New Mexico: Haven for black coaches

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.

MAC making history

With today's hiring of Mike Haywood at Miami of Ohio there are now six African American head coaches out of 119 NCAA Division I-FCS schools. Amazingly three of them are now employed in the Mid-American Conference. The other two are Turner Gill at Buffalo and the recently hired Ron English at Eastern Michigan.

So let's do the math.

That's three out of 13 head coaches in the MAC, or 23.1 percent. That's three out of 106 coaches outside of the MAC, or 2.8 percent. It's better than yesterday.

Let's be honest here. Haywood is getting a pretty sweet gig. Miami of Ohio has produced some of the greatest coaches in college football history. Any of these names ring a bell? Red Blaik, Sid Gillman, Ara Parseghian, Woody Hayes and Bo Schembechler. Thought you might have heard of them.

Haywood's reputation took a minor hit this season also, after Charlie Weis took over play calling duties the final three weeks of the season at Notre Dame. But the Irish offense didn't do any better with Weis, so Haywood was somewhat redeemed.

The former Lou Holtz player at Notre Dame interviewed for the Washington job earlier this winter, but Miami is a better fit and better place to begin his head coaching career. There is a lot of work to do, though.

Shane Montgomery, who took over for another successful Miami coach, Terry Hoeppner, isn't returning in 2009 after leading the RedHawks two 2-10 seasons in three years. But Miami is a program where a young coach can win and build an even stronger resume for the next move.

Right now, it looks like a good move by Miami.