Progress needs to continue in hiring
Barriers remain for Black head football coaches in Texas
With Black History Month ending, Lydell Wilson wanted to honor Luther Booker, Alex Durley, Robert Woods, Allen Wilson, Mike Jinks, Willie Williams, Don Hill and Roy Harper.
Those are Black head coaches who have won UIL football state championships. Lydell Wilson — currently the George Ranch quarterbacks coach and the first Black head football coach in three districts, including Katy ISD with Seven Lakes — is the other. Wilson’s 2007 Lamar Consolidated won a Class 4A state title.
“‘I didn’t realize it was not that many people,’ ” Wilson said about the reaction to a tweet he posted about the number of Black head coaches who have won UIL state football titles. “It’s really not because we haven’t had the opportunity to be there.”
Black coaches say progress has been made in the past decade and is more noticeable now in the head coaching ranks of Texas high school football. There are still many age-old stigmas to hurdle, though.
The lack of diversity among NFL head coaches is one of the most publicized issues in sports.
Two minorities — including the Texans’ David Culley, who’s Black — were hired to fill seven head coach openings in the NFL this offseason. There are four minority, and just two Black, head coaches out of 32 in a league whose players are 70 percent Black.
Many say it’s worse at the highest level of college football. Two minorities, one Black, were hired for head coaching positions during the Football Bowl Subdivision’s last cycle. Mar
shall’s Charles Huff made it 12 Black head coaches out of 130 FBS jobs. It is estimated that roughly half of the players in NCAA’s top division are Black.
Many believe the outdated hiring practices at the highest levels of the game trickle down to Texas high school football. The reason: It’s the way it’s always been done.
“There are only certain particular jobs as Black head coaches that we can get,” Wilson said. “Most of the time, the situations we’re going to be put in are situations where the program has not been successful and you’re not going to be able to make those long runs. … That’s probably why there are not a lot of Black people that have won a UIL state championship.”
Would there ever be a Black football head coach at Southlake Carroll, Austin Westlake or Highland Park?
The feeling not every job is truly available to Black coaches is prevalent, and many say it’s an area in the profession where much more work needs to be done.
“I used to walk around the state and feel like a semi-rock star because I had a job in the suburbs,” Arlington Sam Houston coach and 20-year veteran Anthony Criss said.
Criss is heavily involved with the state’s Black Coaches Association, an informal group dedicated to aiding its members in this aspect of the profession.
Criss remembers that two decades ago it was difficult to find a Black coach west of Fort Worth. There weren’t many in heavily Black East Texas either. He surmised there might have been 50 in a state with over 1,000 jobs at the time.
Criss echoed Wilson on the toughest jobs often being reserved for Black coaches.
“We used to joke and say we’re the clean-up coach,” Criss said, adding that it used to be a dream to see Black coaches land at established programs.
Teams are more integrated than ever, and some jobs call for the head coach or coaching staff‘s ethnicity to match with the team’s, but that is still inconsistent in the sport.
On not every community being ready to embrace a minority or Black coach, Criss said: “The district may be ready, but is the flagship (school) ready? I believe we are knocking down that wall.”
One instance of the wall starting to come down is Converse Judson’s Rodney Williams being promoted from offensive coordinator to take over as head coach in 2019. Judson is one of the more highprofile jobs in the state.
Criss said one focus for the Black Coaches Association is to help put young coaches in the best position to be hired.
It starts with coordinator jobs, particularly on the offensive side.
Elsik coach Aric Sardinea concurs. He is the first Black head football coach in the school’s history. He remembers being one of the few Black coordinators in suburban Dallas during his time as offensive coordinator at Garland Rowlett in the mid-2000s.
He’d gotten the opportunity to take over a topnotch job in Class 3A Daingerfield in 2011, helping the team to a state title game in 2012.
“At the end of the day, it’s got to start with the opportunities that are given to coordinators,” said Sardinea, adding that Black coordinator hires in suburban districts are a plus. “It’s got to start there. When I became a coordinator in high school, I knew it was going to give me a chance.”
Black head coaches still fight other battles, such as coded language, particularly in reference to the success of their programs.
Wilson said Black coaches rarely get as much credit for their success as white counterparts.
“No one asked me, ‘Hey Coach, what did you do when you took over that program?’ ” Wilson said of his Lamar Consolidated tenure. “It had 30 kids from grades nine through 11. What did you do in those five or six years to grow those numbers to win a state championship? They never came and acknowledged the fact that we did a good job. It’s always, ‘Oh, you had a great running back.’ ”
Criss also said he rarely has been complimented for having a well-coached team or outcoaching an opponent.
Black coaches also say second chances are harder to come by for Black coaches, something most evident in the NFL and college football.
“It’s almost like you have to do something twice before people believe you actually did it,” Wilson said.
Wilson, for one, is looking for another chance to be a head coach. Colleagues are perplexed it hasn’t happened already for the state championship-winning coach.
Wilson hopes what he’s done already in his career has helped change the landscape for others.
Black coaches make it a point to mark the progress. Criss, for example, sees more moments worth celebrating today.
He points to Cedar Hill’s DJ Mann being named head coach at a successful Lubbock Coronado program.
Black coaches in suburban districts are becoming more common. In Houston for example, three of Klein ISD’s five football head coaches are Black: Klein Forest’s Johnathan Wilson, Klein Oak’s Jason Glenn and Klein Collins’ Adrian Mitchell. Frisco ISD and Mesquite ISD have made gains in this regard, too.
Palo Duro hired Amarillo ISD’s first Black UIL football head coach in Eric Mims, a graduate of the school.
“Now progress is being made to where I can tell you 16 or 17 years ago, that wasn’t happening,” Criss said.
Criss hopes districts continue to self-examine their hiring practices and question if they are doing everything to make the game as inclusive as it can be.
The work won’t be done until it is.