Author: David Shama

Including candidates of color in the football coaching search for Tim Brewster’s replacement will be a priority for University of Minnesota officials. Gophers athletic director Joel Maturi emailed the following to Sports Headliners this week:

“The University of Minnesota is committed to diversity and we in athletics have demonstrated that commitment.  We are in contact with the Black Coaches Association, have asked the search firm (Parker Executive Search) to look into minority candidates and value the input of coaches like Tony Dungy.”

Not only will University officials vigorously support that mandate, but also important is the school’s record of hiring for high profile positions in the athletic department during the last 20 years.

The present football staff includes six African-Americans in prominent positions, the most in school history and more than many other BCS programs.  Among the six are associate head coach Tim Cross, co-offensive coordinator Thomas Hammock, co-defensive coordinator Ronnie Lee and head strength & conditioning coach Mark Hill.

McKinley Boston, the Gophers athletic director during the early 1990s, is one of the few African-Americans ever to hold the position of athletic director at a Big Ten school.  And two of Minnesota’s last three men’s basketball coaches have been African-Americans, Clem Haskins and Tubby Smith.

Minnesota’s hiring of those three for high profile positions exceeds the diversity record for athletic directors and head football and basketball coaches at most Big Ten schools during the last 20 years including Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Michigan State, Penn State, Purdue and Wisconsin.  The Gophers almost had a fourth African-American hire when then Florida defensive coordinator Charlie Strong was a finalist for the Gophers job before Brewster was hired.

The push to hire African-American head football coaches at FBS programs has become vocal and aggressive in recent years.  But the issue certainly went beyond talk after the 2009 season when African-Americans filled seven of 22 coaching vacancies based on Sports Headliners research using Athlon’s 2010 college football magazine.

Among the coaches taking over big time programs were Turner Gill at Kansas, Joker Phillips at Kentucky and Mike London at Virginia.  They joined African-American head coaches already working at high profile schools including Houston’s Kevin Sumlin, Miami’s Randy Shannon and New Mexico’s Mike Locksley.

Sumlin was an assistant at Minnesota in the 1990s, working for Jim Wacker and later Glen Mason.  After that he was Bob Stoops’ offensive coordinator at Oklahoma.  In three plus seasons at Houston his teams have made a national reputation for scoring points, quickly and often while compiling a 23-13 record. The Cougars rank 10^th in the country in points per game, 40.67.  Rumors persist that Sumlin is of interest to Minnesota officials.

We see a red flag with Sumlin’s work, though.  Defense was been an ongoing problem during his two-plus seasons at Houston.  The Cougars now rank 82^nd in the country in scoring defense, giving up 29.33 points per game.

Despite having almost three years to get the defense stout, despite playing in a mediocre conference, and despite being located in a wonderful recruiting area, the Cougars’ defensive performances are unsettling.  The 5-4 Cougars of 2010 have given up 30 points or more in four games.  In 2009 Houston yielded 35 points or more in eight of 13 games.  During 2008 the Cougars gave up 35 or more five times.

An intriguing potential candidate for the Gophers job is Ken Niumatalolo, the 45-year-old Navy coach with a 24-13 record.  He’s of Polynesian descent and in his third season as head coach of the Midshipmen.  His record this season is 6-3 including a second straight win over Notre Dame.

Niumatalolo didn’t resurrect an awful Navy program but he’s kept it winning.  He was an assistant on coach Paul Johnson’s staff before Johnson left for Georgia Tech.  Since then Niumatalolo has kept the Navy offense ground oriented running the triple-option.  That’s an unorthodox offense which could be troublesome for Gophers opponents if Niumatalolo used it here.

Navy is not an easy place to win, and neither is Minnesota.  A coach who has proven he can win without the best of resources needs to be a must in the Gophers’ hiring criteria.

What University officials are hoping for is the largest pool of qualified candidates possible, black, brown or white.  Right now they pretty much have the hiring landscape to themselves but jobs might open up at attractive programs like Arizona State, Georgia, Michigan, Penn State, Texas A&M and Washington State.

The Gophers’ monopoly on their coaching opening won’t continue.  Colorado fired coach Dan Hawkins earlier this week.