(ThyBlackMan.com) It is pretty clear of the magnitude that college sports has in American society on a seemingly daily basis. There have been numerous scandals involving men’s college basketball, sexual assaults of athletes like college gymnasts, and other issues related to college athletics. The NCAA has been under the microscope and under criticism as usual but there is also a focus on many of the leaders of the colleges and universities of major college sports programs. While professional sports are lead by head coaches, general managers, and presidents, the owners of the teams in pro sports are the biggest leadership models for professional sports teams.
In college sports, leadership in collegiate athletics at the top level can be viewed by many more people including presidents, athletic directors, faculty athletics representatives and conference commissioners. That is a group that doesn’t even include many of the most prominent and wealthy boosters and donors of major college sports programs. The 2018 DI FBS Leadership College Racial and Gender Report Card has been released recently and there were some very interesting findings.
The 2018 DI FBS Leadership College Racial and Gender Report Card was released by The Institute for Diversity and Ethics in Sport at the University of Central Florida. The report card issues grades
based on gender hiring practices and racial hiring practices and positions were examined at the 130 institutions that compete in Division I football, the highest level of college football, were president, athletic director, faculty athletics representative and conference commissioner. Based on gender hiring, the 130 Division I Football Bowl Subdivision (FBS) institutions, they received an “F” while racial hiring received a “C” for an overall grade of a “D.”
Unsurprisingly, the overall grade of “D” is an improvement from the 2017 results.
There are a lot of things to interpret based on the findings of the 2018 DI FBS Leadership College Racial and Gender Report Card. To the surprise of no one, white people hold 85.4 percent of the 395 campus leadership positions while white men held 73.1 percent of the 130 president positions. In terms of black leadership for major college sports colleges, five black men were presidents in the FBS and one black woman, University of Southern California’s Wanda Austin, is a FBS president.
There are 11 black men who were athletic directors while only Virginia’s Carla Williams is the only black woman who was the athletic director of a FBS college or university. One of the most powerful positions in college sports is that of being a conference commissioner and there were no men or women of color who are FBS conference commissioners. In fact, there has never been a person of color who held the commissioner position for an FBS conference.
The athletes on the football field are more diverse than the leaders of the colleges and universities as the percent of black football student-athletes was 54.3 percent for the 2018 season while that percentage is 39.8 percent for white football student-athletes. This comes back to the old argument about college football players being paid and whether a scholarship is enough compensation. The people making the decisions and signing the multi-million dollar sponsorship and television deals are white men while most of the talent providing the entertainment on the football field are black men. There is a reason while college sports has been failing in many aspects as of late.
Staff Writer; Mark Hines