Big Ten coaching diversity: From No.1 to none

The Big Ten tournament starts this week in the nation's capital and all 14 teams will have two things in common: championship dreams and a white head coach.

The Big Ten, once a national leader in number of black men's basketball coaches, is now the only major conference without one. Later this month will be the 10-year mark of Minnesota's hiring of Tubby Smith, the last black coach hired in the Big Ten.

The story of declining racial diversity on college basketball sidelines is a shared one coast to coast. Diversity peaked just over a decade ago, with a third of major conference teams (23 of 70) coached by minority in 2005. That number has fallen steadily, however, and now 17 percent of major-conferences coaches (13 of 75) are nonwhite, according to a Star Tribune analysis of hiring in the six major basketball conferences.

The trend is troubling, several in the coaching ranks and diversity advocates say, yet solutions are hard to find.

A proposal that would mirror the NFL's Rooney Rule and require schools to have diverse candidate pools has lost traction. Big Ten commissioner Jim Delany said diversity has "always been an important issue," but added his conference does not get involved in hiring decisions of schools.

After 30 years of having at least one black coach, twice in the last four years the Big Ten's head coaches have been all white. Meanwhile, the rosters of players are becoming increasingly diverse: 74 percent of players in power conferences were nonwhite last season (the most recent data available), up from 67 percent in 1999.

From Bob Knight's conference-dominating glory days in 1983 all the way until Minnesota fired Smith in 2013, at least one black coach led a program in the Big Ten — peaking with four multiple times in the mid-'90s. Diversity hiring faded from there, the Star Tribune's study revealed, and now has sagged in every major conference.

The ACC, SEC and Big East had more black coaches than white in various seasons throughout the 2000s. For the last three seasons, those three conferences each have had at the most three black coaches, and as few as one. The Big 12 is down to one black coach, Shaka Smart at Texas. Five nonwhite coaches in the 2000s kept diversity steady in the Pac-12 but just three remain, and two are on the hot seat.

Across Division I, fourteen of the 53 coaching changes after last season led to the exit of a black coach, including Rutgers' Eddie Jordan, the last black coach in the Big Ten (Jordan was hired when Rutgers was in the American Athletic Conference). Five of those 14 positions were filled by another black coach, but of the eight power-conference hires last year, none were minorities.

Of the 28 Big Ten hires made in the 20 years since the conference last peaked at four black coaches, 85.7 percent of hires (24 of 28) have been a white coach. Since Smith came to Minnesota in 2007, there have been 10 Big Ten hires — all white.

"I think the topic has been washed under the rug," said former Michigan coach Brian Ellerbe, now a Morgan State assistant. "And there aren't many young guys on the (hiring) lists to move up, either. The administrators, the alums, the people who influence college athletics are just not exposed to minorities and black qualified candidates on a regular basis. They don't have a clue who these people are."

The nation's ADs are 90 percent white, according to Lapchick's annual study, and their exposure to nonwhite candidates is crucial to diversity growth, said former Michigan State AD Merritt Norvell, the executive director of the National Association for Coaching Equity and Development (NAFCED).

From four to zero

Minnesota's Clem Haskins joined Georgetown's John Thompson and Arkansas' Nolan Richardson as the most prominent black coaches of the 1990s. Haskins still has the longest tenure of any black coach in Big Ten history (1987-1999).

The Big Ten had four black coaches in 1993-94 and again from 1995-97 — at the time, most in major conferences.

"You had a guy like Clem Haskins, a pretty seasoned person in the game of basketball," Ellerbe said. "That was a very, very strong thing for me to see as a young coach."

Ellerbe, Jerry Dunn at Penn State, Mike Davis at Indiana and Randy Ayers at Ohio State became the first black head coaches for their schools in the '90s and 2000.

A decade after the height of black coaches is when the drop-off started. Smith joined Indiana's Kelvin Sampson as the only two black Big Ten coaches in 2007-08. The Hoosiers fired Sampson after that season and only Smith remained, until his last season in 2012-13. Smith's dismissal left the Big Ten without a black coach for the first time since 1982-83. Jordan joined the Big Ten with Rutgers in 2014, but he lasted just one more season.

Three programs made hires in the last four years: Minnesota, Northwestern and Rutgers. Two of those three schools decided not to hire black coaches back-to-back, which has only happened twice: at Michigan (Ellerbe to Tommy Amaker in 2001) and at Indiana (Davis to Sampson).

Perhaps more rare than a school following one black coach with another, Ellerbe said, is a second chance.

"As black coaches, we don't get to weather out the tough years," said Ellerbe, who after leading the Wolverines to the inaugural Big Ten tournament title his first season went 10-18 in his last. "So guys like me, we don't resurface. Once you have that tough year, it's labeled such a bad thing."

There could be openings after this season. One black coach rumored to possibly be Big Ten-bound is California coach Cuonzo Martin, who played at Purdue.

Michigan State, Purdue, Illinois and Nebraska have never had a black men's basketball coach. Two of those schools — Purdue and Michigan State — have had longtime, successful coaches.

"These things do go in cycles," Lapchick said. "There are some legendary coaches in the Big Ten where there is often not change. But nonetheless, if it's the only (major) conference in the country that doesn't have a black head coach in the sport where the numbers of black head coaches have historically been very good, it's something that I'm concerned about."

No rules, only 'hope'

The NFL adopted the Rooney Rule — named after Dan Rooney, the former Steelers chairman and NFL diversity committee head — in 2003 requiring teams to interview at least one minority for head-coaching positions. A similar statute, named the Eddie Robinson Rule after the legendary Grambling football coach, was proposed by NAFCED and another group last year.

The NCAA studied the proposal and a committee amended the idea. Norvell said his group didn't accept the changes. "We asked them, 'What is the next step?'?" Norvell said. "They said you need to take that back to the operating committees of the NCAA to work through it. In other words: 'We're done with it and not going to worry about it anymore.' "

Lapchick doubts this pledge will be enough to produce real results. "The hiring of people of color in prominent positions is not something that happens automatically," he said. "There's not a public glare, or a spotlight and pressure, put on colleges and universities, as well as organizations, to make sure they search out a diverse pool of candidates. And the ol' boys' network can come into play, as it often does."

Delany said it's not up to the Big Ten to insert itself into hiring processes of schools, which often pay search firms to find top candidates. But the commissioner encourages school leaders to make diversity a priority.

"What I hope it means at any given time — whether there's one, four, six (minority coaches) — is that people who are in the pool get a fair hearing," Delany said. "That the school did its best job to identify the most meritorious person in the pool. I hope that's what happens. I think that's what normally happens. To say all hires — whether they're black, white, Hispanic or female — are good belies the point. Time will tell you whether or not the right person got the job.

"[Hiring] should be based on fairness, opportunity and merit and that's what it is — for the most part."

The first

Also pictured in the article was a young white coach wearing a bow tie, plaid pants, a shirt with a long collar and even longer hair. Cofield's head baseball coach and assistant basketball coach at the time was Bo Ryan.

Cofield brought Ryan with him when he took over Badgers basketball. Ryan, the longtime Wisconsin coach recently nominated for the Naismith Basketball Hall of Fame, heard from fans who were not happy about their new black coach.

"There were pockets of that, and that even exists today," Ryan said. "But hopefully a lot fewer. There were some people who weren't ready for [Cofield] to be a head coach at the University of Wisconsin. I know firsthand because I intercepted the mail."

Ryan said he and Cofield had "many conversations" about what he would start by being the Big Ten's first black coach.

"I said, 'Coach, this is just like with players,'?" Ryan said. "Once people get over these non-truths and more minority players started to be involved in college athletics and professionally, it was just a matter of time before more minorities were given (coaching) opportunities. … The landscape started to change around that time. Like anything else in our society, sometimes it takes a little longer."

The Black Coaches Association disbanded in 2015, leaving NAFCED to fight for diversity. Norvell's group believes solutions depend on each school elevating the importance of coaching diversity. Additionally, he wants the Big Ten mobilize on the issue, as they did for athletes 45 years ago.

The conference created the Advisory Commission in 1972, the first coordinated effort by a conference to address issues for black athletes.

"What we propose is that every [conference] commissioner's office should take on this responsibility for at least promoting and monitoring racial and ethnic minority hiring," Norvell said. "Then they can collectively report back as a conference to the NCAA board of trustees on what the Big Ten is doing, what progresses they have made to hire minority coaches, or just to make sure there's a diversified pool of candidates. ... It would go a long way toward responding and answering to the need."

If an opening arises in the conference this spring, as the decade mark approaches since the last hiring of a black coach, the coaching community and advocates will be watching to see if a streak some see as troubling continues for the Big Ten.

"Every time you have a search, you have a challenge to be fair, inclusive and make a decision based on the merits," Delany said. "We're in the education business, and having role models from diverse backgrounds and diverse places is good business. The people you're teaching, coaching, training, leading, work better when they're working with a diverse set of leaders."