African Americans Making Little Progress in College Sports Administration

The Institute for Diversity and Ethics in Sport (TIDES) at the University of Central Florida recently released its annual report on racial diversity in college athletics. The scorecard gave a grade of B to racial diversity in college’s sport programs, the same grade it received in 2014.

Among the highlights of the report regarding African Americans in college sports are:

• In Division I, African Americans make up more than 55 percent of the male student athletes in basketball and nearly 44 percent in football, but Blacks are only 2.9 percent of the baseball student athletes.
• Blacks are 47 percent of the football players in Division I but only 7.9 percent of the head football coaches.
• African Americans are 7.9 percent of all head coaches for men’s teams and 7.3 percent of head coaches for women’s teams in Division I. They are 22 percent of the head coaches for men’s basketball in Division I but only 1.1 percent of all head coaches in Division I baseball.
• Blacks are more than 41 percent of the assistant coaches in Division I men’s basketball and 27.1 percent in football. Only 1.9 of assistant coaches in Division I baseball are African American.
• All 11 conference commissioners for schools in the Football Bowl Subdivision are White. None of the 30 conference commissioners in the NCAA’s Division I are Black.
• Of the 327 athletics directors in Division I, there are 27 Black men and one Black woman.
• Blacks are 1.9 percent of the sports information directors at Division I NCAA member institutions and hold even a small percentage of these posts at Division II and Division III institutions.

Richard Lapchick, director of TIDES and the lead author of the report, stated that “the greatest number of career prospects are in college sports rather than professional sports because of the number of jobs available. That makes it even more important for us to create expanded opportunities in college sports for people of color.”

The full report, The 2015 Racial and Gender Scorecard: College Sport, can be downloaded by clicking here.