Four reasons to wonder whether race plays a role in head coach hiring decisions

Sean,

Just throwing out a few reasons why I think it's plausible that racism plays a significant role in keeping black head coaches out of head coaching positions in FBS college football.

1. You're right that the kind of probabilistic reasoning that I was engaged in will never prove that a particular decision not to hire a black man is racially motivated. The fact that African Americans are represented in lower numbers among the ranks of FBS head coaches than they are among the population at large doesn't prove anything. But it does lead us to ask for reasons why such a disparity might exist. It could be that white guys generally possess qualities that would make them better college head coaches, just as nobody seems to bat an eyelash if you draw a conclusion that young black men must generally have qualities that make them better football players than young white men, since they are overrepresented on the football field. But I don't think that my concern has been answered just because other possibilities are plausible. Speculation is all we have at this point, but I'd prefer to answer the question with data, if it were available.

2. You write that you can't think of a single instance in which a head coach hiring decision stuck out to you as being racially motivated. I think it would be surprising if one had. Your observation is salient for what it is, but it doesn't preclude use of race as a "tiebreaker." That is, assuming that a black candidate and a white candidate are relatively equal in terms of merit, a hiring committee still might systematically choose the white candidate. As long as the true basis of the decision is hidden, no one could reasonably accuse that particular hiring committee of racism. But if the same methodology is applied at a number of schools, the numbers would begin to look suspiciously like the ones we in fact encounter.

3. Racism could be outsourced to smaller schools or less pressworthy positions. Everybody knows that hiring a new head coach at a major conference school attracts lots of press scrutiny. This is less true at mid-major schools or in the FCS, and also of coordinator positions, position coaches, and the rest, on down the line. If race is used as a factor at those levels, it is less likely to be detected since people are less likely to crunch those numbers. But the results would still be felt at the head coach level because policies like these would yield fewer qualified black candidates at the coordinator level, or as head coaches at mid-majors.

4. You write that it's inconceivable to believe that anything matters to a hiring committee more than W's. Actually, I think you mention something that could matter more to them: $$$. You write as though there's a one-to-one correspondence between wins and profits, and certainly that correlation is very strong. But money comes from other places; in particular, from booster fund raising. If the hiring committee fears that the boosters will not take well to a black head coach (which would not be an unreasonable concern here in the South), then they might pass over a more qualified black coach on that basis alone, unless the expected profits from his greater number of wins would outstrip the losses the school would suffer from decreased booster support.

More on racism in college football.

Much has been made of the relatively small numbers of black head coaches in NCAA 1A football. While I remain skeptical of how much racism is a factor, I certainly concede that it's a possibility, and despite my skepticism, I generally don't make much of this discussion. The big difference between this case and the Auburn case is that even though fingers were pointed in both, nobody was targeted specifically, and since there's no target, it's hard to make a case one way or the other.

As evidenced by the last three Super Bowls, there are clearly good black head coaches (although it might be a stretch to assuming good NFL coaches are roughly equivalent to college coaches). Like the Auburn case though, I started looking for other instances in which possibly more qualified black coaches were overlooked. Several web searches later, I hadn't come up with anything substantial.

About 25% of Americans are black, so you'd expect around 30 black coaches based solely on that. Furthermore, only six coaches in division 1A haven't had college playing experience, and easily more than 25% of college football players are black. It wasn't always this high, but in 2001, over 55% of college football players were black. Honestly though, it's a little strange to be talking about racial breakdowns at all in my opinion. If it were that simple, we could also say that black players actually benefit from racism. Saying that blacks are more fit to become football players isn't entirely different than saying whites are more fit to become coaches.

Being an SEC fan, I rarely pay attention to up and coming coaches. Most SEC schools don't have the patience to take chances on unproven coaches, although it happens on occasion. Looking just over the major conferences, no recent coaching hires have stuck out to me, at least from a racial perspective. Most schools take a conservative approach and hire the most successful head coach they could land from Div 1A. Occasionally, a top coordinator gets a head coaching shot. For the most part though, new coaching blood comes from the non-BCS conference schools, and I don't really know where those coaches are coming from.

One thing that I have noticed though is that there haven't been many decent black coaches in the mid-major schools lately. I can list several of the most successful mid-major programs of the past few years, and none of them have had black coaches. On top of that, perhaps the two black coaches with the most impressive resumes were fired last season. I think I'd still rather have Tyrone Willingham or Sylvester Croom than Turner Gill.

Perhaps I'm naive, but it still seems strange to me that head coaches could be chosen by any other criteria than the number of games they would be expected to win. I know there are academic considerations, but race has nothing to do with that. If I'm an athletic director, the one thing I'm asking is, "How many wins can you get for my program?" With most football programs more than paying for themselves, more wins equals more money and more prestige for the university. If there's a coach that can get one more win every couple of seasons, or even every fourth season, than the next best guy, I don't care what his race is. As far as I'm concerned, if he's black, you even get good press coverage as a bonus.

Racism in College Football

Much has been made of Auburn's decision to rehire former defensive coordinator Gene Chizik over Buffalo head coach Turner Gill. At first glance, this deal seemed a little dubious, considering Chizik's recent record as the head coach at Iowa State, but I neglected to make a first impression. After further researching Chizik, and remembering that he was the very successful defensive coordinator for Auburn's undefeated run in 2004, and he immediately followed that success by leading the defense of the 2005 national champion Texas team.

His career as a head coach has been rocky in the emerging Big 12 north, but it wasn't hard for me to justify hiring a defensive mastermind with SEC coaching experience over any MAC coach. Certainly, there have been some coaching gems to come out of non-BCS conferences, with Urban Meyer being the most notable. Still, Meyer was much more accomplished when he was offered the head coaching position at Florida than Turner Gill is now, leading Utah to an undefeated season in a stronger conference and a BCS bowl victory. On the other hand, there have also been some successful head coaches plucked from the defensive coordinator position at major conference schools (such as Oklahoma's Bob Stoops).

My conclusion: no grounds for racism charges.

I didn't stop thinking about it there though, especially when I recently stumbled across some Auburn students discussing the issue on a web site I frequent. Not being huge football fans, they didn't have strong opinions one way or the other about whether racism affected the hire, but they weren't happy with the reputation their school has received from the incident. Just looking at the argument before, I hadn't considered the apparently lasting effects that this issue would have on the reputations of the school and its students. I know that in the long run, this too won't last, but for the time being, the media has falsely perpetuated the racist southern stereotype at Auburn.

I don't think I've quite proved my point yet though. Going back to Turner Gill, I don't think he's a bad coach. I think it's entirely possible he's a better coach than Chizik. I'll be the first to admit that Chizik's head coaching career hasn't been the greatest success, but let's look at Buffalo. Gill gets a lot of respect for leading the Bulls to a MAC championship, but most people forget that Buffalo was hardly the best team in the MAC. In terms of overall regular season conference records, Buffalo was tied for fourth. They led their division, but four teams had regular season conference records as good or better than Buffalo's, and being in the much tougher division, those teams went through tougher conference schedules. The MAC western division went 14-4 against Buffalo's eastern division. Even Buffalo was 0-2 against western division opponents in the regular season before upsetting Ball State in the championship game.

Buffalo clearly didn't get any top 25 votes, but how well did they do in the computers? They finished at #60 in the Colley Rankings, fourth in their conference. In Massey, they finished at #76 (#68 MoV), third in the MAC. I'll definitely admit that Gill has improved Buffalo's program over the three years he's been there, but is a #60 finish in the Colley Rankings enough reason to think he could succeed in the SEC in the recently upgraded western division? Chizik on the other hand, while not the head coach, played a significant role in coaching two consecutive top 2 teams.

The correct choice remains to be seen. As it stands now though, I would rather stand with Chizik. He's done a great job so far pulling in an impressive recruiting class, always a difficult task for new head coaches. He also gets points for stealing offensive coordinator Gus Malzahn from Tulsa. Malzahn, a former high school coach, has achieved great offensive success in his stints at Arkansas and Tulsa. I just hope this racist reputation Auburn has acquired is soon to pass.