USA TODAY International Edition
Black college coaches seldom get 2nd chances
When compared with their white counterparts in college football, fewer are hired for head coaching jobs after being fired elsewhere.
The following trivia question still bothers Tyrone Willingham.
Who was the first Black coach in major- college football to get a second chance as a head coach after getting fired from a previous college head coaching job?
After 135 years of college football, this didn’t happen until 2004, when the Washington Huskies hired Willingham after his firing at Notre Dame. Sixteen years later, Willingham, now retired, is one of only four Black head coaches to have been rehired as a noninterim head coach in a Power Five conference after getting fired from a previous college head coaching job.
By contrast, the Southeastern Conference started this season with four white head coaches who are in their second or third head coaching jobs after being fired.
“Thank you for being willing to expose another inequity in the game of football and our society,” Willingham replied in an email to USA TODAY. “When I received your request for comments regarding Black coaches being rehired after being fired, I paused for a moment. I was aware that I was the first but saw it as a disappointing fact. But more importantly I asked myself, ‘ What could I add to the conversation, other than the fact that I was hired by an athletic director who looked past color?’ ”
USA TODAY emailed Willingham about this recently as three other Black coaches in the Power Five leagues try to make the most of their own second chances: Karl Dorrell at Colorado ( 2- 0), Mike Locksley at Maryland ( 2- 1) and Kevin Sumlin at Arizona ( 0- 2).
Besides Willingham, they are the only other non- interim Black head coaches to get second chances in col
lege at this elite level, according to data compiled by USA TODAY – stirring questions about another, lesser- known part of the racial divide in college football.
Why do white head coaches get recycled frequently after failures, compared with Black coaches who almost never get another opportunity?
Why are Stanford and Colorado the only major- college football programs out of 130 to ever hire more than two Black head coaches?
And why have only six major- college programs ever hired a second Black head coach after previously firing their first?
There have been 54 non- interim Black head coaches in major- college football, otherwise known as the Football Bowl Subdivision ( FBS), all since 1979. More than any other reason, this low number is why Black head coaches rarely get second chances – because there aren’t many who even got first chances.
‘ There exists significant bias’
The topic itself can be sensitive in a sport in which nearly 50% of the players are Black but more than 85% of the head coaches are white.
USA TODAY learned as much after assembling the following numbers amid a national reckoning over race since May 25, when George Floyd, a Black man, died under the knee of a white police officer, sparking protests:
Among all 130 FBS programs, including the 65 schools in the Power Five, there have only been six non- interim Black head coaches to get rehired in the FBS after getting fired as FBS head coaches: the four mentioned above, plus Charlie Strong at South Florida, after his firing at Texas, and Willie Taggart at Florida Atlantic, after his firing at Florida State. By contrast, there are 19 white FBS head coaches this year alone who previously were fired coaches or resigned under pressure as FBS head coaches.
Only two Black coaches ever have been hired at FBS programs after serving as non- interim head coaches in the NFL: Lovie Smith at Illinois and Herm Edwards at Arizona State, both hired since 2016. Compare that to just this year with five white college head coaches who previously were NFL head coaches.
“If you are a white pro football head coach, you are guaranteed a head coach job on the college level,” civil rights attorney Cyrus Mehri said during a recent University of Maryland online panel discussion about the under- representation of Black coaches in football. “You have that golden parachute.”
This year, there are 14 Black head coaches in the FBS, down from 17 in 2011.
“What has amazed me is that to my knowledge I have not read or heard of athletic directors being asked why they are not hiring Black head coaches,” Willingham wrote. “Nor am I aware of university presidents, boards of trustees or critical and key boosters being asked why Black coaches aren’t hireable or rehireable.”
USA TODAY tried. It asked a couple of prominent search firms that have been instrumental in filling head coaching positions: Parker Executive Search and Collegiate Sports Associates. Both said they make sure that universities – their clients – consider a diverse pool of candidates.
But ultimately decision- makers at schools make the hire, especially athletic directors to whom coaches report. They are part of a membership organization called the National Association of Collegiate Directors of Athletics ( NACDA).
“Thank you for the opportunity to be included in your upcoming story but at this point in time, we will decline,” NACDA CEO Bob Vecchione said when asked for comment on this matter.
LEAD1, a group that represents FBSonly athletic directors and programs, recently established a working group to develop recommendations to improve diversity hiring overall, not just in football.
“We’ve been meeting now for almost two months, going over recommendations and trying to figure out how to make the funnel bigger,” LEAD1 CEO Tom McMillen said.
Out of 130 FBS schools in 2019, 106 had white athletic directors and 115 had white presidents, according to The Institute for Diversity and Ethics in Sport at the University of Central Florida.
“In the hiring apparatus that exists within college football, which includes people within and outside the schools, in my opinion there exists significant bias and an unwillingness to actually confront it,” said Don Yee, a longtime agent for coaches and players including Nevada head coach Jay Norvell and NFL quarterback Tom Brady.
Regarding second chances for Black coaches, Yee has a similar viewpoint. He said the same people making hiring decisions appear to “take the position that once a Black head coach is hired, for whatever reason, the decision- makers within that apparatus feel that they have quote- unquote done their duty.”
One recent case that stands out is one of Yee’s former clients: Karl Dorrell.
‘ Perfect scenario’ for Dorrell
Dorrell, 56, was hired at Colorado in February essentially as a result of a fluke. After CU’s previous head coach, Mel Tucker, abruptly left for a bigger paycheck at Michigan State, the Buffaloes practically found Dorrell in their backyard ready to replace him.
Dorrell previously served as head coach at UCLA, from 2003 to 2007, when his team earned a bowl berth every year at a time when UCLA’s crosstown rival, Southern California, had become an overshadowing national power.
UCLA and CU have only been to one bowl game each since the 2016 season, making Dorrell’s tenure with the Bruins look good by comparison. But Dorrell had a 35- 27 overall record at UCLA back then and was fired for this perceived mediocrity in late 2007.
After that, the former UCLA receiver sort of fell into the background.
“In the back of my mind, I have always felt I would get another shot, but I just needed to continue to coach and gain more experience,” Dorrell said.
He served as position coach in the NFL with the Miami Dolphins, Houston Texans and New York Jets. He also got back into the college game for one season as offensive coordinator at Vanderbilt in 2014, when the Commodores finished 3- 9.
To help boost his prospects, he even decided to switch agents, cutting ties with Yee. Dorrell still was part of the candidate pool of active head coaching searches after his firing at UCLA, said Todd Turner, founder of Collegiate Sports Associates, an executive search firm that assists colleges in hiring coaches.
“There was no hesitancy about his ability from the people doing the hiring,” said Turner, the former athletic director at Washington who also hired Willingham in 2004.
Dorrell just didn’t get any takers until February, when the Buffaloes were scrambling to replace Tucker, who also is Black. Dorrell happened to own a house in nearby Lafayette, Colorado, and had served as an assistant coach at CU in the 1990s. “It just worked out to be a perfect scenario for me,” said Dorrell, whose team beat UCLA 48- 42 in his first game as CU’s head coach Nov. 7.
He declined an interview request to discuss race and hiring in college football.
DeWayne Walker, Dorrell’s former defensive coordinator at UCLA, remembers speaking with Dorrell about his future after both left the college game and were assistant coaches in the NFL.
“I would always tell him, ‘ Hey, you know you deserve another opportunity,’ ” said Walker, who is Black. “He wanted it. I just think the people that are making these decisions don’t look like us. They don’t.”
After Dorrell was fired at UCLA, Walker also interviewed to be his replacement but was passed over for Rick Neuheisel, who is white and previously was fired at Washington. Walker later left UCLA to become head coach at New Mexico State from 2009 until January 2013, when he stepped down voluntarily after four losing seasons in one of the toughest places to win in college football.
It was a strategic move to avoid being tarnished with more losing seasons and a firing.
“At the time I just felt like my career possibly was at stake if I had stayed there another three years and my record was 15- 50 or something like that,” said Walker, who moved on to become an assistant coach in the NFL.
To get second chances, Black candidates sometimes need to have a “hookup,” Walker said.
He cites Locksley as an example.
Locksley’s new cause
Locksley, 50, went 2- 26 during his first run as a head coach before getting fired at New Mexico in 2011.
Maryland hired him as offensive coordinator after that, a position that helped him become interim head coach in 2015, when head coach Randy Edsall was fired that October. But the Terrapins went 1- 5 under Locksley, seemingly dooming his future head coaching chances until he got his so- called hookup from one of the best coaches of all time: Nick Saban at Alabama.
“Some of it is rebranding,” Locksley said during the online panel discussion about Black coaches last month at Maryland. “I mean, I was a failed head coach at New Mexico.”
Saban took him in for three seasons, first as an off- the- field analyst in 2016 and later as offensive coordinator. Locksley even won the Broyles Award as the nation’s top assistant coach in 2018 amid a 14- 1 season for Alabama.
Having rehabilitated his image, he then got another chance as head coach at Maryland, where his team went 3- 9 in his first year in 2019 but this year is 2- 1 after beating Penn State on the road Nov. 7.
This past summer, he also made his comeback story part of a cause – the National Coalition of Minority Football Coaches, a nonprofit he founded to better prepare and promote minority coaches. Saban, who is white, is on the coalition’s board of directors, along with Willie Jeffries, who became the first Black coach at the major- college level in 1979 at Wichita State.
“There’s just not enough of us ( minority head coaches), and there are enough viable candidates,” Locksley said. “We wanted to bring light on the fact that there are viable candidates, that all they’re looking for is an opportunity.”
Locksley’s coalition is working with an analytics company that can help decision- makers evaluate minority coaches beyond their win- loss record. As any coach can attest, winning percentage doesn’t tell the whole story about a coach’s ability, especially if they don’t get many seasons or chances to prove themselves.
For example, white head coaches in the Power Five leagues got longer tenures than coaches of color – 6.8 on average compared to 3.4, according a study of outgoing coaches during the previous 10 years from Arizona State’s Global Sports Institute.
Analytic evaluations theoretically could factor in such variables, along with others such as a program’s budget size and inherited roster quality.
“It makes the hiring process more sophisticated,” said Raj Kudchadkar, executive director of the organization.
Turner, the search consultant and former Washington athletic director, still says the issue boils down to one thing. “It takes enlightened leaders, ADs, presidents, to make the decision they’re going to hire the minority candidate,” he said.
He said he hired Willingham at Washington because of his record at Stanford and Notre Dame, where he was fired with a 21- 15 record after three seasons.
“He was the best candidate, and I was delighted to hire him,” Turner said.
It ultimately didn’t work out for him at Washington, which was awash in problems upon his arrival there, including NCAA probation and a 1- 10 record the season before. Willingham, 66, finished his four years there with a record of 11- 37 and recently has lived in the Bay Area not far from Stanford, which gave him his first head coaching job in late 1994.
Stanford and Colorado remain the only FBS schools to have hired as many as three non- interim Black head coaches.
Yee, the agent, said this also is a function of the culture and strategy of those schools. CU, for example, has a progressive reputation and a pressing need to recruit players from metro areas in other states, where many players are Black. Stanford first hired a Black head coach ( Dennis Green) in 1989.
“Stanford didn’t really have a rich football history of sustained success, so they were willing to experiment,” Yee said. “They should be applauded for just being open- minded enough to expand opportunity.”
He said expanded opportunity in turn helps society at large.
“NFL football and college football are the last great public activities that can be a unifier, and so how NFL and college football are exhibited visually is important,” Yee said. “I can’t think of any other public activity that can bring people together from all different backgrounds.”