Despite pledge, NCAA ranks largely white

Last September, the NCAA started circulating a pledge intended to deal with a problem that continues to rankle U.S. college sports: diversity in hiring.

While racial diversity on the sidelines and front offices of professional sports leagues has improved in the past decade, the situation in U.S. college athletics, according to NCAA data, remains largely the same: Most athletes in the high-profile sports of football and basketball are black, but the overwhelming majority of coaches and administrators are white.

The NCAA’s diversity pledge is voluntary and doesn’t include requirements or punishments. Nearly 30 per cent of the NCAA’s 1,200 member schools have not signed the pledge. While in some cases this may have been an oversight, presidents of two universities — Notre Dame and Boston College — said they purposely declined.

Notre Dame president Father John Jenkins “feels strongly that principles of such importance should be authored and pronounced by Notre Dame itself and applied university-wide, and not as the product of an association focused exclusively on collegiate athletics,” university spokesman Paul Browne said.

Boston College president Father William Leahy didn’t sign in part because the pledge wasn’t strong enough, according to university spokesman Jack Dunn, who pointed out the school just hired Martin Jarmond, who is black, as athletic director.

While Notre Dame and Boston College have their own initiatives, both still have heavily white athletic departments, a review of their staff directories shows. Of the 23 members of Notre Dame athletics administration, there is one black woman and one Asian-American man. The head coaches have a similar makeup: 16 of 18 are white. At Boston College, all 23 sport head coaches are white.