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BlackballedWhy are there are so few black coaches in college football?

By Richard Thompson FordPosted Friday, Dec. 26, 2008, at 7:27 AM ET

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Read excerpts from Richard Thompson Ford's book The Race Card. In 2006, Ford used anti-discrimination law to look at whether Barry Bonds was as much a victim of racism as Hank Aaron. William Saletan wrote about race, genes, and sports. Tim Harford highlighted a study that showed the true stupidity of discrimination.

Even if it's not proof of racial discrimination, the disparity between the percentage of black athletes and of black coaches is relevant, at least symbolically. A sport that's dominated by white coaches and black athletes—white overseers giving orders to young black bucks who do the physical work—can bear an uncomfortable resemblance to a plantation. (And, fair or not, this resemblance is just a tiny bit greater when the overseers give their orders with Southern accents and the school is located in the former Confederacy—sorry, Auburn.) Add to that what many consider to be the exploitation of so-called "student athletes," most of whom won't make the pros and don't receive a decent education because they need to spend most of their time practicing or playing ball. To the critics, we have an overwhelmingly white university administration and booster base that are happy to benefit from these black kids' efforts in their athletic primes but won't support even the best of them as coaches later in their careers. To be sure, none of this proves that Turner Gill was turned down by Auburn because of his race. But it does suggest that college football is in need of reform that goes much deeper than getting rid of the Bowl Championship Series.

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Richard Thompson Ford teaches at Stanford Law School and is author of The Race Card: How Bluffing About Bias Makes Race Relations Worse, now out in paperback.

Photograph of Turner Gill by Gregory Shamus/Getty Images.

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