Michigan at #15 out of 65 with Black AD/HC/Coordinator Hires
ESPN has a piece entitled "Black Hires in College Football Leadership."
Michigan ranks 15th out of a total of 65 schools. Alabama is dead last. Michigan has had two black AD's (Thomas Goss from 97 - 2000 and Warde Manuel from 2016 through the present.) In addition, Michigan has done well with 4 different black offensive coordinators. The longest serving was beloved Fred Jackson. Our current OC, Josh Gattis, is also black.
Not part of their study, but five out of the current 12 listed on the coaching roster are black. (Josh Gattis, Ron Bellamy, Mike Hart, Sherrone Moore, and Steve Clinkscale.) Also, a 6th coach, Shaun Nua, would be considered a minority.
Also of note, 4 in leadership at Michigan are Michigan football alumni (Warde Manuel, Jim Harbaugh, Ron Bellamy, and Mike Hart.)
Lastly, ESPN also did not look at basketball, but blacks are extremely well represented in Michigan Basketball. Out of 9 listed at mgoblue on the coaching staff, 67% are black, which has to be near the top of the list in power 5 schools. (Juwan Howard, Head Coach; Saddi Washington, Assistant Coach; Howard Eisley, Assistant Coach; Chris Hunter, Director of Basketball Operations; Chris Williams, Associate Athletic Trainer; Jaaron Simmons, Video Analyst.)
While I like the idea of meritocracy (the best qualified should coach,) I also am sure there has been discrimination in coaching and on players on teams. I am proud that Michigan has the first black player ever in the Big 10 on their team, George Jewett. I am glad that Willis Ward was on the Michigan football team, and wish Michigan had not caved in to Georgia Tech in not having him travel with the team.
August 25th, 2021 at 4:08 PM ^
Phil Martelli, the Godfather, is also a minority.
August 25th, 2021 at 4:38 PM ^
That’s right. Italians are Italians. You barbarians cannot hold a candle to those us of descended from Rome.*
Yes, yes, I know the likelihood of actually being descended from Romans is small considering all of the invasions post-Alaric.
August 25th, 2021 at 4:09 PM ^
Might be me, but this survey doesn't really put us in a good light
August 25th, 2021 at 4:39 PM ^
Why?
August 25th, 2021 at 4:43 PM ^
15th out of 65 seems...good?
Better than 77% of all schools in the survey.
It definitely isn't a BAD light, not sure why you'd think that it doesn't put UM in a GOOD one.
August 25th, 2021 at 4:58 PM ^
In this arena, I could care less if we were first or last as long as the coaching is excellent, the coaches care about their players and hiring was done objectively, I suspect players feel the same way. No one gains in the long term when you hire to meet quotas
August 25th, 2021 at 5:45 PM ^
How much less could you care? I'm with you, though. I don't care what color coaches are, but I do think it's smart to hire black coaches when so many players are black and they may feel more comfortable speaking to someone with similar life experiences.
August 25th, 2021 at 11:03 PM ^
Sorry/NOT sorry, but hiring someone simply based on their race is about the worst thing you can do to try and ensure equality.
August 26th, 2021 at 8:22 AM ^
No one is suggesting UM do that. But thanks for your comment, I guess.
August 26th, 2021 at 8:30 AM ^
Where were you all 100 years ago when this practice of hiring/ not hiring based on race began? Current efforts to correct that wrong (pronounced Affirmative Action) should not be the target of your criticism. You should target your criticism at the racism and discrimination that got us here.
August 27th, 2021 at 6:27 PM ^
This reply doesn't make much sense.
August 25th, 2021 at 5:20 PM ^
WindyCityBlue, I hear you. If you look back at my post, you'll notice I posted the facts (15th out of 65, according to their metrics,) and did not assign a value (great, good, mediocre, bad.) I am indeed proud to have had the first black football player at a Big 10 School, and am glad for the number of black coaches. But 15th out of 65? Meh. Neither good nor bad. This study seems too simplified to me. Still, it is a dribble of info allowing comparison of Michigan to other power 5 schools.
August 25th, 2021 at 11:07 PM ^
15th out of 65 is "meh" to you?
What would elicit more than a meh response?
A black head coach? 1st out of 65?
You seem to be espousing a need to put race above most other metrics in the hiring process, and I'm here to say hiring with a focus solely on race is WAY worse than the "meh" state of this staff.
August 25th, 2021 at 4:10 PM ^
"While I like the idea of meritocracy" is not inconsistent with Black coaches. While I'm sure you didn't mean to convey that thought, what you wrote suggests it.
I like the idea of meritocracy and our Black coaches.
August 25th, 2021 at 4:50 PM ^
When it comes to a discussion about race and diversity (and equity and inclusion and sometimes belonging), the concept of meritocracy is often used as an explanation (or excuse) as to why there are not more minorities in positions of leadership. I'm not saying that it is always used in that context - clearly, Jim Harbaugh is an espoused fan of meritocracy and also has hired quite a number of minorities - but there is some truth to it. It's often used to hire those with a proven track record, and those with a proven track record often have certain other advantages of knowing someone or "fitting a culture" or "having a compatible work style" which can tend be be racially driven, intentional or not.
So you're right, it's not inconsistent with hiring black coaches, but StephenRKass was also certainly not in the wrong to use the term the way he did.
August 25th, 2021 at 5:23 PM ^
It's certainly a loaded term and I would not have chosen it. It's also usually BS, especially in the case of football coaches. Look at the players when the majority of today's head coaches were players in the 1980s-1990s. Now look at the coaches. We all know there's a difference. Some people want to pretend the difference is the white players were more capable coaches, for racial or cultural or whatever reasons. That's an utterly nonsense idea perpetuated for the purpose of keeping inferior people from losing opportunities to superior people of color. It's perpetuated a LOT anyway.
A lot of schools right now are looking at Michigan's success with Juwan Howard and asking "what did they know?" Juwan was an NBA assistant at one of the best coached NBA teams for years, and was "in line" for an NBA job since about 2016. Think of all the NBA hires from 2017 to 2020 that were made instead of Juwan Howard. Many of them were former head coaches, meaning they had relevant experience that Juwan Howard did not have. How did those work out?
In 2021 suddenly that changed.
I would argue that the Black coaches who made it up the ranks in a system that subconsciously did not want them to had to go through an extra layer of winnowing to get there, and were therefore the better candidates all along.
August 25th, 2021 at 6:10 PM ^
Yeah, "meritocracy" is a freighted term. I perhaps didn't articulate as well as I possibly could have done.
What I want is the best and most qualified coaches, regardless of race. And it is certainly my belief that black coaches historically have been discriminated against by virtue of their race, and the playing field has not been level. The number of black assistant coaches on Michigan's staff is a sign to me that JH is looking for the best possible coaches, regardless of race. Apart from coaching, I believe that many on Michigan's staff could be gifted in relating to all players, and in recruiting acumen. Again, relational skills and recruiting skills should not directly be related to one's race.
Seth, I'm curious: how often have you yourself faced discrimination, whether overt or discreet and hidden? Any sense of the answer?
August 25th, 2021 at 6:10 PM ^
Yeah, "meritocracy" is a freighted term. I perhaps didn't articulate as well as I possibly could have done.
What I want is the best and most qualified coaches, regardless of race. And it is certainly my belief that black coaches historically have been discriminated against by virtue of their race, and the playing field has not been level. The number of black assistant coaches on Michigan's staff is a sign to me that JH is looking for the best possible coaches, regardless of race. Apart from coaching, I believe that many on Michigan's staff could be gifted in relating to all players, and in recruiting acumen. Again, relational skills and recruiting skills should not directly be related to one's race.
Seth, I'm curious: how often have you yourself faced discrimination, whether overt or discreet and hidden? Any sense of the answer?
August 26th, 2021 at 8:34 AM ^
Thank you Seth!
August 25th, 2021 at 10:28 PM ^
delete
August 25th, 2021 at 11:17 PM ^
This whole response is kind of disingenuous. You toe the line well, but when you put (excuse) in parenthesis it is clear what point you are making.
You seem to be saying past performance of coaches is based on inherent racial advantages because they are white (taking liberties with what you said but it is pretty clear where you are going with this). Not necessarily untrue, but neither is it honest.
By the same token, I would ask you to HONESTLY consider the situation when we hired the DC to replace Brown.
Shortly after this hire of a VETERAN black defensive coordinator, he left to be a Head Coach.
Would you HONESTLY have been ok if he'd hired a black Defensive Coordinator with NO proven track record? Anywhere?
Would you have been ok with handing the reins to an unproven DC because of his race?
Sure, many DCs have perhaps benefitted from being white. But do YOU feel an inexperienced coach would have been acceptable at UM?
And this is true at ANY coaching level. You want someone with a track record of results. Not a demographic.
Pretty sure the answer is no. You'd want the best DC for the job. Race be damned.
August 26th, 2021 at 8:24 AM ^
We just hired a very young, inexperienced, white defensive coordinator. Have you been upset about that?
August 27th, 2021 at 6:24 PM ^
I assume you're referring to George Helow?
https://mgoblue.com/staff-directory/george-helow/3817
He's been coaching at the D1 level for almost 10 years. Not sure if you are making the point you think you are making.
Besides the fact that he's a LINEBACKERS coach and not the Defensive Coordinator in my example, you've proved my point. Thank you.
August 25th, 2021 at 4:18 PM ^
This is such a poor analysis, 50 out of the 65 schools have hired 1 or fewer black coaches or ADs. This chart is essentially rewarding schools that have low turnover. Both Iowa and Alabama have never hired a black coach or AD but Alabama is 65 and Iowa is 41 due to Bama having the positions open 15 times and Iowa only having it open 3. This is lazy reporting.
August 25th, 2021 at 4:29 PM ^
Indeed. “Lazy ESPN reporting” is redundant.
August 25th, 2021 at 4:37 PM ^
Isn't "low turnover" as regards coaches and ADs generally a good thing? It would mean you have competent people in the role, right?
I don't like this ranking/analysis for various reasons --- foremost, it doesn't control for competency. Yes, U-M hired Tom Goss, which ranks them better here, but the near universal consensus is that he was a bad AD (for the younger folk, yes, worse than Brandon!).
I don't think skin color is correlated (at all) with competency, as regards being a football coach or AD, or most things.
August 25th, 2021 at 4:46 PM ^
Are you suggesting that not hiring a black coach or AD 15 of 15 opportunities isn't somewhat worse than 3 of 3? Assuming 15% of the potential candidates are black (roughly the % of US population), wouldn't random chance result in 2+ of 15 opportunities resulting in a black hire. Zero of 15 could be interpreted to suggest bias (conscious or unconscious). Zero of 3 seems to more plausibly be attributed to chance.
August 25th, 2021 at 7:14 PM ^
^^THIS
Not sure why anyone would think it is better to not hire a black coach or AD with 15 opportunities to do so instead of only 3. Seems like Alabama deserves its last place ranking given that it has had all those opportunities to hire a black coach but didn't.
August 25th, 2021 at 5:35 PM ^
Yeah, ignoring the denominator hurts the point a bit, but I'd also like to point out that the first black head coach in SEC football history was Sylvester Croom in 2004, which means the vast majority of kids on campus right now were born before the SEC integrated it's HC ranks. That's sort of bananas given the fact the SEC footprint has a large AA population compared to, say, Iowa.
I think the chart does highlight that Alabama has had 12 more opportunities to hire a person of color in a position of authority and in each instance they didn't do that.
August 25th, 2021 at 4:33 PM ^
Is it possible to wipe out the Goss reign of terror and drop a few spots in their rankings? People can say what they want about Brandon, but Goss was 10x worse.
August 25th, 2021 at 6:18 PM ^
Yeah, Brandon was an idiot, but Goss was just completely incompetent.
August 25th, 2021 at 11:29 PM ^
Serious question... I wasn't around then. If Goss was so bad, was it apparent at the time that he lacked qualifications and was hired mainly based on his race?
August 26th, 2021 at 12:08 AM ^
No. He had qualifications on par with other ADs. Former player. Business executive. At the time Canham reported that he had been a front runner in two previous searches but passed over.
August 26th, 2021 at 12:14 AM ^
Goss was strongly considered for the role in 1994, 3 years prior to his actual hire. Goss wasn't quite ready to leave what he was doing elsewhere at that time, however.
Goss didn't come out of nowhere. He had a strong business background. He just wound up being not very good as a big school AD. Which happens. But race was never really discussed at all as regards him.
(I happened to be typing this concurrently w/ the above post. Same story from each of us)
August 25th, 2021 at 4:43 PM ^
Go Blue. Thanks for posting OP.
August 25th, 2021 at 5:02 PM ^
That’s nice - though they could be scarlet or green for all I care as long as we quickly get to a place where we can beat Ohio State.
August 25th, 2021 at 11:30 PM ^
"Just win, baby."
August 25th, 2021 at 5:28 PM ^
I thought the fact that only 4 schools - NW, Stanford, Vandy, and Colorado are the only programs to hire black coaches back-to-back. Like, we recycle through so many shitty white coaches every year and yet one POC doesn't work out (or jumps to a new program) and it's seemingly a barrier to trying again.
I am surprised UM hasn't hired a black head coach yet, though until relatively recently they had openings so infrequently (and tended to make insular promotions) that they didn't have a ton of opportunities or push to do so. And they did hire RR, so it hasn't been a complete procession of white guys.
August 25th, 2021 at 5:50 PM ^
Rich Rodriguez is a white dude.
FWIW It doesn't matter one bit to me whether the next 50 coaches at Michigan are all white, Asian, black, Hispanic, Polynesian or any mix thereof as long as they know what they are doing.
I'd also like Michigan to avoid shitty coaches of any race.
August 25th, 2021 at 9:20 PM ^
Yeah, you're right. I remembered there was some article (turns out it was a mailbag on ESPN) where RR didn't consider himself Hispanic but Bill Martin apparently did when he hired him. That says something about how old white guys see POC, but I thought it was interesting that Martin felt he was going beyond the usual fraternity of coaches when he hired him.
August 25th, 2021 at 6:26 PM ^
What I love about Howard is that he is just an awesome COACH all around. The fact that he is one of only a few black coaches at the NCAA level just makes Michigan's decision to hire him seem all the better.
When Beilein left, I would have said the odds of us even maintaining his level would be extremely difficult. Yet Howard has maintained that level on the court and IMPROVED recruiting to a level Michigan hasn't seen in decades.
I don't love to get into counting games about how many black vs white coaches Michigan has, but it is also impossible to not notice that over time black coaches have been underrepresented in all major sports. Guys like Howard (and Mike Hart from what we have seen of him as an RB coach at Indiana) have worked hard to earn their coaching spots and I'm very happy to have them at Michigan.
August 25th, 2021 at 11:53 PM ^
what about white athletes being underrepresented at the Cornerback position? What about Asian Coaches? Why don't we have more of those?
I'm so sick of this idea that it's the system's fault. Such a fucking loser mentality. This may come as a shock, but it will probably always be this way. It will never be perfect, it will never be completely equal, and someone will always be butthurt. Unless the SJW's and Socialist Warriors that teach and administer universities get together and start enforcing quotas on College Athletics. Fun fun!
August 25th, 2021 at 8:16 PM ^
I remember we tried to claim Rich Rodriguez as a minority when he was here. LOL at that one.
August 25th, 2021 at 10:52 PM ^
Considering how few people will sing Josh Groban songs in public, he would be considered in the minority.
/jk
August 25th, 2021 at 9:14 PM ^
Man maybe someday we won’t have to talk about stuff like this because it won’t be news.
August 25th, 2021 at 11:46 PM ^
who the fuck cares. Hire the best person for the job thats it.
People don't understand that this OBSESSION with race adds to the tension.... Retards are doing studies on how many people with more melanin fill out job roles, like they are going to cure bias or racism by "enlightening" us.
Humans are tribal, but for the most part we live in a society where people don't discriminate and will give someone a chance if they work hard, have a good attitude, and show potential. We're very lucky to live in the society that we do. Spend some time in a 3rd world country and get to know people from there. In most of those places, if you're not from the right family, you will have to deal with being dirt poor for the rest of your life... even if you have a highly-skilled job that would be high-paying in the US.
We live in a great Country. Although Hollywood and the nitwits on the telly will have you convinced some of us should be ashamed of ourselves "check your privilege" lmao
August 26th, 2021 at 8:53 AM ^
Cis het white man claiming that discrimination doesn't exist and discounting the experiences of non whites who say it does... check
If you think racism is bad here you should go to (a third world country) (or back to Africa)...check
America is "Great" (again) ... check
The racist Triple Crown in one post. Nice!
? ? ?
August 26th, 2021 at 11:06 AM ^
Retards are doing studies...
Yeah, you sound like a really tolerant person. I think I'll skip your lesson on discrimination or race relations.
August 26th, 2021 at 12:26 PM ^
they work hard, have a good attitude, and show potential -
What does "good attitude" has got to do with success? From most accounts, Steve Jobs was .. not so easy to work with. Jeff Bezos... Elon Mask... So you wouldn't hire any of these three to run your organization?
Racism is not always a poster claiming someone hates another person for their skin color. At times, it is also a little nuanced thing. Say for instance, "grandfathered in". You know how that one came about, right?
August 26th, 2021 at 3:25 PM ^
The highly-charged political commentary and ESPECIALLY the derogatory use of the word "retards" as a description of those you disagree with has earned you a warning, "Glen Mason's hot wife".
Your decision: clean it up or you will be writing your own ticket out of here.
I'd prefer you stick around but you've been here since 2008 and know the rules.