Maximus Rex
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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."
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.
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."
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.
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