College hoops' black coaching issue
Myron Medcalf [ARCHIVE] ESPN.com | July 18, 2013
When a national sportswriter calls to talk about minority hiring in college basketball, folks of all races seem to get nervous.

As I sought feedback following last week's release of the "2012 Racial and Gender Report Card: College Sport" by Central Florida's Institute for Diversity and Ethics in Sport -- the report excludes historically black colleges and universities -- which states that the current pool of Division I African-American head coaches (18.6 percent through the 2011-12 season) is at its lowest mark since the 1995-96 season, people weren't sure what, if anything, they should say.

Multiple administrators passed on the opportunity. The NCAA wanted to see my questions, and then it wanted a pre-interview phone conversation before it ultimately emailed its responses.

The coaches who talked on the record always ended our chats with the same concern: "I didn't say anything that will make me look bad, right?"

Shaka Smart
Andy Lyons/Getty Images
To reach Shaka Smart's level, black coaches often have to overcome certain labels.
I don't blame them. It's an incendiary issue, because we're uncomfortable with race as dialogue.

It's still a subject that makes athletic directors -- 89 percent of whom are white at the Division I level, per the report -- squirm. Minority coaches speak cautiously, because they don't want to be labeled as rebels or militants.

That hesitancy is a significant component in a perennial problem that's often managed but rarely attacked. An inherent defensiveness makes the subject difficult to publicly dissect. So year after year, the issue remains.

The numbers aren't too surprising, but they're worth addressing, especially when the coaching pool belies the fact that 57.2 percent of Division I men's basketball players are African-American.

"After it appeared that we had made some progress when it came to hiring men's basketball coaches of color, it's apparent from this report that progress has slowed or stopped all together, and that's incredibly disappointing," said Notre Dame women's associate head coach Carol Owens, president of the Black Coaches Association. "Not so long ago, it was the trendy thing to hire coaches of color, but I believe that those in the decision-making apparatus have turned their backs on those they were so eager to hire just a few years earlier."

Perhaps it's that simple, but I believe the dilemma is more complicated than that.

Iowa assistant Andrew Francis is an African-American who wants to lead his own Division I program one day. But like his peers, he's not seeking an easy path, just an opportunity.

He had one when Siena interviewed him for a position that was ultimately filled by Jimmy Patsos earlier this year. As he prepared for the interview, Francis had concerns about his lack of head-coaching experience, not his race.

"I think that's one of the biggest hurdles," he said. "That was the one thing that kept pressing in my mind. It wasn't that I'm a black guy interviewing for this job."

But acquiring that first job is a constant challenge for many black assistants. Perception could be part of the problem. Francis, and multiple others, referenced the idea that too many black assistants are viewed as solid recruiters but not necessarily men who can run programs.

"For a long time, if you look at a lot of successful African-American assistants, they were known for being what? Recruiters," said Francis, who praised Iowa's Fran McCaffery for his mentorship and guidance. "But you have to know a lot more than recruiting to run a program."

VCU's Shaka Smart added, "When that [recruiter] label occurs, now you get to the hiring process with the athletic director, and if he's influenced or impacted at all by that label, he's going to be less likely to hire that assistant coach, even though the truth is much different from the label."

No athletic director, university president or trustee will admit that "labels" affect hiring. And there's probably no way to prove it.

But the data suggests that black assistants have hit a ceiling in college basketball. The only way to change the current climate is to create avenues for worthy black candidates to prove their value to athletic directors and other administrators.

That demands relationships -- relationships that have been difficult for some minority coaches to forge.

"I think the biggest frustration was just trying to get a foot in the door, whether it's an interview or just getting involved and getting into the mix," said Charlotte coach Alan Major.

That mix is usually concocted by powerful men (and a few women) who are mostly white. They all want to win, and their job is to find a person who can do that.

In major college football and basketball, the job security of an athletic director is tied to the success of their most recent hires in those sports. So they all want qualified candidates. That's the chief objective.

Rick Ray
Kelly Lambert/USA TODAY Sports
The SEC has taken a lead in providing opportunities to black coaches like MSU's Rick Ray.
But according to the numbers, they often choose what's familiar, too. And black isn't always familiar.

That's the barrier that Major and others referenced. Cultural divides factor into hiring, because administrators often rely on personal connections for recommendations. Sometimes those confidants fit similar profiles and thrive in similar social/professional circles, which may limit the chances of a minority candidate emerging in the hiring process.

It's called the homologous production theory, says Mark Daigneault. He's an assistant to Florida coach Billy Donovan (not an assistant coach) who has studied treatment discrimination in men's college basketball coaching through the sports management program at the University of Florida.

People tend to surround themselves with folks of similar races and backgrounds, he said. The potential ramifications of that theory in collegiate sports, per Daigneault, are uniform athletic departments and coaching staffs.

"If white administrators are more likely to network with and surround themselves with people like them, and the majority of them are white and male, then that's going to show up somewhere in the hiring process," he said.

Scott Stricklin said he wasn't looking for a minority coach when he hired Rick Ray to run Mississippi State's men's basketball program last year.

Stricklin, the university's athletic director, has helped the SEC become the nation's most diverse conference in major Division I men's basketball (seven of the league's head coaches are African-American, one is Hispanic). But before he made the choice, Stricklin turned to people he trusted. That's the norm, he said.

"It's like any job search. You call people you trust and respect to get their input," Stricklin said. "Whether I'm hiring a ticket manager or I'm hiring a head football coach, I'm going to call people I trust in that area and say, 'Hey, give me some names.' So if there's any accusation of a good ol' boy system, I guess that leads to it, but I don't know how else you get a read on people unless you ask other people who've viewed them in a setting where they weren't trying to get your job. You're going to rely on people you trust to get a recommendation."

That's a smart move for Stricklin and his colleagues throughout the country. In college sports, however, the preferred method may constrict the hiring pool, even for the administrators who desire more diversity in their respective departments.

It's not that simple, though. Stricklin said it's rare to see minorities in athletic departments who have long-term goals of becoming athletic directors.

Every person I interviewed for this column concurred.

They also agreed that addressing the lack of diversity within the Division I administrative ranks is just as important as the problem in coaching.

But Oregon State coach Craig Robinson said it might be challenging for athletic departments to attract desirable minority candidates because they might have more fruitful options elsewhere.

"For a while, [corporate America] was only hiring Ivy League-educated and top-10 business school black folks, and if you're just looking for those folks to be athletic directors, you're not going to find them, because they can make more money being lawyers and doctors and investment bankers," he said. "So you have to either groom your own or you have to take a flyer on somebody whose résumé might not be exactly what would make you the most comfortable."

Craig Robinson
Cal Sport Media/AP Images
Oregon State's Craig Robinson says schools may need to cast a wider net when looking for black athletic leaders.
The greatest obstacle within this entire quandary appears to be the absence of a fortified and proven bridge between qualified black men's basketball coaching candidates and predominately white administrators.

Sure, programs like the Villa 7 certainly help. But more sweeping adjustments might be warranted to truly disrupt the status quo.

That's why Dr. Richard Lapchick, author of the annual report card, recommends the Eddie Robinson Rule, college athletics' version of the NFL's Rooney Rule.

Lapchick, who has analyzed diversity issues in sports for nearly 50 years, said the rule would require schools to interview minorities for vacancies, which would spur progress.

"Anywhere that's been put in place, it has made things better because it just opens the hiring process," he said. "You're gonna get bogus interviews for sure, but more than likely the case is going to be even if you had no intentions of hiring that person, if they come in and they're impressive, which happens consistently in the NFL, people in the organization ... they'll remember that person."

It's a promising idea, but who would regulate the rule? The NCAA is not built like the NFL. Unless its membership agreed to it, the NCAA alone could not enforce such a requirement.

"The NCAA is a membership organization, so our colleges and universities would have to endorse such an initiative to take effect, and I don't know from a legal perspective if the NCAA could mandate that policy for all schools to follow since campus policies are determined by each college and university," said Bernard Franklin, NCAA executive vice president and chief inclusion officer, via email. "The NCAA is structured and governed differently than a league. Also, we need to understand that having a diverse pool of candidates for interviewing is imperative, but interviewing is not hiring. The issue doesn't always rest solely with interviewing, but with actual hiring."

I don't have the answers. There are clearly many layers to the issues.

But the dialogue surrounding them has been too discreet and too quiet for too long. Instead of whispering, we should scream if diversity within men's basketball and college sports is genuinely significant to us.

Fear, however, is a silencer. A broad and open discussion about this sensitive topic could facilitate change.

"One of the simplest solutions you can have is just having a dialogue or awareness about the issue," Daigneault said.

But every time folks are asked to come to the table to discuss race and its role in hiring at this level, few grab chairs.

And that's our biggest problem.
7: GRADUATION RATE FOR BLACK COLLEGE ATHLETES
Top college basketball and football programs continue to recruit and then exploit black athletes without proper academic counseling. And while a small minority of these players will make a great living in the NBA or NFL, the majority eventually will need to find a different profession — without a college degree.
This was never more obvious than at the recent NCAA tournament. The teams that advanced furthest were often the guiltiest. “The worst news to report is that at the 2014 Sweet 16 the achievement gap between white and African-American basketball student-athletes is even worse than when all the tournament teams were examined,” said Richard Lapchick, director of the Institute for Diversity and Ethics in Sport. The graduation rate overall among white male players from these 16 teams was 98%, while it was 55% for blacks, a gap of 43% that had grown from 27% a year earlier.
No college was worse in this way than Wisconsin (this columnist’s alma mater), which reported a 100% graduation rate among its white basketball players and a 0% rate among its black players. Congrats on that, Bo Ryan. Colleges making little progress in hiring minority coaches
By: Chris Hunn
Saturday, Feb. 22, 2014 - 3:23 p.m.

Charlie Strong was introduced as the new Texas head football coach back in January. At the press conference, Strong acknowledged the historical significance of being the school's first black head coach of a men's sport. (Eric Gay — The Associated Press)
At his introductory press conference last month, Charlie Strong raised up his Hook 'em Horns sign as the University of Texas made him its first black football coach in the 121-year history of the program.
His right hand in the air — index finger and pinky pointed upward — appeared to be a sign of progress.
Texas, a historically conservative state, now had Strong and Texas A&M coach Kevin Sumlin, another African-American, leading its top two college football programs.
While it is a significant step forward in closing the racial gap in collegiate coaching, there are still major concerns.
"There's been very little change at the college level," said Richard Lapchick, director of the Institute for Diversity and Ethics In Sport at the University of Central Florida. "Colleges have the worst (diversity) hiring practices when you compare them to any of the professional sports leagues."
Lapchick annually conducts the Racial and Gender Report Card for many professional leagues, colleges and even the Associated Press Sports Editors. The reports are essentially assessments of hiring practices.
The numbers for college athletics are staggering.
According to the 2012 College RGRC (the 2013 report card will be released next month), of the 450 full-time NCAA staff members, 81 percent are white. Of the 120 Football Bowl Subdivision schools, 90 percent of the presidents are white and 89 percent of all Division I athletic directors are white.
The trend trickles down to the coaching positions.
Division I coaches in men's sports are 86 percent white, along with 85 percent in Division I women's sports. The report, which does not include historically black schools, showed the number of black coaches in men's basketball are on the decline, with just 18.6 percent African-American, the lowest it's been since 1995-96.
"Me being in this position, I take pride in it, not only representing my university, but also representing African-American coaches," UConn coach Kevin Ollie said. "Hopefully, I can continue to do a good job and it can open up some doors for some younger coaches. And the younger coaches have to understand, we can't be pigeon-holed as just a recruiter. We have to be pigeon-holed as doing everything. We have to do a better job with that, and I think we will."
As for football, black coaches are now leading two of the most storied programs in the nation. Along with Strong at Texas, Penn State recently hired James Franklin. Schools like Notre Dame (Tyrone Willingham), Stanford (Willingham, David Shaw) and Miami (Randy Shannon) have recently had black head coaches as well. But last season, of the 125 men who served as FBS head coaches, only 13 were black.
After Strong was hired at Texas, T-shirts with the words "Black is the New Brown" went on sale. The shirt, with a picture of Strong's face on it, was referencing Strong taking over for Mack Brown. The shirt has since been taken off the market after many considered it racist and offensive, including UT President Bill Powers.
Also, many questioned if race played a part in Texas booster Red McCombs' criticism of the Strong hire. McCombs said Strong would make a good coordinator or position coach, but disapproved of Strong as a head coach.
"There's a lot of qualified minority coaches out there," said Tommy Frazier, a former Nebraska quarterback. "And I'm not just talking African-American coaches, but Hispanic coaches, and they're being overlooked. And it's a problem. Someone has to change the culture of the people that are hiring the coaches."
Former Iowa quarterback Brad Banks echoes Frazier's sentiments and says qualified minority candidates just need to be given a chance.
"You can never be satisfied with the way things are going, but you can say things are moving," Banks said. "You would love to just see minority coaches on every team on every level. But like I said, it's coming around."
Five years ago, seven of the 16 men's basketball and football head coaches in the Ivy League were black. Now there are only three. One is Yale basketball coach James Jones. The Bulldogs also had an African-American football coach in Tom Williams, but he resigned in 2011 after it was discovered he falsely represented himself as a Rhodes scholarship finalist on his résumé.
"That number is going to fluctuate," said Jones, now in his 15th season with Yale. "Sometimes I feel minorities are under-represented in college athletics. It has improved, but it needs to continue to improve."
According to the 2012 College RGRC, UConn athletic director Warde Manuel was one of nine black athletic directors among the FBS schools. Manuel and the Huskies recently hired Bob Diaco, who is white, as their football coach. Manuel said two of the nine final candidates were African-American.
Manuel says tangible progress has been made, but it's not enough. He adds it's gotten to the point where there isn't much discussion about the coach or administrator being black or white. It's about that person's ability to run a successful program.
"My philosophy will always be the best person for the job will be the person chosen," Manuel said. "Here or elsewhere. As it relates to minority hiring, that's my expectation. That's what I want. I want to see that landscape in college athletics and the rest of the world."
The Black Coaches and Administrators, a non-profit organization, was created to help the development of minorities in all levels of sport. Executive director Floyd Keith stepped down last year and Carol Owens, a Notre Dame women's basketball assistant coach, was named president of the BCA. A Notre Dame spokesperson said Owens was not available for an interview and Lapchick says the organization is struggling because of funding.
Lapchick says the "Eddie Robinson rule" would be a big step in the right direction and is something he's been advocating for years now. It's basically a collegiate version of the NFL's Rooney Rule, which requires teams to interview minority candidates for head coaching and other positions.
The NCAA says it can't implement it.
"The NCAA is a non-profit and voluntary member association which can't influence individual campus hiring practices," says a statement on the NCAA's website.
Lapchick points out the NCAA said it couldn't enforce penalties for low graduation rates either, but then it put the Academic Progress Rate into effect.
While a hiring like Strong's offers hope, there is still a ways to go.
"Unless something changes," says Lapchick, "I'm not optimistic it's going to get any better."

Title IX and the Drive for Gender Equality in Sports
By Molly M. Ryan – January 15, 2013

Not so long ago, athletic fields in the United States exhibited a clear gender divide. Of course, boys competed against boys while girls competed against girls, insofar as girls were competing at all. But a much more common circumstance was that boys competed against each other . . . while girls cheered them on. Perhaps the clearest manifestation of this divide was when boys, in pads and helmets, battled heroically on the gridiron, while girls, in skirts and sweaters, stood on the sidelines, imploring the boys to “hold that line” and “move that ball!”

Today, 40 years after the passage of Title IX—40 years into a concerted national effort to make the athletic opportunities provided to both sexes more equivalent—some of the legal arguments have circled around with pointed irony to the old traditional categories of football and cheerleading. Some educational institutions covered by Title IX have audaciously argued that the playing field between the sexes is already more level than it might appear because cheerleading is an athletic opportunity equivalent to playing football. At the same time, a number of analysts who have identified where the real gender-based athletic disparities lie in terms of participation and funding have suggested that the most effective way to equalize emphases on male and female athletic opportunities would simply be to eliminate scholastic and collegiate football altogether. Cheerleading and football; football and cheerleading. The old connection between these traditional—and largely gender-specific—activities is apparently hard to break.

Title IX, passed by Congress on June 23, 1972, was one of a number of civil rights laws enacted over the last half of the twentieth century designed to prevent sex discrimination of all kinds. The actual language of Title IX provides that “[n]o person in the United States shall, on the basis of sex, be excluded from participation in, be denied the benefits of, or be subjected to discrimination under any education program or activity receiving Federal financial assistance.” The statute applies to all educational opportunities and does not even specifically mention sports. But over its 40-year history, Title IX has become closely associated—in terms of public discussion as well as legal dispute—with the question of female participation in organized athletic competition at America’s high schools and colleges.

As is so often the case, the meaning and implication of the legislation’s actual wording have been subject to considerable judicial interpretation. In 1979, the U.S. Supreme Court held that a private right of action for injunctive relief exists under Title IX. But the practical impact of that potentially significant finding on athletic participation was eliminated in 1984 when the Court narrowly interpreted the statute. It basically held that Title IX applies only to matters related to admissions and financial aid, not to athletic opportunities, because athletic departments themselves were not direct recipients of federal funding. In response to this decision, Congress amended the terms of the statute in 1988 to make clear that if an institution receives federal funding, then all of its programs and activities, including those related to athletics, are subject to the mandates of Title IX. Following that legislative clarification, the Court approved in 1992 the remedy of monetary damages for Title IX plaintiffs.

As a direct result of this legislation and the resulting litigation, an enormous amount of progress has been made in participation rates by females in organized athletic competition. In 1972, only 295,000 girls competed in high school sports, compared with 3.67 million boys. By 2011, the numbers had climbed to 3.2 million girls compared with 4.5 million boys. Women’s participation in college sports has also increased significantly since 1972, when fewer than 32,000 female students competed in intercollegiate athletics. Today, over 193,000 women wear the uniforms of college and university sports teams, competing in a wide variety of sports along with their male classmates.

Progress and change can be seen in ways that go beyond the raw numbers, as well. The celebrated 1999 U.S. women’s soccer team, for example, was made up of women who benefited greatly from the mandates of Title IX in their high school and college careers. And those pioneers were then enthusiastically cheered on to their World Cup championship by millions of young girls (and their parents!), who by the end of the twentieth century had come to take female athletic participation (and prowess) for granted, and had adopted the assumption that they would be given the same opportunities that their brothers or male classmates had always been given.

That assumption, however, is no more entirely appropriate today, on the fortieth anniversary of Title IX, than it was in 1999, when Mia Hamm was a household name and Brandi Chastain graced the cover of Sports Illustrated. Great progress has been made, but a truly level playing field in terms of gender remains an elusive, and maybe even ill-defined, goal. According to some calculations, female college students are still offered 86,000 fewer opportunities for athletic participation than men are offered across the country, and female student athletes receive $148 million less in athletic scholarships than their male classmates do. In 2010, Football Bowl Subdivision Division I universities spent a median amount of $20,416,000 on men’s programs but only $8,006,000 on women’s programs. And at the high school level, girls continue to have 1.3 million fewer chances to play sports than boys do.

Moreover, educational institutions that receive federal funds—and are therefore required to make their athletic programs more equitable along gender lines—have explicitly pushed back against these requirements in the realm of public debate and in the confines of America’s courtrooms. The arguments against the dictates of Title IX have been aggressive, persistent, and at times creative. But they have very rarely been successful. Over a 40-year run of litigation, the courts have been consistent. Educational institutions receiving federal funds must take all reasonable steps to comply with the relatively plain language of Title IX. And according to the courts and regulations, there are three ways for schools to demonstrate that they are doing so. They can show that (1) the percentages of male and female athletes are substantially the same as the percentages of male and female students enrolled, that (2) the school has a history and continuing practice of expanding athletics opportunities for females, or that (3) the school is fully and effectively meeting its female students’ interests and abilities to participate in sports.

Some educational institutions have sought to find a way around the requirements of Title IX, as interpreted by the courts, by claiming that economic hardship has required them to cut women’s teams, not as an act of discrimination but as an act of unavoidable austerity. The earliest case in this regard was Favia v. Indiana University of Pennsylvania, 7 F.3d 332 (3d Cir. 1993), in which the Third Circuit ruled that a school that is not in compliance with Title IX cannot cut opportunities for women, the already underrepresented sex, regardless of financial difficulties or challenges. Budgetary considerations are simply not a justification for failing to comply with Title IX.

Nor have the courts looked kindly on institutions that are found to have retaliated against those who report Title IX violations. In Jackson v. Birmingham Board of Education, 544 U.S. 167 (2005), the Supreme Court found in favor of a coach of a high school girls’ basketball team who claimed that he had been fired because he complained about his team not being given equal funding or equal access to athletic equipment and facilities as similarly situated boys’ teams at his school. The Court held that institutional retaliation against individuals who complain about discriminatory practices disallowed by Title IX is itself a form of discrimination and, therefore, a violation of Title IX.

Perhaps the most common strategy pursued by educational institutions seeking to comply with the letter of Title IX without increasing the number of female sports teams or otherwise acting to increase opportunities open to female students has been to approach the matter of gender “proportionality” from the other direction. That is, they have tried to make athletic opportunities more equivalent for their male and female students, particularly in terms of participation numbers and rates, not by adding teams for female students but instead by eliminating men’s teams. The male athletes affected by these actions, not surprisingly, have then alleged that the proportionality test, which schools endeavor to satisfy by cutting male teams, is an unconstitutional invitation to reverse gender discrimination. One of the earliest cases of this type was Kelley v. Board of Trustees, 35 F.3d 265 (7th Cir. 1994), which was brought by male student athletes when the University of Illinois eliminated its men’s swim team in 1993 to make their athletic opportunities more equivalent along gender lines. The Seventh Circuit held in that case that the elimination of male opportunities is indeed a viable and acceptable tool that schools can use in their attempts to comply with Title IX. Over the past 20 years, numerous members of other eliminated men’s teams have filed suit arguing that reverse discrimination resides at the very heart of the proportionality test applied by the courts to the enforcement of Title IX. But all of these suits have been unsuccessful. Every appellate court that has considered the issue in these terms has found that the proportionality test is constitutional and, by implication, that it can be met by the elimination of teams for boys and men.

Perhaps of greater interest given the history of gender-based stereotypes involving athletics, the courts have recently had to contend with the claim that competitive cheerleading, dominated by female students, ought to be counted as a sport for purposes of Title IX calculations and compliance. In 2009, Quinnipiac University eliminated its women’s volleyball team, men’s golf team, and men’s outdoor track and field team, while elevating its cheerleading squad to varsity status, all in an effort to comply with Title IX via the proportionality test. Members of the women’s volleyball team filed suit in Biediger v. Quinnipiac University, 691 F.3d 85 (2d Cir. 2012), alleging Title IX violations associated with this elimination of athletic opportunities for female students. The district court issued a permanent injunction barring the school from disbanding the volleyball team. And in August 2012, the Second Circuit affirmed the district court’s ruling and held that the elimination of volleyball could not be counteracted by the elevation of cheerleading because, simply put, cheerleading is not a sport for the purposes of determining compliance with Title IX. Cheerleading, the court explained, is not recognized by the National Collegiate Athletic Association or the Department of Education as a sport; there is no uniform set of rules for intercollegiate competitions; there is no progressive playoff system like those that characterize other intercollegiate sports; the Quinnipiac cheering squad does not have a locker room; the squad is not allowed to recruit prospective members; and the squad competes not only against varsity teams from other colleges and universities but also against club teams and even high school students.

This attempt to establish female cheerleading as a sport for the purposes of Title IX compliance, thus far unsuccessful, is even more interesting when viewed in the context of an argument that seems to be gaining currency concerning cheerleading’s traditional partner in gender stratification, football. Given the number of male participants required to form a viable football team and given the unique costs associated with outfitting, training, and transporting a football team, a growing number of observers are suggesting that the best and easiest way for educational institutions to achieve Title IX compliance in terms of equivalence and proportionality is to eliminate their football teams. Cheerleading is not a sport, according to current judicial findings, but football most assuredly is. And, so the argument goes, if you can’t influence the numbers by elevating cheerleading, then maybe the appropriate response ought to be to downgrade football.

Imagine an idyllic Saturday afternoon in 1970 somewhere in America at any one of thousands of high schools and colleges. The male students are on the field playing football, while the female students are lined up at the side of the field, leading the cheers. This gender-based distinction and disparity, largely taken for granted in 1970, soon became socially unacceptable and was judged illegally discriminatory. A forward-looking fan at that football game might well wonder how U.S. courts of the future will adjudicate the disputes that are sure to arise in response to this very challenging change in how institutions apportion resources. Will the courts deem cheerleading a sport, thereby increasing the number of females engaged in athletic activities? Will they invite the elimination of football, thereby decreasing the numbers of boys so engaged? Or will they encourage educational institutions to construct more playing fields, hire new coaches, and provide first-class equipment so that any of those cheerleaders who wish to can put down their pompoms, put on other kinds of uniforms, and go play soccer, field hockey, or even, in some particularly intrepid cases, football?

We are now 40 years into considering all of these questions and other questions closely related to them. Some of them have been answered pretty definitively by the courts. Others still require further clarification. But it is clear that we are, as a society and as a legal system, a long way from the discriminatory dynamics that characterized the playing fields of the 1970s before the passage of Title IX.

In this paper I review the current and potential future effect of the economic downturn on matters of diversity and inclusion. I discuss reasons for cautious optimism in minority and female hiring patterns—both in the areas of athletic leadership and coaching. But this progress is uneven and tenuous. Special attention, I argue, is needed for the growing academic performance gap between white and African-American student athletes. Any economically-driven cuts in academic support and life skills education could exacerbate this problem. I conclude that the economic downturn, to date, does not appear to have had a major effect on diversity and inclusion. However, because periods of economic crisis typically have a greater negative impact on minorities than others, we need to carefully monitor athletic and academic programs from high school through college and continue to advocate for this "fragile ideal" of racial and gender equality
Participation in sports has a strong influence on the development of African American youth and the Black community as a whole. The purpose of this paper is to explore the positive and negative effects that participating in sports has on the African American community using previous works and experiments on the topic. Results found that participation in athletics helps African American youth develop important social skills, creates an outlet to keep Black youth off the streets in impoverished neighborhoods, and establishes a vehicle to help Black youth get into college. However, the overemphasized importance of sports within the African American community through the media and Black families themselves has resulted in multiple negative effects including career immaturity, lower academic achievement and the exploitation of the Black intercollegiate athlete.
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Athletic Blacks vs Smart Whites: Why Sports Stereotypes Are Wrong
Posted: 05/20/2009 5:12 am EDT UPDATED: 05/25/2011 1:15 pm EDT *

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Before playing the Stanford team in the Final Four, UConn women's coach, Geno Auriemma, said people underestimated Stanford because they think white players are soft. More pointedly, he pointed out that his players, who are predominantly African-American, should be given the same respect for their discipline for which Stanford's team was praised. The coach was simply exposing stereotypes that have been around for a long time.
Black athletes are usually given credit for their "natural athleticism," while whites are CREDITED for their "hard work," "discipline" and "knowledge of the game"; as if Black athletes are naturally given the gift of great athleticism, and white people become great athletes through hard work, discipline and intelligence.
Every Black athlete who is successful has worked very hard and is knowledgeable of their sport. Every white athlete who is successful has natural athletic ability.
The problem with stereotypes in sports is that they often lead to general stereotypes. If you say "white men can't jump," why not "Black men can't read defenses"? And if Black men can't read defenses, maybe they can't READ BOOKS either?
Sports stereotypes have a real effect in the real world. Most employers are not concerned with employees' natural athletic abilities, so stereotypes of African-Americans being athletically superior for the most part do not help Blacks in the real world. However, the stereotypes of whites being hard working, disciplined and smart are helpful to them in FINDING EMPLOYMENT.
One of the most prevalent stereotypes in sports is that of the Black quarterback. BothRush Limbaugh and former sports commentator, Jimmy the Greek, have caught flack for their philosophies on African-American quarterbacks. Jimmy's explanation of how blacks were bred for physical skill but whites were bred for intelligence was blatant racism, but there have been many more subtle ways at insinuating the same point.
Former NFL M.V.P. Steve McNair played for a small Black college because every major college recruited him to play defensive back rather than quarterback, his natural position. Many African-Americans are discouraged from playing quarterback and asked to play other positions in high school, college and the professional ranks. How many other black M.V.P.-caliber quarterbacks were forced to play other positions because coaches didn't feel Blacks made good quarterbacks?
Biological factors do not compel people from certain races to excel in certain sports. Cultural factors do. China produces a lot of good ping-pong players because ping-pong is part of Chinese culture. Kenya produces a lot of marathon winners because long distance running is part of their culture. Jamaica produces sprinters because track and field has become a strong part of their culture and national identity. Baseball has become a big part of Latin American culture and subsequently several of baseball's top players come from Latin America. Basketball is a big part of African-American culture, so a good deal of players in the NBA are African-American.
Sports stereotypes are made to be broken. Athletic basketball players are popping up all over the world from all different backgrounds, from Argentina to Turkey, from Kenya to China. Boxing, once a sport dominated by African-Americans, is now being dominated by boxers of other ethnicities from all around the world. Russians are dominating the heavyweight division, and a Philipino, Manny Pacqiao, will fight an Englishman, Ricky Hatton, for the title of best fighter, pound for pound (at least while Floyd Mayerweather is retired).
While no Black quarterback has won a Superbowl since Doug Williams proved Jimmy the Greek wrong in 1988, two of the last three Superbowl winning coaches have been African-American. This goes even further to disprove Jimmy the Greek's theory, given that African-Americans have excelled at coach, the most cerebral position of all.
Despite all the stereotypes of Black athlete not being intelligent or caring about their education, an African American, Myron Rolle, has become the first major U.S. athlete to win the Rhodes SCHOLARSHIP since Bill Bradley. He bypassed a career in the NFL to get an education from Oxford University, one of the world's most prestigious schools.

Read a Story on Myron Rolle, Rhodes Scholar
When stereotypes begin to insinuate that certain races have certain characteristics, whether they be positive or negative, they fall into the same racist generalizations that are at the root of racism and race-based discrimination.
Black Males, Athletes and Academic Achievement
Posted: 05/07/2013 6:48 pm EDT UPDATED: 07/07/2013 5:12 am EDT *

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I entered Indiana University in 1979 as a freshman on SCHOLARSHIP from the inner city of the West Side of Chicago. Our team at Indiana University went on to win the NCAA championship in my second year, and I left college to enter the NBA in 1981. While I was a full-time player for Detroit Pistons, I remained a college student attending summer school every year until I graduated in 1987. My NBA career lasted 13 years and included two NBA championships.
Recently my community-based work has taken me back to my hometown of Chicago, where I have partnered with Mayor Rahm Emanuel and Father Michael Pfleger of St. Sabina Church to facilitate truces in an effort to stop youth gang violence through promoting education and peace basketball tournaments. I was blessed to have graduated at every level of my educational experience, especially since I grew up below the poverty line and had little advantage in life other than a mother who fought hard for her kids. While I was very fortunate in my academic and athletic endeavors, too many other black male athletes have a very different trajectory.
I am currently in the process of completing a MASTER'S DEGREE in Education at the University of California, Berkeley, where I have studied the connections between education and sports. In pursuing this degree, I have had the time to reflect on how we, as a society, make available access to education for athletes, especially black male athletes.
My co-author is a college professor and scholar of African American education. She studies the ways that race and racial stratification influence educational trajectories and opportunities to learn. She is currently chair of the African American Studies department at the University of California, Berkeley, and works in multiple ways with student athletes on campus.
We argue that college athletics, as it intersects with the educational and life outcomes of black male athletes, is in crisis. This crisis is evident in many ways, including the prevalence of once-aspiring professional black male athletes who end up with no degree, few job prospects, and used-up eligibility. Our educational system, and indeed our society, has failed these young people. One of the ways this manifests is in the low graduation rates for African American men's basketball players. Only 65 percent of African American basketball student-athletes graduated in 2013. There is a 25-percent gap between the graduation rates of white and black basketball student-athletes. Further, 21 of the 68 teams to compete in this year's NCAA basketball tournament had black graduation rates below 50 percent. Right here at our very own university, the University of California, Berkeley the graduation rate for black male basketball players in 2013 was only 33 percent. What this means is that many black men's basketball players are leaving college without the degree or requisite skills to embark upon a professional career, a price which only later down the road do students come to understand. We argue that these trends are not the product of conspiratorial athletic directors, coaches, or faculty, but are created by virtue of a system that creates a default pathway that too often does not include A COLLEGE DEGREE.
Why is it so common for athletes, especially black male athletes, to graduate at lower rates than their non-black counterparts? Certainly, it is not the case that black male athletes do not aspire to A COLLEGE DEGREE. I know from personal experiences as a player at Indiana University and then later as a coach at Florida International University, that the young men I coached and played with and against all desired to graduate from the institutions they attended.
However, there are structural forces and institutional structures at play that, when taken together, unintentionally constrain the ability of black male athletes to graduate. The first of these structural forces is that many black student athletes come to campus with poor academic preparation. This is often due to the poor quality of urban public schooling in our nation, and reflects recruiting practices and priorities that privilege athletics and not academics, thus putting young people in situations where it is extremely challenging for them to excel academically. Many (though not all) of these black male student athletes come from high-poverty neighborhoods, and thus face additional challenges in their transition to college. These include needing to support family members at home, struggling to meet their own expenses, and not having the same level of support as other students.
There is tremendous incentive for high-profile college athletes to focus on athletics rather than academics. For students from families struggling with poverty, there can be significant pressure to go pro early to better support their families. These financial pressures faced by students and their families are pressing and urgent for black male athletes who deal with the daily effects of poverty. When combined with the encouragement by family, the campus community, and others to see themselves as bound for a professional sports career, athletes view their futures as being more tied to their athletic performance than their academic performance, and they focus their energy and time accordingly. When this focus is underscored by the dire financial need of the athletes and their families, the incentive to becoming a better athlete is even more pronounced. Finally, black male student athletes experience significant academic stereotyping on college campuses. They have been trained to think about themselves as athlete's first and students second -- a message often propagated in part by university administrators, staff and faculty. This academic stereotyping is linked to longstanding and pervasive stereotypes about black men as anti-intellectual and as having innate physical abilities. It also poses a problem in that a dream of playing in the NBA is realized by just a fraction of the players at the college level. Education, once considered the backstop for an athlete that failed to make it to the professional level, is becoming all the more elusive.
It is critical that we find ways to better support African American basketball student-athletes in academic pursuits and in attaining college degrees. There is evidence that this is certainly possible. When I was a college basketball coach at Florida International University (FIU), I was faced with players -- by virtue of their prior educational experiences, and the college recruitment process -- who were ill prepared for the rigors of college academics. However by emphasizing and valuing the athlete as a student first and athlete second, I graduated 19 out of 21 players who played for me. My college coach Bob Knight at Indiana University valued us as students first and as a result, he graduated over 90 percent of the black players who played for him. In addition, several high-profile basketball PROGRAMS have successfully raised graduation rates for black players in recent years.
However, it is important to note that creating the structures and support systems to support Black student athletes requires that we reject the negative stereotypes about black male athletes; this is critical work, and speaks back to a system and a society that fails to reject these negative connotations of black men.

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The Effect that College Sport have on The Minorities
Participation in sports has an persuasive impact on the mental and physical development of African Americans and their community. Just about every young male have dreams of going to the league being young is a wonderful experience reason being your potential is unlimited. Participating in college sports aids in the further development of social skills, and also provide life skills to minorities that will be useful as they ascend in life. Not saying that the privileged don’t receive o take college sport serious but, in my opinion they’re for the most part trained as an young child in socializing and life skills. Minorities are realizing with a sense of urgency that college sports are the way out and to a better life. If they have the GPA and is good in sports the sky is the limit. They can start a business as an trainer in the sport they played and now if you’re a dual threat play two sports you can double your chance. The military isn’t your only option any more and if you good enough in basketball you can make it to the NBA. Kentucky Men’s basketball team has had the tables turned on them in recent years meaning African Americans have made UK a one stop shop for enhancing job skills and training Basketball. UK has had three of the top players in the NBA call UK home for less than a year its giving young African Americans a chance a the American dream. Another minority is women in college sports Title IX has done and is still serving women to this day. Title IX has giving all young women a chance at providing for their family the way young men can through sports. Young women have realized that sports are the way for a better life however, with young women its school the men not just the military, sports the opportunities are plentiful today for the young generation of women. They’re playing professional football, soccer, and the WNBA has afforded young women the opportunity to play professional basketball at home in front of their families. Because of Title IX young women dreams and admiration’s of being executives’ in the sport industry is possible more women are becoming AD’s and presidents of sport organizations. 40 years ago women as an AD was unheard of I would say it was the good ole boy network but, today women hold 4% of Division 1 Athletic Jobs. Women earn 60% of undergraduate degrees and 60% of master degrees, 47% of law and 37% of management MBA’s wow it has opened the door for women. Kim Ng is the senior vice of baseball operations for major league baseball with admirations of becoming a GM of a club one day. The final minority group is African American coaches. As of 2012 there was 18.6% of all division 1 head coaches so that would lead me to ask how is most of D1 players African American, the best players on the team, and most of them look to the coach to guide them for four years. Why isn’t there more African American as the leader of the team. VCU’s head coach Shaka Smart stated in an article coaches who talked on the record always ended our chats with the same concern: "I didn't say anything that will make me look bad, right?" I believe that most of the assistant coaches are recruiter most of the assistants are African American so that will attract the minority players which want to start so maybe this is why the head coach doesn’t look like most of the players. VCU's Shaka Smart added, "When that [recruiter] label occurs, now you get to the hiring process with the athletic director, and if he's influenced or impacted at all by that label, he's going to be less likely to hire that assistant coach, even though the truth is much different from the label." It's still a subject that makes athletic directors 89 percent of whom are white at the Division I level, per the report squirm. Minority coaches speak cautiously, because they don't want to be labeled as rebels or militants. I’ve highlighted the negative but let me flip it just a little. Although minorities are recruited not all of them stay in school to receive a degree the fact is not everyone will play professional sports so maybe they should concentrate on academics. Use the University because it will use you. To change those numbers we have to get that all important degree if we want to be head coaches in D1. Minorities are really the majority in college sport we bring in the revenue, get the coaches the contracts and many of us will leave without an degree we stay eligible to participate in sports by doing this we can start the process to becoming head coaches and athletic administrators. Minority males have to get serious with the education part of school its not a vacation or training camp for athletics but, it’s a real life skills and job training institute for life!