they is and never should be any justice.