Nearly six weeks after Jody Runge’s resignation, the University has hired her replacement for the position of women’s basketball coach. Former Oregon star Bev Smith was one of the five official candidates interviewed for the job, and all were white.
The University’s hiring process in this specific situation is a typical scenario at college athletic departments across the nation.
At the end of the 2000-01 intercollegiate football season, 29 head coaching positions became available. Only one of those positions was filled by a minority. Fitz Hill was the only African-American coach to be hired, and he now works for San Jose State University as its football coach.
Entering the 2001-2002 academic school year, 10.6 percent of coaches at universities across the nation will be minorities, according to statistics kept by the NCAA.
At the University, softball coach Rick Gamez and men’s basketball coach Ernie Kent are the only non-white coaches out of the 13 positions available.
Dave Williford, assistant athletic director of media services at the University, said there is not a lack of minority coaches on campus.
“Whether it be Mike Bellotti or Ernie Kent, I feel we’ve done very well on this,” he said.
Williford said the Athletic Department does not take into account the color of a coach’s skin when hiring, and he said that should never be an issue.
“I think you hire the best coach possible,” he said.
In the Pacific-10 Conference, men’s basketball has the highest percentage of minority coaches. Kent is one of five minorities who fill half of the head coaching positions in the conference. No minorities fill head coaching positions for women’s basketball in the Pac-10. Stanford coach Tyrone Willingham is the only minority coaching football in the conference.Players are apparently paying attention to the Pac-10’s situation, as well. Kellen Winslow Jr., son of Hall of Fame football player Kellen Winslow, announced on Feb. 15 he would attend the University of Miami instead of the University of Washington, even though he had originally given an oral commitment to the Northwest school. His father asked him to consider another university because of Washington’s lack of minority coaches.
University of Washington officials declined to comment on the younger Winslow’s decision.
Although many say strides have been made to ensure a more diverse group of coaches, they add that more can be done.
Floyd Keith, executive director of the Black Coaches Association, said a lack of minority coaches at the nation’s universities needs to be addressed.
“When you look at the percentage of participation, there is not a representative number of coaches,” he said. “The inequalities are there, and it is just a public awareness of what they are.”
He said it is important for athletic departments to hire coaches they like, but they need to review all possible applications for available positions.Schools also need to look at other factors when making hires for their head coaching positions, Keith said.
“It also has to be something that is good business,” he said, adding that salary is usually an influencing factor when hiring.
Keith added that coaching staffs are not the only areas where minorities are underrepresented.
“The numbers, when it comes to administration, are even worse than in the coaching ranks,” he said.
The NCAA tracks 23 sports and the coaching backgrounds of the schools in Divisions I, II and III. For men’s teams, 7,580 positions are available, and 10.7 percent of the positions are filled by minority coaches. In women’s sports, minorities make up an even smaller percentage.
Although approximately 300 more jobs exist in the women’s field, the percentage of minority coaches falls to 10.5. Combined, 1,649 minorities fill the 15,498 available coaching positions. Overall, minorities hold only 10.6 percent of the head coaching positions in NCAA-sanctioned sports.
Richard Lapchick, director of Northeastern University’s Center for the Study of Sport in Society, said schools need to exhaust all possibilities when interviewing for their head coaching positions.
“I think there are significant numbers out there, but how we go about looking for them is critical,” he said.
Lapchick, who heads a biannual gender and racial report card, which grades each professional sport and the NCAA, said he is dissatisfied by the lack of minority coaches at universities across the nation.
“I think the most disheartening thing is we have not come as far as we would have expected 20 years ago,” he said.