April 27, 2016 The Skanner Page 9
News
Minority Coaches Struggle to Get Opportunities in the NCAA
College sports get lowest grades for racial hiring progress of all sports groups reviewed by a new report
replacement, Ed Conroy,
was fired this season and
replaced by former NBA
coach Mike Dunleavy.
“My hope is that my
tenure at Tulane doesn’t
define who I am as a
coach,” Dickerson said.
“If that defines who I am
as a basketball coach,
then God help this pro-
fession.”
Dickerson is now 49
years old.
Jon Krawczynski
AP Basketball Writer
W
“
AP PHOTO/CARLOS OSORIO
hen
Dave
D i c ke r s o n’ s
five-season
run at Tulane
came to an end in 2010,
he joined Thad Mat-
ta’s staff at Ohio State
to work with one of the
most respected coach-
es in the game, help the
Buckeyes win and apply
what he learned in his
first head coaching job
to be more successful the
second time around.
It’s a path that so many
coaches have taken over
the years, including
seven who have worked
for Matta and gone on
to take Division I jobs.
And yet six years, five
NCAA
Tournaments,
three Sweet 16s and a Fi-
nal Four trip later, Dick-
erson is still waiting for
another chance.
“At one time in this
profession, if you were
a part of a winning pro-
gram and demonstrated
the qualities of being able
to coach and being able to
run a program and being
able to relate to young
men, you had opportuni-
ties,” Dickerson told The
Associated Press. “But
now I think the bench-
mark has changed.”
As a black coach, the
odds are stacked against
Dickerson and many of
his colleagues. Accord-
ing to the latest annual
report from The Institute
for Diversity and Ethics
in Sport, hiring for mi-
norities in college sports
— including football and
men’s and women’s bas-
ketball — continues to
lag behind practices in
the professional ranks.
College sports had the
lowest grade for racial
hiring practices among
all sports groups or or-
ganizations reviewed the
institute, while only the
NFL had worse numbers
when it came to gender
hiring practices of the
professional and college
sports leagues the orga-
nization tracks.
For men’s basketball,
23.8 percent of schools
had coaches of color,
which Richard Lapchick,
the director of TIDES and
the primary author of
the report, called “a ma-
jor area of concern.” The
picture is even bleaker
for minority women,
who held just 11 percent
of the Division I basket-
ball jobs last season.
“We need more black
coaches, period,” former
NBA and Auburn star
Charles Barkley said at
the Final Four.
Dickerson, who won
a national title as an as-
sistant at Maryland and
In this Feb. 22, 2015 photo, Ohio State assistant coach Dave Dickerson
yells from the bench during the first half of an NCAA college basketball
game against Michigan in Ann Arbor, Mich. More and more minority
coaches in college sports, particularly in basketball and football, are
finding it increasingly difficult to find head jobs.
has coached on staffs that
have advanced to three
Final Fours, is still op-
timistic that his time is
coming.
But he has had trouble
escaping his 71-85 record
at Tulane, even though
Hurricane Katrina dec-
imated the region four
months after he took the
job and forced his team
to uproot and move to
Texas A&M.
“People can talk about
not having this, not
having that, not being
afforded the time,” Dick-
erson said. “We didn’t
have a campus. We didn’t
have our gym. We didn’t
have game uniforms. We
didn’t have dorms. We
had nothing. No coach in
the history of college bas-
ketball had to deal with
what I dealt with. There
was nothing in the coach-
ing manual to teach me
how to deal with that.”
In his second and third
seasons there, Dickerson
posted the first back-to-
back winning seasons
the program had seen in
more than a decade. His
and picked the young
non-minority coach who
has had limited experi-
ence and promoted him
over the minority coach,”
said Merritt Norvell, ex-
ecutive director of the
National
Association
for Coaching Equity and
Development, a group
led by some of the most
prominent
minority
coaches in the country.
That’s what happened
and say, ‘Well, I can’t
blame that choice,’” Tay-
lor said after parting
ways with Hawaii. “But
it’s very hard to swal-
low the resumes. This is
about resumes.”
Ganot ended up guid-
ing Hawaii to its first
NCAA Tournament ap-
pearance since 2002, but
Taylor strongly believes
he would have done
the same thing. Taylor
People can talk about not having this, not hav-
ing that, not being afforded the time. We didn’t
have a campus. We didn’t have our gym. We
didn’t have game uniforms. We didn’t have
dorms. We had nothing. No coach in the histo-
ry of college basketball had to deal with what I
dealt with
Many colleges seem
to be turning to young-
er, more inexperienced
coaches in hopes of find-
ing the next Shaka Smart
or Brad Stevens.
“There’s been a dra-
matic shift in the last two
years to young coaches,
which has really over-
looked a lot of racial and
ethnic minority coaches
who played by the rules,
have done everything
right, and then when
opportunities have oc-
curred, athletic direc-
tors and head coaches
have
reached
down
in Hawaii this year,
where the Warriors
hired 33-year-old Eran
Ganot over 47-year-old
interim head coach Benjy
Taylor, who led Hawaii to
a 22-13 record and the Big
West Conference Tour-
nament championship
game after taking over
for a coach and assistant
who committed several
NCAA violations.
“If I wasn’t going to get
the job, you would just
hope that all the hard
work you put in, the job
would be given to some-
one where you step back
wound up working at
an Audi dealership in
Hawaii before accepting
an assistant job at South-
eastern Missouri.
Dickerson, meanwhile,
is enjoying working at
Ohio State.
“I’m excited about the
future,” Dickerson said.
“I wouldn’t trade my ca-
reer that I’ve had for any-
thing. But I would love to
have a second chance to
be a head coach again.”
AP National Writer Ed-
die Pells contributed to
this report.