Race and Hiring for College Football Head Coaching Positions: Lawsuit Forthcoming?

Mark Alesia of the Indianapolis Star has an excellent piece today on race and hiring trends for NCAA Division IA and IAA football head coaching positions. (BCA Gives IU, Irish High Marks, Indianapolis Star, 11/10/2005). The Black Coaches Association -- a non-profit organization whose primary purpose is to foster the growth and development of ethnic minorities at all levels of sports -- recently studied this topic, and there is now speculation that a black candidate denied such a head coaching position could bring a lawsuit against a particular school (but not the NCAA) alleging racial discrimination.

Here are some key excerpts from Alesia's article:

There are three black coaches among 119 schools in Division I-A. That number has decreased in the three years since the Indianapolis-based BCA announced its intention to develop the report cards.

[Black Coaches Association] executive director Floyd Keith threatened legal action if diversity among all head coaches in college football doesn't improve.

"This (upcoming) search year is going to be very significant in the decision as to where that goes," Keith said. "In the history of social change, there has always been some element of legal accountability that has had to be a part of the process. Hopefully, that doesn't have to happen."

Keith said any legal action would be against a university, not the NCAA, which has no control over whom schools hire. The BCA has chosen to work with the NCAA. Wednesday's news conference was conducted at NCAA headquarters.

"You'd have to take an individual search, an individual process, and there would have to be an individual case that would warrant that," Keith said. "An affirmative action policy would have to be involved (and disregarded by the school)."

The actual study from the Black Coaches Association is available here (it is a PDF file). The study's principal author is Dr. C. Keith Harrison, a professor at Arizona State University.

I hope to post more on this topic next week after I get back from my visit at Case Western Reserve University School of Law, as it is an extremely interesting issue, both in terms of social policy and, more practically, litigation procedure in a case involving allegations of racial discrimination.

For additional background information, check out Alesia's story from October regarding a new socio-demographic study on athletic directors: the Institute for Diversity and Ethics in Sport at the University of Central Florida recently studied Division I athletic directors in 2003-04 and found that just 4.6 percent were minorities and 7.3 percent were women (note: historically black schools were excluded from the Central Florida study).

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