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.