Is Willingham Racist?
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"The Rock," cfb360.com, October 8, 2008
When Tyrone Willingham publicly decried the lack of head coaching jobs for black Americans earlier this year, he made an irrefutable point: that something in the system is broken. {snip}
“You’ve got to explain the numbers,” said Willingham. “There’s more than one answer. But it’s alive and well in certain places, yes.”
A little research shows that he should be pointing the finger in the mirror.
Willingham, together with enablers like John Saunders and Mark May, has done as much to hurt the cause of minority coaches as any other single person I can think of. I would argue that he’s created new minority roadblocks others must now overcome.
{snip}
{snip} The stepping stone to a head coaching position is a coordinator position. Granted, Willingham skipped this step on his way to the head coaching position at Stanford, but being a coordinator is almost a prerequisite to the head coaching position (note that it certainly doesn’t guarantee success.)
Yet in his seven years at Notre Dame and Washington, Willingham has hired exactly zero minority coordinators.
Zero. That’s remarkable for someone willing to throw the charge of racism on the table. Zero into the position that is the stepping stone to the head coaching chair.
In contrast, since Willingham left, Notre Dame has filled both of its coordinator positions with black coaches.
{snip}
So who’s racist? The school that hires a minority, or the head coach who hasn’t hired one in seven years?
There would have been no better way to further the cause of minority coaches than by the notoriety gained by being a coordinator at Notre Dame. I don’t know what the minority pool looks like for Head Coaches, but theoretically you would think there has to be a bigger pool to choose from when hiring for a coordinator position.
Yet Tyrone Willingham hired whites for those key positions . . . again, the ones that make up the pool for the next head coaching ranks.
“You Have to Explain the Numbers.”
But his worst transgression, by far, was legitimizing the idea that it’s okay to blame racism without cause for personal failures.
Willingham was given the biggest stage in the college football world and failed. He was given one of the biggest stages in the Pac-10 and failed. There’s no loss of dignity in failure. There is great loss of dignity in blaming racism without cause or proof.
Worse, at Notre Dame he did it the coward’s way, by not challenging charges of racism in the press that he knew had no factual support, even when put on the spot by John Saunders, all while banking millions from Notre Dame with the knowledge that he had already contacted the University of Washington about leaving Notre Dame.
{snip}
This isn’t just one data point. Willingham’s pattern of unassociated blame has continued at Washington.
When Willingham’s job was on the line last year, Athletic Director Todd Turner intervened, lining up power brokers while James Bible, president of the Seattle-King County NAACP, requested a meeting with UW President Mark Emmert to discuss “the value of Coach Willingham to this community.”
{snip}
If you can’t fire a black head coach with cause (and an enormous payday), than what signal does that send to other schools who might hire a minority head coach?
I’ll answer.
To a school, it means you may not be able to fire him when you want to despite performance on the field. {snip}
I know this because “fireability” is a key employment proposition at every major company. {snip}
In college football, however, it’s not just cost which is prohibitive—it’s also the negative publicity that comes with firing a minority head coach. Willingham’s passive-aggressive tacit approval of racial attacks on Notre Dame showed everyone how painful a process that can be.
{snip}
So if you’re an AD on the sideline, you’re thinking, “Do I need this headache? I just want a winning team.”
{snip}
(Posted on October 10, 2008)
Comments
Would somebody explain to me the lack of white basketball players? The NBA is almost totally dominated by blacks.
Posted by at 7:05 PM on October 10
I believe that blacks lack critical thinking skills which is one reason they distill every issue to racism. Discussing facts with blacks is a futile endeavor. They complain that blacks are over represented in the prison system but just try showing them the crime statistics. Pointless.
Posted by sbuffalonative at 7:46 PM on October 10
Good article. As a fanatic college football fan, with no intrest in the NFL game, Black Head Coaches have proven to be “PC Underachievers”, as even Mississippi State has shown in the SEC………Sports is the last bastion in America where one is graded intirely on “RESULTS”…….Where affirmative action is out of the loop, and all pursue victory with the best qualified athletes……But, coaching PC circumvents the process as expected.
Posted by roho at 9:15 PM on October 10
When Tyrone Willingham publicly decried the lack of head coaching jobs for black Americans earlier this year, he made an irrefutable point: that something in the system is broken. {snip}
“You’ve got to explain the numbers,” said Willingham. “There’s more than one answer. But it’s alive and well in certain places, yes.”
———————
You can bet when a black like Willingham here cries “racism” it’s from a self-serving point-of-view. He’s only concerned about whether he’s going to get and keep a high paying coaches job. He’s also putting his employer on notice that if they even think of getting rid of him he has no problem playing the race card against them. This is the kind of stuff that keeps people from hiring blacks in the first place.
Posted by RHG at 9:31 PM on October 10
Actually, three of the last four NBA Most Valuable Players were white …
Posted by Bball player at 10:22 PM on October 10
Is Tyrone Willingham racist?
I don’t know. We need a word for “someone who dishonestly uses accusations of racism for personal gain.”
How about “accusation racist.” If we have that phrase, then we can turn the word back on itself every time.
Is Willingham an accusation racist? Yes.
Posted by Reader-1 at 11:56 PM on October 10
Coaching big time football is one of the most demanding jobs in the world. Coaching takes intelligence. Any black with the requisite intelligence has been scooped up long ago to be a highly paid CEO or given a partnership in a big law firm.
I read somewhere that Jimmy Johnson, one of the best coaches in history, has an IQ of 160. I can believe it. Can you imagine a black guy with an IQ of 160 settling for a coaching job? He would be have the presidency of MIT and a dozen other money making position.
Successful coaches are workaholics. They stay up all night watching game films and grading players. No partying, no drugs. Most of the time coaching is unrewarding if you want to get to the top. It is a dog eats dog business. As soon as you think you’ve got an edge your assistants are hired away and everybody is beating you with your own weapons.
You can readily see all the attributes necessary for success in coaching are the very traits blacks are noted for not having.
We have Romeo Crennel in Cleveland. He was formerly defensive coordinator with brainy Bill Belichick. Belichick was the real brains; Crennel was just a glorified ombudsman to the black players. But the Browns had to hire or face the fury of the black power lords. In the NFL a team can looses and still make money.
Big time college football is different. Lose games and you loose money. That is why there will never be but a few black head coaches in big time college football. Donna Shalala is president of Miami. She hired a black. It takes some loony character like her for blacks to get the job.
As an ND fan I noticed that its defense is poor; black defensive coordinator. Weis takes care of the offense.
Posted by P Noctura at 2:17 AM on October 11
Ironically, he recruited lots of white athletes at Notre Dame and coached majority white teams.
Awful coach though, as he is proving at the U. of Washington.
Posted by Boone at 8:53 AM on October 11
I don’t think Willingham is racist, but he doesn’t discourage anyone, namely John Saunders, from charging he (Willingham) was a victim of racism at ND. Throughout his sub-par coaching career he’s recruited mostly white players and hired mostly white assistant coaches. He simply cannot coach, doesn’t seem to know very much about the game of football, is a lazy recruiter and makes no attempt at being innovative.
That’s he’s lasted this long is due solely to his skin color and public facade as a wise black sage. He will be fired by UW by season’s end, but thanks to black skin privilege he’ll be given a job as a commentator on ESPN or ABC.
Sports casters and the NCAA are twisting themselves into knots to increase the number of black head coaches, yet could care less that whites are chronically underrepresented at positions like tailback, wide receiver and cornerback.
Posted by Super Dave at 6:38 PM on October 11
“Would somebody explain to me the lack of white basketball players? The NBA is almost totally dominated by blacks.”
Posted by at 7:05 PM on October 10
Well could it be because:
(1) Basketball is instinctive;
(2) Blacks are quicker;
(3) Blacks are faster;
(4) Blacks are stronger;
(5) Blacks generally practice basketball far more;
(6) Blacks generally can’t get into academic institutions but for an athletic skill;and because,
(7) Blacks think they can all make the league and become millionaires.
While there are some white exceptions in the league, while being outstanding players in their own right, merely prove the general rule. For example,while there is at least one great semi black golfer, most golfers on the tour are white.
_________________________________________________________________
This football coach is marginal at best. His best year was at
Stanford when the PAC Ten was down. Notre Dame was a disaster. He will be fired from this job at the end of the year as well.
In football great coaches can come into any program and year after year the program improves; with respect to poor coaches the programs gradually decline. Compare Washington to Alabama.
Of course, at the University of Alabama where football is not only a sport but literally life and death, it would be one thing to have the complete team composed of very big, very strong, very fast, and very black players [ which is basically does by the way] but quite another for the University to be expected to hire a black coach just to be politically correct.
Today, a college football coach in a football factory is literally a CEO of a major industry and for that one has to be fairly bright.
MoMo
Posted by MoMo at 7:58 PM on October 11
P Noctura at 2:17 AM on October 11
Great take sir.
“We have Romeo Crennel in Cleveland.” Excellent example. If Romeo was White he would have been fired months ago. As a football lover (college only) I have been trying for years to explain to the nitwits of the world that the reason there are many black players in football yet so few black coaches is because playing a specific position and understanding the big picture of the aggregate of each position are two different things. Jimmy Johnson is an excellent example. Does anyone know what, if any, college he played for yet alone head coached? If I remember right (I read his excellent book many years ago) he was a only mediocre player at Arkansas who never played in the NFL. But he must have that 160 IQ/work ethic because his record with the Cowboys is legend. And is it me or are there more and more predominately White college teams popping up lately?
Posted by at 1:13 AM on October 12
“If Romeo was White he would have been fired months ago.”
Uh, not exactly.
The Cleveland Browns have had 7 coaches (including two interim) in the last 20 years since Marty Schottenheimer left in 1988:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cleveland_Browns
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bill_Belichick
36-44
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bud_Carson
12-19-1
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jim_Shofner
1-6
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chris_Palmer_(American_football)
5-27
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Butch_Davis
24-35
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Terry_Robiskie
(black) 1-2
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Romeo_Crennel
20-28
Even the genius, Bill Belichick finished his tenure with Cleveland 8 games under 500, the same as has Crennel. In the 42 years since the NFL-AFL merger, Cleveland has had 12 head coaches, two with winning records, has never appeared in a Superbowl, much less won one and has contended for the AFC championship twice.
BTW there have been very few great NFL coaches who were hall of fame players because great players tend to go into broadcasting which offers more money, a more stable lifestyle and half the hours.
And Johnson has won 3 Superbowls, but his career record as an NFL coach, is a solid, yet unspectacular 80-64.
Posted by at 12:28 PM on October 12
Actually it’s a similar story in Cincinnati where Marvin Lewis with a career record of 42-43 makes him the most successful Bengal’s coach in 25 years.
http://www.nflteamhistory.com/nfl_teams/cincinnati_bengals/
coaching_history.html
Posted by at 12:39 PM on October 12
I’m bemused by all these Bantus who foam at the mouth about racism, like Hank Aaron and Frank Robinson did about baseball- even as they were happily cashing paychecks issued by their “racist” sports. Football, basketball, boxing - same thing.
Am I glad I’m a NASCAR fan - only the wheels are black!
Posted by Soprano Fan at 4:53 PM on October 12
As much as I enjoy college football, I realize that giving most of the players a “degree” is a joke, and it’s degrading to the students who actually earn them. Same with most of the coaches—affirmative actions. The only real football being played at the college level is in the Ivy league. Harvard, for example, cannot give out scholarships or money of any kind, so if you’re good enough to make the team, you’re also good enough to be in the classroom—no AA, no scholarships, no free rides, no tutoring or hand holding going on. In college football, they are the only true “student athletes” left. Money has corrupted the game so much the so-called “students” playing the game are really a quasi-professional group looking for NFL riches. Very few achieve that, but most college/university administrators have become addicted to the revenue football brings. It also pays for the silly title IX sports programs the government forces on them.
Posted by Veritas at 5:57 PM on October 12
If blacks are faster, quicker, stronger, then why is it that:
1. Whites dominate boxing. 16 of the 20 belts from middlewight through heavyweight were held by whites at the end of 2007. Blacks only hold 3 belts in these same weight classes and it will likely be only 1 or 2 by the end of the year.
2. Whites dominate MMA. Six of the top 10 fighters in the world are white with only 2 blacks (Anderson Silva and Rampage Jackson) in the top 20.
3. Whites dominate international basketball and almost always beat all-black or almost all-black U.S. teams.
4. Whites dominate international soccer and all-white teams like Italy and Spain won the most recent World Cup and European championships.
5. The worlds strongest man competition, weighlifting, wrestling, martial arts and almost all other sports besides sprinting and marathoning are dominated by whites.
6. The NFL’s whitest teams (Patriots, Colts, Packers, Chargers) are always at the top and in the playoffs while the blackest squads (Cardinals, Chiefs, Bengals and formerly the Saints) are laughing stocks?
7. All-white or almost all-white high school football squads usually win state championships against all-black or mostly blacks teams.
Posted by Boone at 9:05 PM on October 12
1. For what, 5 years now? Granted, whites have made inroads against blacks in the sport of boxing. Some is skill and some is simply the crookedness of boxing. Many of these whites are Europeans from small Eastern block countries with governments that pay off the crooks that run the sanctioning bodies. In addition, The judges and referees are almost always in their home pockets. When white Americans start winning titles, wake me up.
2. Did you forget Rashard Evans? That would make 3 of the top 10 plus a few Brazilians who would be considered black here.
3. I guess you took a long nap during the Olympics. The US team, (black) won it’s games by an average of 27 ppg.
4. Yes, and black teams from Brazil and France won two of the last three world cups. (As well as the Nigerians winning the Olympics in 2004.
5. World’s strongest man, wrestling, weightlifting yes, martial arts, no. Whites, blacks, Hispanics and Asians are all well represented in the dozens of forms of martial arts.
6. Every team in the NFL has more blacks than whites. Blacks make up 13% of the US population.
7. A little vague there, isn’t it?
Posted by at 6:43 PM on October 13
Blacks are inferior to whites in overall muscle strength, especially upper body strength. Numerous physiological studies have confirmed this, as does the domination of whites in Olympic weightlifting and Strongman contests. The domination by whites in these events is even greater than that of blacks in sprinting, which is their primary athletic talent. Blacks are better than whites at sprinting, but not at strength contests.
The NBA changed some rules and ignored others to flood the league with black players. When held to the rules as written, blacks do not perform all that well as they are no longer allowed to double dribble, run without dribbling (to build up speed for a big dunk), palm the ball etc. This is why all black teams have not fared well against other squads at the world level most of the last 15 years. In Beijing, officials curiously decided to look the other way and let the NBA play as they do in the NBA, and refused to call falls on the Americans. One wonders how much money was pushed under the table to help things along.
The NFL has had a similar bias against whites the last several decades. All you have to do is watch the combines, not the highlights chosen for viewing by the media, but the actual events themselves. Whites who outperform blacks are written off, ignored or shifted to other positions, as it seems their ability confuses or frightens the powers that be. As a former Div 1 player who has been through this, I know from whence I speak. Officials would look around me to get at the blacks behind me I had easily beaten in all events.
The team from France was not a black team. Look again. Brazil is a great soccer nation. It is also huge, with the population being soccer mad. One has to conclude that if you had a white nation of 230 million that was soccer mad or even 100 million, it would do well.
Rashad Evans is not considered a top 20 MMA fighter. He is considered by fighters and fans a “project” who is obviously being led along in order to try and give the public a black champion. He lost 8:30 seconds of a fight against Tito Ortiz and was given a win. He was clearly beaten, easily, by the naturally smaller Michael Bisping, but was handed a win. Evans KO’d Chuck Liddell, a man ten years older, who’s been getting his head rattled the last two years. In point of fact in the world of MMA, not only do whites dominate, they easily dominate. Most blacks in MMA seem to become confused by fighters who employ several skills at once. This has been commented on time and again, especially by latino fighters who aren’t forbidden from speaking their minds. Of course there are great black MMA fighters, Anderson Silva is a great fighter. But he’s the exception, like white sprinter Jeremy Wariner. Most black MMA fighters are along the lines of Bob Sapp or Kimbo Slice.
Boxing? Same organizations. Same officials. But the talent pool is larger. For several decades, blacks from the US dominated with their competition being only each other and maybe a white here or there from a very small pool of fighters. Now that lots of Europeans are fighting - and they aren’t brainwashed by American TV - the blacks are having a much tougher time. It isn’t payoffs as the American ghetto fighters are being KO’d. Some of it is their own cockiness, as they believe everyone on earth is afraid of them. In the heavyweight division, it’s the strength of the Eastern Europeans, period. Fast hands and a hard head are not enough to withstand the sheer force these heavyweights generate in their punches. White domination is why the media is deriding boxing.
The Patriots, Colts, Packers and Chargers are among the very few teams that have been about 50/50 black / white. But the bias in the NFL “selection” system was pointed out above. It is true that the “blackest” teams generally finish at the bottom. If you doubt the NFL rigs things, then step back and take a look at the quarterback situation. The league is behind the scenes forcing mediocre QB’s into the league. The league and media sing their praises, try to convince us they are the real deal. Then we actually get to see them play. Vince Young, Michael Vick, you name them. 19 out of every 20 are so bad that any white so talentless at the position would be run out on a rail. Go ahead, watch them. One look and they start running.
In HS sports, such as football in S. California, white teams KO the black “power” schools because they not only have talent, they have better fundamentals.
Posted by Tell it like it is at 1:12 AM on October 21