Group Seeks More Minority Coaches

The Black Coaches and Administrators stepped up pressure on major-college football programs to increase the number of minority head coaches Wednesday by announcing it will retain an employment lawyer to provide free consultations for job candidates.

Floyd Keith, executive director of the Indianapolis-based BCA, tried to avoid talking about a possible civil rights lawsuit but acknowledged information from job candidates “could be followed through on a legal avenue.

“This is the way we have to deal with it at this point,” he said.

At the end of this season, there will be four black head coaches among 119 schools (3 percent) in the Football Bowl Subdivision—Buffalo’s Turner Gill, Houston’s Kevin Sumlin, Miami’s Randy Shannon and Mississippi State’s Sylvester Croom.

Among players in Division I football, 46 percent are black.

On Wednesday, the BCA issued its fifth annual report card on the hiring processes used by Division I college football programs to fill openings for head coaches.

BCA president Paul Hewitt, men’s basketball coach at Georgia Tech, said the report cards have succeeded in increasing minorities among job candidates and on search committees. But, he wrote in the report, they are too often not the final choice.

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