FSU’s Taggart, Babers meet in rare matchup
When Willie Taggart was hired to become Florida State’s head coach, it was a groundbreaking moment for the program and university.
In 2017, Taggart became the first black head football coach in program history. He was also the first black head coach at his three previous stops — Western Kentucky, USF and Oregon.
“I just figured pretty much, for the most part, wherever I go I’m going to be the first African-American coach,” Taggart told the Sentinel shortly after his hire in 2017. “But I do understand my role. And I do understand a lot of people are counting on me to do well, and I appreciate that.”
In 2015, Syracuse made a trailblazing hire as well, tapping Dino Babers to become the program’s first black head coach.
For the second consecutive season, Taggart and Babers will coach against one another when the Seminoles (3-4, 2-2 ACC) host Syracuse (3-4, 0-3 ACC) on Saturday at Doak Campbell Stadium. The game will kick off at 3:30 p.m. and air on ESPN2.
While the contest pits two struggling, middling teams, it also highlights an issue in college sports: the lack of minority head coaches.
There are 19 minority head coaches out of 130 at the FBS level, which represents roughly 15% of all coaches.
Taggart and Babers are two of three in the ACC — Miami’s Manny Diaz being the other one — and two of the 12 who lead Power Five programs.
Taggart and Babers are two of 14 black head coaches. Of the 1,560 potential regular-season Football Bowl Subdivision games this year, only nine — including two on Saturday — feature two black head coaches facing each other.
“As rare as it is to have a black coach or a Latino coach in college sport, the fact that two of them are playing against each other makes it even [rarer],” said Richard Lapchick, the director of The Institute for Diversity and Ethics in Sport (TIDES), which is based at UCF and publishes an annual racial and gender report card on FBS and Division I leadership.
Lapchick has urged college football and NFL leaders to prioritize minority hires since the 1980s. He was involved in the NFL’s adoption of the “Rooney Rule.” The rule, implemented in 2003, mandates NFL teams with a head coaching vacancy must interview at least one diverse candidate for the position.
Lapchick said the trend of hiring minority coaches in college football has stagnated in recent years. One of the challenges is when an FBS coaching job opens, the search lasts a couple of days instead of a couple of months. As a result, the pool of potential minority candidates shrinks.
Lapchick added athletic directors tend to hire someone with whom they are familiar. If the athletic director is white, the candidates they know also tend to be white. The 2018-19 DI Leadership Racial and Gender Report Card stated 84.6% of athletic directors were white.
“I think it’s difficult for minority coaches to do that because their circle of coaching jobs is so fragile anyway,” Lapchick said. “Willie Taggart has faced all kinds of pressure in Tallahassee in his first two years there.”