More Minorities At Helm At Division I Schools

In 2003, there were exactly three minorities among the 120 college football head coaches in Division I-A, now known as the Football Bowl Subdivision.

"It was easier to become a general in the Army than become a head football coach" if you were black, said Floyd Keith, executive director of the Black Coaches and Administrators Association, which began tracking the numbers that year.

"The numbers were so paltry, it was such a glaring error, a deficiency in athletics that it was hard to define," said Keith.

That's why Keith and other advocates are celebrating the increase to 15 football coaches of color this year. With Wednesday's hiring of Joker Phillips, Kentucky becomes the first state in the country to have three black head football coaches. That means ALL of the state's Bowl Subdivision football coaches are minorities.

Late in 2009, the University of Louisville hired Charlie Strong and Western Kentucky University hired Willie Taggart to guide their football programs.

"It's unheard of; it's never been done," Keith said.

UK's football program had black players as early as 1967, and it had a multitude of black quarterbacks in the 1970s — Bill Tolston, Derrick Ramsey, Larry McCrimmon, Terry Henry — before it was mainstream. But for Kentucky, which has not always had the most progressive track record in the realm of civil rights or on issues of race and sports, to be the first state with three black head football coaches at its major colleges is nothing short of head-turning.

The schools have made it clear that these hires weren't made for the history books, but to win more football games. Taggart is a Western alumnus who had also coached there. Strong has been an assistant at some of the top football programs in the country, including the University of Florida. Phillips, a UK alumnus who also coached at Cincinnati, Minnesota, Notre Dame and South Carolina before returning to Lexington as an assistant under Rich Brooks in 2003, was chosen as Brooks' successor two years ago.

"I don't think race had any impact at all in making these hires," said Wood Selig, the athletics director at Western. Selig said he was glad for the state to make history, but "we hired the best person. It sounds trite, but it's true."

At a press conference on Wednesday, Phillips even acknowledged that the only history that matters will be the win-loss record: "I'm an African-American hire, but I'll be an African-American fire if we don't win," he said, only partly joking.

So, Kentucky forged its way into the history books. But the biggest deal about all this might be that for many, it's not that big a deal.

'Qualified head coaches'

Take Frank Cardwell. He was the principal of Franklin-Simpson High School in Franklin when Joker Phillips went there. Phillips was always a standout, Cardwell says, particularly as part of the back-to-back state football championship teams in 1979 and 1980.

"I wish we could talk more about the fact that these gentlemen are qualified head coaches rather than they are black" Cardwell said. "From the first day I knew Joker, I don't think I ever heard the word 'race' come out of his mouth."

For UK President Lee Todd, a reputation for increased diversity is a plus, but, "we chose the best coach we had available to replace Coach Brooks, and I'm sure Louisville chose the best coach they could find in America to head their program," he said. "So these coaches are not being chosen because they're African-American. They're being chosen because they have the skills and they happen to be African-American."

Certainly for a generation of young people who now see President Barack Obama, a few black football coaches are hardly worth a remark.

Former UK receiver Keenan Burton, who has played for the St. Louis Rams the last two seasons, said some people might focus on race, but Phillips' greatest benefit to the program is consistency.

"If you don't hire him, your program starts over," Burton said. "So you hire the best man, and Joker Phillips happens to be black."

This post was edited on 1/10/10 at 2:24 pm