The Institute for Diversity and Ethics in Sport (TIDES) at the University of Central Florida (UCF) recently issued its 2014 College Sport Racial and Gender Report Card (CSRGRC), which “showed that the record of the National Collegiate Athletic Association and its member institutions worsened for gender hiring practices, racial hiring practices and the combined grade. It is the worst Racial and Gender Report Card issued among all professional leagues and the colleges in the past year.”
College Sport received a C+ for racial hiring practices by earning 78.5 points, down from 82.3 points in the 2013 CSRGRC. College Sport received a C- for gender hiring practices by earning 69.4 points, down from 75.9 points in the 2013 CSRGRC. The combined grade for the 2014 CSRGRC was a C with 74.0 points, also down from an overall C+ with 79.1 points in 2013. It was the worst combined grade ever issued in the College RGRC.
“It was extremely discouraging that this year’s CSRGRC showed further deep overall declines,” said Richard Lapchick, the Director of TIDES and the primary author of the CSRGRC. “The drop in the race and gender grades emphasized an area of continuing and alarming concern. College sport still had the lowest grade for racial hiring practices and is now tied with the National Football League for gender hiring practices among all of the college and professional sports covered by the respective Racial and Gender Report Cards.
“It was especially bad news that the opportunity for people of color among men’s and women’s basketball head coaches declined significantly,” he added.
For the 2014 season, 22 percent of the men’s Division I basketball coaches were African-American (down from 23 percent) and 23.8 percent were coaches of color (down from 24.8 percent). The all-time high was in 2005-06, when 25.2 percent of all the head coaches were African American and 26.2 were people of color.
For Division I women’s basketball in the 2013-14 season, African-American women head coaches held 10.6 percent of the positions and African-American men held 3.7 percent of the positions for a combined percentage of 14.3 percent, which was a significant decrease from the 20.6 percent reported in 2012-2013.
The number of head football coaches of color at the FBS level decreased from 15 in the 2013 report to 14 at the start of the 2014 season. Nearly 89 percent were white.
Lapchick highlighted the significance of the findings.
“The greatest number of career prospects are in college sport rather than professional sport because of the number of jobs available,” he said. “That makes it even more important for us to create expanded opportunities in college sport for women and people of color.”
