Notable Times Football Coaches Were Accused Of Being Anti-Black

Football coaches play an important role in the lives of many young Black men. When it comes to college rosters for football and basketball, Black student-athletes make up nearly 60% of the players, but their coaches are majority white. 

According to the Institute for Diversity and Ethics in Sport (TIDES) at the University of Central Florida, in 2021 Black coaches held only 9% of head positions at the Division I level, 6.2% at the Division II level, and a measly 5.9% in Division III.  The study also revealed that 82.2% of men’s basketball head coaches are white, along with 89% of football head coaches and 94.5% of baseball head coaches across all three divisions, as reported by AP. The women’s side was not better, as white coaches made up 82.1%, 84.9% and 88.7% in Divisions I, II, and III of head coaching positions, respectively. 

There isn’t anything inherently wrong with white coaches teaching Black players, but when a coach is culturally incompetent or even racist, it can be detrimental to the development of young Black men.

Interestingly enough, coaching college football is tailor-made for someone seeking control over the fate of Black men, which is a scary thought seeing as Alabama Sen. Tommy Tuberville was a college head football coach for two decades. The senator recently made an appearance on CNN and went back and forth with host Kaitlan Collins about whether or not white nationalists are racist.

Asked to clarify his comments on white nationalists in the military, Sen. Tommy Tuberville's response: pic.twitter.com/deTfS4XKnR

— Kaitlan Collins (@kaitlancollins) July 11, 2023

In May he also said when asked about white nationalists in the military during an interview with WBHM:

“We are losing in the military so fast. Our readiness in terms of recruitment. And why? I’ll tell you why. Because the Democrats are attacking our military, saying we need to get out the white extremists, the white nationalists, people that don’t believe in our agenda.”

Just imagine what Tuberville thought about his players, which were mostly Black. 

When Tuberville was pressed on the issue of white nationalists in the military, he responded, “Well, they call them that,” he said. “I call them Americans.”

Tuberville isn’t even the only former head coach this week to get call out on their Anti-Black views. Newly fired Northwestern University head coach, Pat Fitzgerald was recently accused of fostering a racist team environment for Black and brown players. 

As we previously reported, the Daily Northwestern published the accounts of three former players who claimed they were part of a football program with “a certain culture of enabling racism and other microaggressions.”

Specifically, Fitzgerald is accused of lending preferential treatment to white players and ordering Black players with dreadlocks and other Black hairstyles to change their looks to comply with “the Wildcat way,” a reference to the team mascot. A familiar refrain from Fitzgerald was that he wanted the Black players to have “good, clean American fun” in ways that were not imposed on white players, including allowing them to have long hair, the former players said.

If you’re a Black parent who has a son with aspirations of playing college football make sure you do your due diligence on these head coaches, because they will be a part of shaping that young man’s future. 

Below we’ve listed other notable instances of football coaches who were accused of being anti-Black.

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