It has been a good month to be a potential African American head football coach.New Mexico State will officially announce UCLA defensive coordinator DeWayne Walker as the Aggies new coach on Wednesday (Dec. 31, 2008). Walker, who just finished his third season with the Bruins, becomes the seventh black head coach at the 119 major college football programs. Even more noteworthy is Walker is the fourth hired this month.
Earlier hires are Mike Haywood at Miami of Ohio, Ron English at Eastern Michigan and Mike Locksley at New Mexico.
It seems the non-BCS schools are more willing to take a chance on black coaches. Why? Much less pressure from big-spending alumni. In fact, many of these schools hope to be viewed by the media and other outsiders as forward thinking and willing to give a long shot an opportunity. Whatever the reason, I applaud the effort.
An interesting sidebar to this story, that I found at Dr. Saturday's blog, is that New Mexico, which has one of the nation's smallest black populations, now has black head football coaches at the state's flagship universities.
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2 comments:
really thought he could get a better job than this one, but oh well...
Probably, but he's taking the lead of other outstanding coaches and starting at smaller, non-BCS schools to improve chances of success. I believe Walker and Locksley have the best chance at success.
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