Study: Key leadership at FBS schools white, male
ORLANDO, Fla. — A study released Wednesday shows that the top leadership positions among Football Bowl Subdivision (formerly known as Division I-A) schools and conferences remain overwhelmingly white and male.
The report by The Institute for Diversity and Ethics in Sport showed small increases in the percentage of gender and racial minorities that serve as athletic directors, presidents and faculty athletic representatives. But none show more than a 2 percentage point gain.
Whites held 336 (88 percent) of the 381 campus leadership positions. White men held 77 of the 126 president positions. Nineteen women and 15 non-white males serve as presidents in FBS.
Among athletic directors, white men hold 97 (77.6 percent) of 125 jobs. Twenty-one were non-white males, with no female African-American, Asian, Latina or Native American athletic directors at FBS schools.
Study author Richard Lapchick said that because of the ongoing changes in college athletics, having diverse administrators in its top division is more important than it has ever been.
“If you don’t have the perspectives of women and people of color it limits what you’re looking at and how you’re looking at things,” Lapchick said. “It’s one of the biggest confluences of moments in college sports about how it will look in the future. By having a monolithic view of white men . . . it makes me worried that all student-athletes won’t be considered in the things that affect them most.”
In addition to administrative positions, this year’s report also noted that for the second consecutive year minority head football coaches saw a decline — from 15 to 14 — after several years of gains. There were 18 minority coaches to begin the 2012 season.
Lapchick called this year’s decline among minority coaches the “most troubling” thing about the 2014 report. He likened the development to a similar trend in college basketball, which saw a dramatic uptick in minority coaches, only to see those numbers begin to slowly tail off.
“To see progress stop and numbers go down for the last two years is an alarming statistic,” Lapchick said. “Some people think we had the job done with 18 . . . I think the people pressing for those changes took a deep breath and kind of dropped the pressure a little bit.
“I think we have to reassert pressure on decision makers to have a diverse group of people in the hiring process for key football coaching positions.”
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