COMMENTARY : Lessons of Campanis, Snyder Are Forgotten in Pro Sports

Where are Al Campanis and Jimmy “The Greek” Snyder when you need them?

In the weeks following their separate but equally ignorant public comments concerning blacks in sports management, a firestorm erupted. Surveys were conducted, lip service was paid. Owners, particularly those in Major League Baseball and the National Football League, professed an unawareness and in many cases accepted blame. Along with the league executives in each sport, they promised wholesale change, sooner not later.

They lied.

Right this minute, five teams are in search of managers: the Yankees, White Sox, Cubs, Brewers and Mariners. No black man is the leading candidate for any of them, or for the Red Sox vacancy that was filled Tuesday by the very deserving Butch Hobson (with retread Don Zimmer in tow as third-base coach).

In the NFL, the Indianapolis Colts just hired Rick Venturi, whose record in his only previous head-coaching stint, at Northwestern, was 1-31-1. Is this what you’d call minimum-standard requirement or what?

Clifford Alexander, a consultant to Major League Baseball and the former secretary of the Army, became noticeably angry the other day when I asked him about all the open managerial jobs with so few blacks (maybe only one, Don Baylor) as candidates.

“Clearly, there has not been serious consideration given to black and Latino candidates,” Alexander said. “Baseball can’t be serious, passing itself off as the national pastime. They must be talking about only being white America’s pastime.

“Why is it we have to toil in the vineyards for 20 years to get a top job? Did Lou Piniella toil for 20 years before he got a shot? Same when it comes to general-manager positions. Who are perhaps the best GMs in baseball? John Schuerholz (of the Braves) is a former school teacher. Sandy Alderson (Athletics) is a lawyer. You don’t have to be associated with baseball for 50 years to perform competently in one of these jobs. If baseball doesn’t want to be held out as a laughingstock, they (the owners) have to get a lot more serious. They need to be shaken up. Every penalty available needs to be utilized against them.

“Some teams aren’t even taking the basic steps of considering minorities at all. Increasingly, they’re not even going through the motions of calling someone in for an interview. That’s contrary to everything Commissioner Fay Vincent has said to them publicly and privately, and contrary to everything baseball claims it wants to be.”

The NFL is even worse by whatever measuring stick you want to use. The goofy Irsays just promoted a guy who won one game as a head coach in three years. If Campanis’ ill-fated phrase “lacking many of the necessities” ever described anybody, it’s Venturi.

On the same Colts staff is Milt Jackson, who’s been an assistant for 11 years. Two years ago, when Jerry Glanville tried to hire Jackson to be his offensive coordinator in Atlanta, the Irsays refused permission. “No way,” they said, “Milt’s too important to our coaching staff.”

Well, if he was important enough to stand in the way of his personal advancement, why not make him head coach? Or at least offensive coordinator? Jackson, if you haven’t guessed, is black. So is Redskins assistant coach Emmitt Thomas, who could have been defensive coordinator in Phoenix by now had the Redskins not refused a similar request by the Cardinals to interview him.

So from the lying mouths of club executives we heard, “Well, we promote offensive and defensive coordinators to head coach and there simply aren’t any black coordinators.” Simultaneously, there were club executives refusing black assistants the opportunity to even interview for the positions that yield head coaches. (Hopefully, Commissioner Paul Tagliabue’s abolition of the old “tampering” rule regarding coaches will open some doors.)

The question to be asked about Venturi isn’t just how he got to be head coach, but how he got to be defensive coordinator in the first place. Where are his qualifications, his necessities? What possible certification can he have that three dozen black assistants don’t have? One win in three years?

This is the new bigotry that has kept minority hiring just where the owners want it, virtually nonexistent. A team or GM figures he has one good black assistant coach, he’d better not let him go, lest he might have to find or develop another -- and you know how impossible that is.

It’s all a pack of lies.

In three consecutive seasons, the Bengals have lost back after back to injuries but the running game keeps chugging with people you’ve never heard of because Jim Anderson is one helluva coach. The 49ers’ secondary has been a revolving door, but the pass defense is always one of the best because Ray Rhodes is a damned good teacher of technique. Jimmy Raye and Tony Dungy have been waiting so long their stars have risen and fallen before they’ve gotten an opportunity.

You know where the ugliest injustice of all is in the NFL? Just look to Herndon, Va., where the Redskins didn’t even wink in Bobby Mitchell’s direction when the GM job was open two years ago. Anybody who thinks Mitchell, despite 20 years of distinguished service, was given a serious interview, simply is out of touch.

It’s not only a case of lacking any sense of human decency, it’s also bad business. When NFL teams drafted eight quarterbacks before Rodney Peete in 1989, it means all (except Dallas, which took Troy Aikman) would rather gamble on a marginal white quarterback than on a black one, who, according to their own scouts, would make it in the NFL.

Today, Rodney Peete is 5-1. Where is Mike Elkins? Where is Billy Joe Tolliver? Anthony Dilweg? Erik Wilhelm? Who are Jeff Graham, Jeff Carlson and Jeff Francis? They were all drafted before Peete. None is a starter. Several aren’t even in the league.

That’s bad business. You cannot produce at peak efficiency when a significant pool of talent is excluded. The owners have accepted that when it comes to physical talent, but obviously don’t believe blacks have anything to offer beyond running and catching.

It’s a disgusting state of affairs, even more so than usual because it seemed for a brief moment that the door had been opened a crack. If it had, it’s been slammed tight again. “Now,” Alexander said, “it’s foolishness. It’s a damned outrage.”