SEC Still Stands Alone on the Issue of Race

When Alabama found itself without a football coach after dumping Mike Price, the scandal-stained program quickly turned to two of its own.

Mike Shula and Sylvester Croom had similar resumes. Both were ex-Crimson Tide stars. Both were longtime NFL assistants. Both had solid reputations.

Shula, who is white, got the job. Croom, who is black, did not.

With that, the Southeastern Conference -- the pride of a region famous for college football and for racial struggles -- remained the one major conference that’s never had a black coach.

“When you’re oh-for-forever, there has to be something there,” said Floyd Keith, executive director of the Black Coaches Association.

Alabama athletic director Mal Moore said race was never a factor in his search to replace Price.

Asked if the state was ready for a black man in one of its most visible positions, Moore said, “There’s no question in my mind.”

It’s a much-debated issue in college football. A mere 21 blacks have been head coaches at Division I-A programs, with only four still holding those jobs.

And the SEC is the only big-time league that has never had a black head coach. The Atlantic Coast Conference, Big East, Big 12, Big Ten and Pac-10 have all had at least one.

“I do not think there’s been that desire to hire or pressure to hire an African-American coach,” former Auburn coach Terry Bowden said. “Why that is ... is probably the same reason there’s never been an African-American governor in the Deep South.”

Alabama’s hiring of Shula brought the issue into the spotlight again, prompting civil rights leader Jesse Jackson to call for an investigation into the hiring practices at Alabama and all SEC schools.

San Jose State coach Fitz Hill has made a second career of studying the topic. A former Arkansas assistant with a doctorate of education, he wrote his thesis on the barriers facing black football coaches.

“In the South, the head football coach is a very powerful individual,” said Hill, who is black. “There must be a comfort zone that has to take place in putting a person of color in that position, because of the power that comes with it.”

Segregation kept blacks from playing in the SEC until the late 1960s. After that, blacks quickly became some of its top performers. Herschel Walker and Bo Jackson each won the Heisman Trophy. Blacks claimed 15 of the 26 first-team spots on last year’s Associated Press All-SEC team.

The SEC has had 340 head coaches, including interim appointments, in its 70-year history -- none of them black.

“I know there are people out there who are qualified,” said Rodney Garner, a black assistant at Georgia who doesn’t hide his head coaching ambitions. “At some point it’s got to happen.”

The league does appear to be edging closer. Croom was a finalist at Alabama. Grambling State’s Doug Williams was interviewed by Kentucky.

Still, those jobs went to Shula, who had never coached at the college level, and former Oregon coach Rich Brooks, who had been out of the profession for two years.

Like Alabama, Kentucky officials also maintained they hired the best man for the job, regardless of skin color.

The other five major conferences have had 10 black football coaches combined. Notre Dame, the nation’s most prominent independent program, hired its first -- Tyrone Willingham -- last year, with no complaints so far.

Bobby Williams took over a successful Michigan State program in 1999, but he was fired during the 2001 season after his team was embarrassed by Michigan 49-3 to fall to 3-6. Other black coaches have struggled to forge winners at downtrodden programs such as San Jose State, North Texas and Louisiana-Lafayette.

Equally troubling to proponents of change, league schools have hired only seven blacks as offensive or defensive coordinators, a popular conduit to the head coaching ranks. Five SEC schools -- Arkansas, Auburn, Kentucky, Ole Miss and Tennessee -- have never had a black coordinator.

“I mean, there’s a lot of guys (from the NFL) who would come back and be coordinators in the SEC,” said Croom, a Green Bay Packers’ assistant. “And the SEC is paying very well. And the first thing (school officials) will say is, ‘We can’t afford to pay you.’ Well, my gosh, they’re paying the other coordinators.

“There’s a number of coaches who played SEC football, coached at NCAA schools and are doing well in the NFL,” Croom said. “And yet they’re not considered for head coaching jobs.”

While blacks have made inroads in SEC basketball -- currently, four of the 12 head coaches are black -- the league is still waiting to break ground in its highest-profile sport.

“I’d love to see it happen so we can get it over with,” said Georgia athletic director Vince Dooley, who has hired two black basketball coaches. “For a while, they said we wouldn’t have black players. Then it was black quarterbacks. Now it’s black coaches. It’s going to happen.”

The SEC has urged schools to consider minorities when they look for a coach, but Dooley said it’s impossible to legislate that sort of change.

“We’ve got to let it happen,” he said. “We’ve got to be fair, do the right things and make sure it’s a person who’s qualified to do it.”

The league forwarded a long list of minority college and NFL assistants as potential head coaching candidates to each school in October.

“One of the things that the conference office can do is we’re asking our institutions to be sensitive and aggressive in the diversity area,” said commissioner Mike Slive. “And we want to do the same thing at the conference office.”

The SEC office was left without a minority in any of its 10 key leadership positions when assistant commissioner Eugene Byrd resigned in the spring. Slive said he’s in the process of interviewing candidates to rectify that situation.

Alabama had to conduct a hurried search after Price was fired in May without ever coaching a game for the Tide.

Croom was an All-American center on Bear Bryant’s powerful teams in the early ‘70s. He spent a decade at Alabama working for Bryant and other white head coaches before moving on to the NFL.

At first, Croom wasn’t optimistic of getting the top job.

“But during the process, I felt like I became the top candidate,” he said, “until at the end. Until the very end.”

Instead, the job went to Shula, a Miami Dolphins assistant, former Alabama quarterback and the son of longtime NFL coach Don Shula.

Alabama trustee John England doesn’t believe race was a determining factor in Shula’s hiring, saying there was support for both coaches.

“They very easily could have decided that Sylvester Croom was the man,” said England, one of three black trustees. “And I think the Alabama family would have rallied around him, just as they rallied around Shula.”

While SEC schools haven’t been reticent about hiring black assistants, Garner feels many of them get pegged as recruiters while their on-field skills get overlooked.

“We do get labeled,” said Garner, a defensive line coach but better known as one of the SEC’s most effective recruiters. “Everybody talks about ‘Rodney Garner, the recruiter.’ What gets lost is ‘Rodney Garner, the coach.”’

He is quick to point out that four Georgia linemen in the last three years have been first-round NFL picks.

“I’m not saying it’s just me, but I’m the position coach,” Garner said. “I’m responsible for developing and teaching and grooming those young men.”

Even so, onfield success has not led to opportunities on the sidelines.

“It’s time for them to quit making excuses,” Croom said, “and go ahead and take care of business.”

Sports writers Arnie Stapleton in Milwaukee and Paul Newberry in Atlanta contributed to this story.