(ThyBlackMan.com) It’s not just time to learn where college football’s best teams will spend their postseasons with bowl games and the College Football Playoff, it’s also time for college football head coaches to be hired and fired throughout the country. At the highest level of college football at the Football Bowl Subdivision, there are head coach openings at notable schools like Ole Miss, Arkansas, Missouri, Florida State, and South Florida. Sadly, three of the head coaches who were fired were Willie Taggart, Charlie Strong, and Frank Wilson were black head coaches. The firings of Strong and Taggart were surprising considering Strong won 10 games his first season at South Florida just two years ago and Taggart was shockingly fired in his second season at Florida State.
Another college football head coaching surprise happened earlier this month when Washington head coach Chris Petersen, one of the best in the country, stepped down and Washington hired defensive coordinator Jimmy Lake as his successor. Lake becomes a rarity in college football as a black head coach hired in-house, “coach-in-waiting”, or coaching successor when the incumbent head coach leaves the position. One of the elite head coaches in college football was not a “hot” coaching name or an established head coach as Clemson’s Dabo Swinney took over in 2008 after Tommy Bowden was fired. Swinney has shown himself as an extremely successful head coach and built Clemson into a powerhouse program with little to no expectation when he took over as head coach. There have been mixed results when college football programs decide to name an in-house successor to the incumbent head coach. 
When there is success at some college football programs, they would prefer not to shake up the coaching staff and promote a coach from within as the next head coach of the program when the incumbent head coach steps down. In the past, it worked for schools like Jimbo Fisher taking over at Florida State for Bobby Bowden or like it is working for Lincoln Riley at Oklahoma when he took over for longtime Sooners head coach Bob Stoops. Ironically, Oklahoma’s rival, Texas, had a butchering of the “coach-in-waiting” situation years ago with Will Muschamp scheduled to succeed Mack Brown. It was interesting when a SEC school known more for basketball decided to go that route and hire in-house in choosing a black head coach to succeed his white predecessor.
The most notable recent example of a black man being promoted from within or the “coach-in-waiting” at a Power 5 conference school prior to Washington hiring Jimmy Lake was Kentucky hiring Joker Phillips as their head coach back in 2010. Phillips, Kentucky’s offensive coordinator as Kentucky experienced some relative success in the late 2000s, succeeded his mentor, Rich Brooks, and was a former player at Kentucky. It was a historic hire of Phillips as he was Kentucky’s first black head football coach ever and the second in the Southeastern Conference. Unfortunately, he was fired after three seasons despite leading Kentucky a bowl game his first season. At Washington, Jimmy Lake takes over a much better program than Kentucky was and has familiarity with the school and players as defensive coordinator. Lake has been a significant part of the defensive success of Washington in recent seasons as the program as been one of the most successful programs in the country the last four seasons with a rock solid defense. It is also notable that Jimmy Lake’s hiring as head coach was given approval by another minority by a woman in Washington’s athletic director Jen Cohen.
Staff Writer; Mark Hines