Solving NCAA Football Mystery

Since Sunday I have struggled with the following quote in the NY Times:

“It’s more frustrating than anything that I can think of right now…I can’t see my way clear to the solution.”

So said NCAA President Miles Brand in Pete Thamel’s Times article questioning the lack of African American football coaches in Division I-A (now the FBS I guess).

There are currently only 4 African American coaches among the 119 FBS schools and only one — Miami’s Randy Shannon — coaches at a school that is eligible to play in the BCS Championship game.

The issue has been recently highlighted by the fact that Auburn overlooked Turner Gill (the guy who turned around Buffalo) for a guy who was fired at Iowa State after going 5–19 over two seasons. Auburn blew it.

But back to Miles. Perhaps he should dig in to the NCAA men’s basketball situation. Men’s NCAA basketball D-I programs have African Americans as head coaches at almost 30% of schools. Surely there are some learnings to be had there?

Better yet, how about playing off of Georgia Tech basketball coach Paul Hewitt’s idea of having this be driven by the young recruits. Hewitt’s example is simple: if offensive and defensive recruits went to play for say Shannon at Miami, and in a couple years Miami won the BCS title, perhaps that would trigger more minority hiring.

Ok, so how about Miles does something to make this issue front and center to recruits and their parents.

How about mandating that each recruiting packet or letter sent to a kid contains the summary stats of that school’s hiring profile across not just the coaching staff but the university’s administrative positions (no surprise that these jobs are underrepresented with minorities as well).

At least let the players and parents make an informed decision based on the inclusion of this information.

Then there’s always the idea of having the NCAA spend as much time on this issue as they do defending the current bowl system and negotiating their TV contracts.