15 out of 162. That roughly 9% of coaches represents the number of black head coaches in the NFL and Division I college football. It is the dirty secret of the football world and something football doesn’t want to talk about.
About 55% of Division I players are black, and closer to 70% in the NFL, but black coaches are fewer and far between. So what has led to the discrepancy that plagues football today? There are a multitude of reasons.
In less enlightened times, there was the widespread (and incorrect) belief in football circles that black athletes couldn’t play quarterback or be the head coach because a mental capacity was lacking. Then came a new wave, where great quarterback talents and coaches came to life and performed at a high level.
But while the tide is changing on the field (Lamar Jackson, Patrick Mahomes, and Russell Wilson are among the best quarterbacks in the league), it remains absent on the sidelines.
Many former players take on assistant coaching positions, and there’s a lot of great, young, black talent there that needs to get a chance to lead on the sideline.
South Georgia is experiencing its own problems with this very same issue. Many of the top coaching positions come and go, and black coaches are overlooked time and again. Some of the best coaches in the region are black, but they aren’t given the same opportunities to win with the best resources and the best facilities.
Maurice Freeman, the head coach of Brooks County High School for 17 seasons, just led the Trojans to the state championship game with few resources at his disposal. He’s one of the best coaches in all of Georgia, but may never get an opportunity to coach at a bigger school. If Freeman can consistently create a winner at Brooks County, he would be unstoppable at one of the most well-funded schools in the state.
Marquis Westbrook’s tenure as a player at the University of Florida and as one of Georgia’s top players garnered him a Class 5A job at Warner Robins High School, and in turn he led the Demons to another state championship appearance in his first year. He was the first black head football coach in Warner Robins High School history and has proven himself among the best defensive minds in the state.
Dondrial Pinkins has turned around the Pelham High School program, creating one of the strongest teams in Class 1A. They’ve reached the semifinals two years in a row, and it wasn’t long ago that the Hornets finished the season winless. Will he get a chance to move to a larger stage?
This doesn’t even include the top assistants in the region – including Joshua Crawford, the offensive mastermind at Valdosta High School, and Dr. Byron Slack, who led the top defense in the state at Lowndes High School – who also deserve their chances as head coaches in the state.
There are signs of improvement in the NFL, where the Rooney Rule requires one minority coach to be interviewed for each head coaching vacancy, but when will they cut down the arbitration and start identifying the talent? Many talented coaches are going by the wayside, under appreciated and never given the chance to prove themselves. My hope is the up-and-coming coaches, such as Byron Leftwich in the NFL and Jimmy Lake, the new head coach at the University of Washington, get a better chance than their predecessors.
With head coaching jobs opening up every year, there is a chance one of the talented black coaches will be considered for the position. They may not get the job in the end, but the question remains, will they get a fair shot?
Written by: Kyle Grondin
