With Black History Month upon us, let’s look at coaching opportunities for minorities in the ACC. 

The schools that make-up the ACC cannot be accused of prejudiced hiring practices, at least when it comes to men’s basketball.  Despite being known as the best basketball conference historically, the league’s schools have shown modern, integrated hiring practices.  A total of seven ACC men’s basketball programs are led by non-white coaches (miami, nc state, bc, georgia tech, clemson, fsu, and uva).  Throw in the fact Seth Greenberg is Jewish, and you have two-thirds of the teams being led by coaches that are not white Christians. 

This is quite refreshing for a conference with deep Southern roots.  By comparison, the ACC is much more well integrated than the other major Southern conference – the SEC.  The SEC currently has just two non-white head coaches in men’s basketball and one of them, Butch Pierre at lsu, is only an interim head coach and he is replacing a white coach.  Georgia is the other school with a non-white head coach.

When you shift the focus to football, the picture is no where near as positive.  The ACC has just one non-white head coach, Randy Shannon at miami.  And the SEC has just one also, Sylvester Croom at mississippi state, the first and only black head coach in SEC football history.  This isn’t a condemnation on just these two conferences though considering the number of black and hispanic head coaches in all of Division I-A is in single digits.  In fact, there’s as many African-American head coaches in ACC basketball as there are in all of Division I-A football, I believe.

While the numbers are great in the ACC, it is interesting to look at where those minority coaches are at.  If you broke up the ACC into football schools and basketball schools, I would shake the institutions out as such:

Clear-Cut Football School

• Virginia Tech
• miami
• florida state
• clemson

Clear-Cut Basketball School

• unc
• duke
• nc state
• wake forest
• maryland

That leaves bc, georgia tech, and uva.  boston college I certainly don’t see as a football school.  I would throw them on the basketball side of things although they only had about 200 students at their home game against uva on Sunday.  georgia tech is in a college football mad city, but it is a SEC city.  I would lean towards calling georgia tech a bball school despite their history in football.  And uva I would call a lacrosse school, though if I had to pick between these two sports, I’d say they support football more.  They just aren’t any good at it.  [Click below to read on...]

Now that we’ve split up the schools by their preferred sport, it is interesting to note that only miami football and nc state basketball have a non-white coach leading their dominant sport for the clear-cut schools.  That’s just 2/9, or 22%.  In basketball, while 58% of the coaches are non-white, only one of the five clear-cut basketball schools has a minority coach leading them.  bc and georgia tech do, too, but like I said, they are split football/basketball schools to me. 

This makes it even more of a challenge for these minority coaches.  Let’s face it – it is hard recruiting basketball players at fsu, clemson, and miami.  There are too many “basketball” schools in the country you have to compete with.  And without a strong fan base to support your program, it is hard to get top rate facilities, top talent, and in turn, win.  The results are obvious.  If you look at the bottom six teams in the ACC in the men’s basketball standings, all six schools are “football” or split schools except for nc state.  And all six are led by minority coaches, facing the difficulty of leading the “lesser” program at that school, so to speak.  clemson is the only school in the upper half with a minority coach, and it is no coincidence that they have one of the more experienced coaches in the ACC – Oliver Purnell, who is in his fifth year leading the tigers and 20th year as a head coach.  The fact he’s doing it a football school makes it even more impressive.

There still seems to be hesitation at a lot of schools to have a minority as the face of the institution, at least from a sports perspective.  Part of the reason is coaches like Beamer, Bowden, krzyzewski, and williams have been around forever.  But Bowden’s successor will be white in all likelihood since Jimbo Fisher has been designated as his replacement.  And other clear-cut schools have “stayed the course” with their premiere sport when there was an opening.  What this says is that while progress is being made, at least in men’s hoops, there still is a ways to go. 

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