Black head coaches
Charles Barkley's thoughts on Auburn's hire of Gene Chizik...
"I think race was the No. 1 factor, you can say it's not about race, but you can't compare the two resumes and say [Chizik] deserved the job. Out of all the coaches they interviewed, Chizik probably had the worst resume...I'm just very disappointed...I just thought Turner Gill would be the perfect choice for two reasons: He's a terrific coach and we needed to make a splash. I thought we had to do something spectacular to bring attention to the program. Clearly, if we'd hired a black coach, it would have created a buzz...We talked about the whole race thing in Alabama...I told him it's there and it's going to be anywhere you go. I told him you can't not take the job because of racism. He was worried about being nothing more than a token interview. He was concerned about having a white wife. It's just very disappointing to me."
I agree with those who lament the lack of black head coaches in college football. I don't think forcing schools to interview black coaches is the answer. There is a cultural problem among the men who influence these coaching searches (boosters, etc.). At certain schools, they are the true racists and I can completely imagine Auburn's boosters gathering to chat football and scoffing at the thought of hiring a black coach. The problem is not that they are white. The NFL has rich white people running it and have plenty of respected black coaches (Dungy, Herm, Tomlin, Crennel, Lovie, etc..) It's the elitist, racist, old-school attitude of these people at certain schools. Especially at a lot of these schools in the deep south, I just don't see a short term or an even long term solution.
I really hope that Admiral Martin doesn't have to deal with these scum.
What do you guys think?
December 15th, 2008 at 7:55 PM ^
IMO, Gill and Hoke are about equal in terms of resume... position coaches at (consistently overrated) power schools, turned around abysmal MAC schools. Did Hoke not get a job because of his size?
December 15th, 2008 at 7:59 PM ^
it's harder to do what gill did at buffalo than to do what hoke did at ball state
December 15th, 2008 at 8:04 PM ^
I actually think it's a push. Gill essentially built a program from the ground up, yes... but Ball State has never been good and went 1-10 and 0-11 back to back season a few years before Hoke arrived.
December 16th, 2008 at 3:15 AM ^
ball state was 16-18 the three years before hoke got there
December 15th, 2008 at 8:08 PM ^
btw seems like Brady Hoke lost a 100 lbs the last time I saw a televised ball state game. he is no longer in the mangino/weis/friedgen club.
and look at turner gill's three years in the mac and compare them to Hoke's - its significantly better. but my argument was not for turner gill, it was for the bigger picture of ncaa head coaches
December 15th, 2008 at 8:13 PM ^
Gill is 12–13 in conference over 3 years, Hoke is 18-5.
December 15th, 2008 at 8:18 PM ^
i was talking about each of their FIRST three years. in terms of in-conference gill is 12-13 and hoke is 9-15. overall gill is 15-22 and hoke 10-24
December 15th, 2008 at 8:17 PM ^
again, the argument is not specifically for Gill.
December 15th, 2008 at 9:44 PM ^
Ty Willingham set back black coaches everywhere by 10 years.
Edit: And Romeo Crennel.
December 15th, 2008 at 10:10 PM ^
kind of statement is that? I seriously hope thats a joke.
December 15th, 2008 at 10:17 PM ^
Look, when you manage to not recruit at ND, then go 0-12 in Washington, you are a bad coach.
If you've watch Romeo Crennel manage the clock, you'd agree he's a terrible coach. He was down 7 with 2 minutes left or something, and he kicked a field goal. Think about this, he STILL NEEDS A TOUCHDOWN to not lose and he kicks a field goal. Not to mention his numerous clock gaffes. The guy sucks hard.
The problem is that when there are so few black head coaches, the failures of one get unfairly applied to them all. Do I think it's fair? No. But does it happen? Yes. It's really a shame, because no one looks at Charlie Weis and says that fat PoS coaches suck, but people will look at Ty Willingham and say all black coaches suck. It's tragic, but true.
December 15th, 2008 at 10:23 PM ^
Lovie Smith, Tony Dungy, Mike Tomlin? I might have given you the benefit of the doubt if you were just talking college, but you decided to throw Romeo Crennel in there. The bad black coaches reflect poorly on themselves and themselves only. The same as bad white coaches. Maybe Ty Willingham set black coaches back in the minds of some specific schools that probably wouldn't have hired a black coach anyway, but saying he set black coaches back 10 years is absolutely ridiculous.
December 15th, 2008 at 10:28 PM ^
Ok, next time I'll say 4.3 seasons or something. I wasn't picking an exact time dude.
December 16th, 2008 at 12:55 PM ^
Rod Marinelli has set back senile old white coaches back 20 years.
December 15th, 2008 at 10:03 PM ^
who cares whether hes black or white. Whenever someone hires a coach its because they think they are the best candidate for the job. Not because his white, IMO.
December 15th, 2008 at 10:46 PM ^
It is naive to think that boosters of SEC schools (read: old, white southerners) are blind to race.
December 15th, 2008 at 11:08 PM ^
No one said that these people are blind to race, only that it's not nearly as important to them as winning.
And this may get a lot of super liberal types on the board up in arms, but if the football coach is the face of the football programs and represents the boosters and alumni, and if the alumni would prefer that that person not be a black man, isn't it in the athletic department's best interest to abide? AD's rely heavily on their alumni and booster support, it's important to keep them happy, even it may not be the "worldly" thing to do.
Additionally, when a school fires a white coach, everyone assumes he didn't meet expectations. That's what people will think when Weis gets fired. But when Willingham was fired, there was a huge racial uproar calling ND a racist institution for firing their black coach, no matter that he didn't win or recruit very well. I wouldn't blame a University if they felt it a good idea to avoid an uproar of their own.
December 16th, 2008 at 12:23 AM ^
It's not unreasonable to question if race played a role in Willingham's dismissal. For some reason he was given a much shorter leash than Charlie Weis. Why wasn't he given a 10 year extension after starting 8-0 in 2002? By contrast, Weis' was given a $30-40 million deal after beginning his inaugural campaign 5-2. Given those facts, again, it's worth asking why Willingham got the short end of the stick.
December 16th, 2008 at 12:35 AM ^
Questioning whether race played a role and blaming racism are different. And I think Wies get's more time because ND learned that they can't keep firing coaches after 3 years or no one will want to come.
And the money happened because ND thought they had found their savior. Their last coaches were so bad that they were desperate to lock someone up. Plus Weis was an ND alum. The circumstances were different, you can't compare them in a vacuum. There are dozens or more reasons for the discrepancy, yet so many people jump right to race, and if you argue against it you're racist.
December 16th, 2008 at 1:56 AM ^
thats a pathetic spin on the point that me and others are making. no one said that a school is racist whenever they hire a white coach. you seem to be one of these people that look at opinions such as mine and immediately dismiss them as "here these super-liberals go again, if i disagree with this then they're just gonna label me as racist..." You said something along these lines in earlier posts.
I disagree with you but I don't think you're a racist and I am not a liberal just because I live in Ann Arbor. My intention was rational debate on the matter. My claim was that Auburn's hire was influenced by race and that the NCAA's lack of black coaches is a problem. When two SEC coaches tell an ESPN reporter that Turner Gill has no shot at the job because he's married to a white woman, that's not acceptable to me. There is a reason Sly Croom was the first black coach in SEC history.
I never said that all schools in the south are racist, hell we might have racist donors yelling in Bill Martin's ear too, I was saying that its more likely in the south.
You also said that good players made bad coaches (I agree), and used this point to debunk an earlier argument that college football has few black coaches for the number of black players it has. Are you saying that most marginal players are white? Though the majority of D-1 starters are black, that doesn't mean that most marginal players are white. They are black and white.
Also, this is not about Turner Gill. I never said Turner Gill should be Auburn's choice. I just think its wrong that he was probably ruled out because of his race. I obviously can't directly prove this but that brings up the big picture, which is that are there less black coaches than there should be. There is a reason that college football is the only such sport that has this problem.
You say that less black coaches are hired because there is a smaller pool of qualified black coaches. I know. But the reason there is a smaller pool of qualified black coaches because fewer of them get a chance at being coordinaters, etc. I lament this fact. I fault Auburn because I think they ruled out Gill because of his race but I'm not faulting other schools that chose white coaches over black coaches. Its not the responsibility of an AD who has a job opening to improve the pool of black candidates so that he can chose one. I'm saying its the responsibility of unversity communities to not foster environments where white elitist boosters gather behind the scenes with an AD and write a fat check while scoffing at the possibility of hiring a coach because he is black.
December 16th, 2008 at 2:06 AM ^
woops i meant to place this response after your next post
"Auburn was hardly the only team looking for a coach recently, so either all of those other schools are racist, or maybe Turner Gill isn't quite yet accomplished enough to be a BCS head coach."
but in response to all your points in this thread
December 16th, 2008 at 2:09 AM ^
I wouldn't harp on the Sly Croom being the first thing too much, the Big 10 has only had 3 black head coaches and two of them were at the same school.
December 16th, 2008 at 3:11 AM ^
that's a minor detraction from my point. but yea you're right
December 16th, 2008 at 12:34 AM ^
'... if the football coach is the face of the football programs and represents the boosters and alumni, and if the alumni would prefer that that person not be a black man, isn't it in the athletic department's best interest to abide? AD's rely heavily on their alumni and booster support, it's important to keep them happy, even it may not be the "worldly" thing to do.'
That would be a terrible, terrible reason to deny someone a job. Sometimes leadership needs to come from the top. A lot of Southerners in the 50's and 60's were against black voting rights, but that didn't make it right, and didn't stop LBJ and co. from passing the Voting Rights Act in 1965. Just an example, FWIW
December 16th, 2008 at 8:53 AM ^
Frankly, you can't look at a coaching search that ends with the answer "Gene Chizik", and claim that it's top priority was winning. Similar to us when the boosters requested Martin hire Ferentz. I'm not saying that either case was necessarily racism, but if your standard is "success", Chizik fails, roundly. Clearly, there were other things more important - like he was relatively cheap, and they were familiar with him.
December 16th, 2008 at 12:37 PM ^
While I agree that it was a curious hire, this is an SEC school we're talking about. There is no way that winning wasn't a top priority. They must simply think that Chizik's record at ISU is a fluke and that his performance as DC at AU/Texas is more revealing.
December 16th, 2008 at 2:51 PM ^
It is not in the athletic department's best interest to support their boosters' personal bias and racist attitudes. Moreover, many of these institutions are public universities and engaging in discriminatory hiring practices for any employment position at a public institution is illegal and, as such, very much not in the athletic department's best interest.
December 16th, 2008 at 8:55 PM ^
I know this might come as a shock, but it helps to have actual proof before you make accusations like that. Just because you THINK it's racist and discriminatory doesn't make it illegal.
December 17th, 2008 at 9:32 AM ^
"Maybe schools don't hire people because people with influence at those schools don't like black people. That's not 'racism' that's just 'being conscious of race to the extent that black people don't get the same opportunities as whites'. Not sure why you liberals can't see the difference."
"Also, if black people weren't so whiny all the time about this racism hoogabooga, maybe white people would be nicer to them in the first place. Maybe it's not fair that black men don't get offered HC positions, but too fucking bad."
(See esp. nos. 57, 59)
December 15th, 2008 at 11:10 PM ^
I don't understand why this argument is always limited to college football. College football is reflective of the university environment as a whole. There aren't exactly many black professors either. Rather than using the easy cop-out of racism, try actually using some logic and evaluating the other factors that contribute to this result (in both academica and athletics) from interest, to opportunity, to sheer number of applicants. Just because there are a lot of black football players doesn't necessarily mean that there are a lot of aspiring black coaches. Frankly, it seems much more racist to me to consider (and potentially hire) a coach because he is black (as Barkley suggests) when there are other candidates who are equally, if not more qualified. As someone else said, as much of Chizik is a head-scratcher of a hire, he has a better resume than Gill. Hiring Gill over Chizik could easily be seen, if looked at objectively, as the more racist decision.
December 17th, 2008 at 9:49 AM ^
Racism is an expression of power. Don't give me this whiny, Rush Limbaugh white-people-are-victims bullshit about how hiring a black man can be racist too. Just as the power and influence of white people as a group within our society vastly outweighs that of black people, the "racism" of white preference dwarfs any potential preference shown towards blacks.
December 17th, 2008 at 12:57 PM ^
Brabbs that's just incorrect. You just redefined what you think racism is, which does not jive with accepted definitions. Racism exists whenever race plays a role in a decision, i.e. where you buy a home, who you choose as friends, or who you hire at any position. It does not matter if this is done negatively or positively, and it does not matter which race is in question. Hiring a coach because he is black is just as racist as hiring a coach just because he isn't. Race is a factor.
The definition (not the practice) of racism has nothing to do with history, nor with power. The opposite of racism is racial equality. Hiring a man because he's black perpetuates the problem, it does not bring us closer to equality.
December 17th, 2008 at 1:11 PM ^
First, show me the evidence as to what the "accepted definitions" of racism are. You may as well have said 'my definition.'
I don't agree with your distinction between definition and practice, but even assuming your argument, isn't the practice of racism more relevant here than the semantic definition? Even if racism in a vacuum is defined as "any consciousness of race whatsoever" what we are dealing with here is consciousness of race in combination with power - racism in the world, not in abstract theory. Race itself is a construction of history and power - or are you going to tell me that it's a biological absolute?
Furthermore, in earlier posts you admit that the decision to hire Chizik instead of Gill may very well have been the result of racism in practice (differential racial judgment plus agency) - your primary argument seems to have been 'too bad - that's just the way things are.'
December 17th, 2008 at 1:22 PM ^
I could give you a number of citations, my degree from Michigan is in Sociology and this was drilled into my brain by a number of people.
Just because blacks have been victims of racism more in our country than whites, you simply can't say "a racially motivated decision benefiting a white man is racist, while a racially motivated decision benefiting a black man is not." Maybe you feel the latter is more morally justified, they are equally racist.
I like how you ended your post by simply putting words in my mouth. That's a classy argument, sir. A career in law is certainly in your future.
December 17th, 2008 at 1:32 PM ^
FROM COMMENT 57:
"[I]f the football coach is the face of the football programs and represents the boosters and alumni, and if the alumni would prefer that that person not be a black man, isn't it in the athletic department's best interest to abide? AD's rely heavily on their alumni and booster support, it's important to keep them happy, even it may not be the 'worldly' thing to do.
"Additionally, when a school fires a white coach, everyone assumes he didn't meet expectations. That's what people will think when Weis gets fired. But when Willingham was fired, there was a huge racial uproar calling ND a racist institution for firing their black coach, no matter that he didn't win or recruit very well. I wouldn't blame a University if they felt it a good idea to avoid an uproar of their own."
Explain to me how the above doesn't say 'Yeah - these decisions might be racist. So what? It's perfectly understandable - hell, racism is the smart way to go here.' Would that paraphrasing be more to your liking, sir?
December 17th, 2008 at 2:05 PM ^
You're clearly upset by this and I was just looking to play devil's advocate. This is going nowhere, I'd rather stop before someone gets pissed.
December 17th, 2008 at 2:12 PM ^
rac·ism
Pronunciation: \ˈrā-ˌsi-zəm also -ˌshi-\
Function: noun
Date: 1933
1 : a belief that race is the primary determinant of human traits and capacities and that racial differences produce an inherent superiority of a particular race
2 : racial prejudice or discrimination
December 17th, 2008 at 2:36 PM ^
I never said that "white-people-[are]-victims". Don't put words in my mouth. Every single person of every race can be racist; racism is not limited to one race or another. Any decision based on race, one way or the other, is a racist decision. To say otherwise only perpetuates your subjective and simplistic definition of racism.
December 17th, 2008 at 2:46 PM ^
I never said that you said white people are victims, I just characterized the (utterly simplistic) idea that every time anything is done based on race, it's racist as part of the 'white people are victims' lexicon. Saying that "any decision based on race, one way or another" is racist implies that racism is something that can equally 'victimize' whites, right? My point is that this is preposterous. In America, where being white tends to automatically bestow privilege and power over minorities deemed non-white (and especially African Americans) it is misleading and disingenuous to call preference for those minorities 'racism' in an equivalent sense to the pervasive effects of institutional white racism.
In another society, racism may certainly be expressed differently. Perhaps, in a theoretical vacuum, the definition of racism as "anything that acknowledges race" would obtain. In the real world, racism and race are inextricably linked to power.
December 17th, 2008 at 2:51 PM ^
It must really suck to be you.
December 17th, 2008 at 4:45 PM ^
Strikes and gutters.
December 17th, 2008 at 2:53 PM ^
Hypothetical: Let's say a white guy is applying for a job. After all the interviews, he is the most qualified candidate. The man in charge of filling this position, who is black, tells the white guy "you are the most qualified candidate, but because I'm black I want to hire a black guy."
Are you suggesting that this wouldn't be racist?
December 17th, 2008 at 3:19 PM ^
you should read your own posts....you sound like a complete idiot.
December 16th, 2008 at 12:15 AM ^
I would argue that there is no Division I school harder to field a winning team at than Buffalo. Almost no tradition to speak of. In one of the smallest conferences in the country. The absolute worst weather of any school in D-I. In 2003, just before Gill was hired, Buffalo went 0-11 and lost to....wait for it.....COLGATE.
Flash forward to 2008 and Turner Gill has Buffalo defeating an unbeaten team on national television, winning their conference and going to a bowl game. This is nothing short of a miracle. For Gill to strike out at every coaching vacancy in this cycle is just pathetic, he should've been the first choice for any university with an opening. He was certainly the most qualified of any coach Auburn interviewed. The silver lining is that Auburn will reap what they've sowed over the next few years.
December 16th, 2008 at 12:21 AM ^
Auburn was hardly the only team looking for a coach recently, so either all of those other schools are racist, or maybe Turner Gill isn't quite yet accomplished enough to be a BCS head coach.
December 17th, 2008 at 3:39 PM ^
Yes and Lane Kiffin is accomplished enough to be a BCS head coach, nonetheless at a BCS school with loads of tradition and success.
December 16th, 2008 at 12:22 AM ^
And I'm proud of it!
December 16th, 2008 at 12:54 AM ^
Viva Senor Rodriguez!
December 16th, 2008 at 1:03 AM ^
doesn't claim it.
December 16th, 2008 at 1:20 AM ^
He is of Spanish decent, not Hispanic decent, right? I thought that was the reason he doesn't claim it, because he's of European decent, like pretty much every other "white" person.