Number Of Minority Head Coaches To Swell Again

After losing three of the six Black head coaches to resignations/firings following this season, the news coming out today is that Mike Locksley, Offensive Coordinator/ Quarterback Coach at Illinois, will take the vacant head coaching position at the University of New Mexico. This brings the number of Black head coaches in Division I-A back up to four.

Locksley is an interesting case, because he actually played college ball on defense, and coached on the defensive side of the ball for the first four years of his career, before becoming a tight end/wide receiver coach for Army in 1996. For the last several years, I have been convinced that the quickest way to get a head coaching position in college is to be promoted from an offensive coordinator position. With the popularity of the spread offense, fans and administrators alike view offense as the place where they can make up the most ground quickly, because if you can score points, you can at least be entertaining in games, and keep them interesting. Locksley's ascension from offensive coordinator to head coach supports my theory. Under Locksley, the Illini have run a spread option offense patterned off of what Rich Rodriguez did at West Virginia and now at Michicgan, and similar to what Texas A&M ran under Dennis Franchione. Using the spread option, Illinois set a school record in 2007, becoming the first team in school history to top 3,000 yards rushing. To my knowledge, no team in the Mountain West runs this version of the spread option, so New Mexico should have a schematic advantage there. Air Force runs their own version of a multiple-option spread, but they use a different scheme make up their option attack.

While you have people like Kellen Winslow, Sr. and Mark May decrying the lack of Black head coaches in Division I-A, I have been convinced that they are looking in the wrong areas. May and Winslow seem to think you should hire someone as a head coach just because they are Black, just to make a statement. UCLA was the one BCS school to try that tactic, hiring a woefully underqualified Karl Dorrell, and the experiment was a failure. I think May and Winslow ignore the progression of coaching. Top schools in BCS conferences usually won't hire a coordinator for a head coaching position, they usually want someone with some head coaching experience. They will look at other lower-level BCS schools (Baylor, Vanderbilt, Northwestern, etc.) and at non-BCS schools (Houston, Utah, Navy, etc.) for candidates. Since you don't have a large number of Black head coaches at lower-level BCS school and non-BCS schools, there aren't a lot of Black head coaching candidates for the top jobs at the major BCS schools. The lower-level or non-BCS schools will usually look at well-known or well thought of coordinators for their head coaching positions (New Mexico's hiring of Locksley is a perfect example). I think in order for their to be more Black head coachng candidates for the top jobs, you need more Black head coaches at the lower-level BCS programs and at the non-BCS programs. In order to have more Black coaches at those programs, you need more Black coordinators. In order to have more Black offensive coordinators, you need more Black coaches working with the wide receivers, quarterbacks, and offensive line. Arguably, those are the three most important position groups on offense. I don't include running backs in that group because I think the success or failure of your running game is more dependent on your offensive line than anything else (A&M's experience running the ball this season certainly supports this argument). I often look around college football and notice how there aren't very many Black offensive line coaches at the I-A level, and wonder why that is. While I see several Black defensive coordinators when watching I-A football, they don't seem to be the "hot" area to hire from right now, so not as many are getting jobs.

It is worth noting that among the 10 teams participating in BCS bowl games, only one of them (Florida) has a Black coach working in a coordinator position (Charlie Strong, Defensive Coordinator). Oklahoma had Kevin Sumlin working as Co-Offensive Coordinator last season, but he is now the head coach at Houston. Maybe instead of decrying the low number of Black head coaches at the Division I-A level today, May, Winslow, et al. should ask why more Blacks aren't being considered for offensive coordinator positions at the top programs.