Diversifying leadership may lie with athletes

Dr. Richard Lapchick estimates he speaks at 25 colleges and universities each year. As the director of the Institute for Diversity and Ethics in Sport at the University of Central Florida, he said his visits follow a familiar pattern that reveal hidden frustrations on campus.

He is picked up at the airport by the highest-ranking person of color — or sometimes a woman — at the school. He listens as they tell him how much they love the school and how great the host city is for raising a family.

But by the end of the trip, the same person who picked him up is often now asking for help finding a way out of the university, where they don’t see opportunities for advancement.

College athletics exemplifies the frustration Black sports professionals feel when trying to climb the ladder of success in that field.

Attitudes are changing slowly, but Lapchick said there’s a faster path forward — and it starts with athlete activism.

He calls it a social reckoning, those times when college and professional athletes have used their voices in ways that have made a difference.

“When those voices turn inward…it will impact those hires,” Lapchick said.

According to NCAA figures from 2019, the latest year numbers are available, 9% of athletic directors were Black at Division I schools that are not historically Black colleges and universities.

One challenge for Blacks landing top-level administrative or management jobs is that hiring managers often choose

Lapchick