Mizzou coaching search: Is diversity in the playbook for Tigers’ top football job?

The University of Missouri has a chance to make history when the school hires its next football coach.

The Tigers have played intercollegiate football since 1890 and have never had a minority head coach. Could that finally change when Mizzou replaces ousted coach Barry Odom?

After four unremarkable seasons leading his alma mater, Odom was fired last week. Now, the pressure is on Athletic Director Jim Sterk to hire a head coach who can make Missouri a perennial top-25 team that competes for championships.

So far, four names have emerged as top candidates for the job: Arkansas State coach Blake Anderson, Louisiana Tech coach Skip Holtz, Army coach Jeff Monken and Nevada coach Jay Norvell.

The job should go to the most qualified coach, regardless of race. Any candidate for the position must be an energetic leader with head-coaching or coordinator experience at the major-college level, Sterk has said. He hopes to have a new coach in place within the next two weeks.

But will a diverse group of candidates get due consideration?

So far, Sterk has been tight-lipped about the search, betraying no hint of who is on his radar. But an athletic department official said that Sterk interviewed an unnamed African American coach this week and reached out to other coaches of color to gauge their interest — an encouraging sign.

Still, early informed speculation has centered on a long list of potential contenders that’s woefully lacking in diversity. Multiple local and national news organizations have pointed to more than two dozen possible candidates for the Mizzou job — nearly all of them white.

Surely there are multiple candidates of color qualified to coach a new generation of Tigers. Norvell is one possibility.

Mike Locksley, a successful offensive coordinator at Alabama and current head coach at Maryland, Arizona head coach Kevin Sumlin, and Tee Martin, assistant head coach at Tennessee, all have had success at the college level and would be among a group of strong candidates.

Sumlin was the first black head coach at Houston, Texas A&M and Arizona.

Former East Carolina head coach Scottie Montgomery and Colorado head coach Mel Tucker are also qualified minority coaches.

Outside of Norvell, none of them have been publicly linked to the Missouri job.

Sterk’s legacy in Columbia will depend a great deal on choosing the right coach to replace Odom, a popular figure among his players at Mizzou. The athletic director will have the help of Parker Executive Search, the same firm the school used in 2017, when Missouri hired basketball coach Cuonzo Martin, who is African American.

Black head coaches are rare

In college football, the dearth of minorities at the top of the coaching hierarchy remains an issue.

In the Football Bowl Subdivision (FBS), 49.2% of student-athletes who play football are African American, according to the latest report card issued this year by the Institute for Diversity and Ethics in Sport.

The institute produces annual racial hiring reports on professional and college sports organizations. The 2018 study found that only 11% of FBS head coaches were African American.

The number increased from 18 in 2017 to 19 last year. Of the 130 head coaches, 111 (85.4%) were white men.

College football does not have anything resembling the NFL’s Rooney Rule, which requires a team to interview at least one minority candidate for a vacant head coaching position or senior executive role. Teams can be fined or face other penalties if they don’t comply.

Richard Lapchick, president of the Institute for Diversity and Ethics in Sport, once proposed a college version of the Rooney Rule. The measure has yet to get any traction.

Oregon is the only state that requires state-funded schools to interview qualified minority candidates for top coaching and athletic administration positions.

Four years ago, racially-charged protests at Mizzou and a threatened boycott by members of the school’s football team roiled the campus.

One year later, Missouri was among the schools that signed a non-binding NCAA pledge to establish “initiatives for achieving ethnic and racial diversity, gender equity and inclusion” in intercollegiate athletics.

Sterk could make good on that pledge — and make some important Missouri history — by hiring the school’s first football head coach of color.

This story was originally published December 5, 2019 at 5:00 AM.