"We've adopted policies so that we can ensure there are diverse pools, but we don't, and I don't, make the hiring decisions. "We've had success in adding diversity in other sports as well as some of our athletic directors' positions and at the president and chancellor level, but not in the head football coach position recently," Sankey said. Sankey's predecessor, the late Mike Slive, said repeatedly that Croom's hiring as the SEC's first Black head football coach - not the conference's seven consecutive national titles - was the most significant event that happened under his leadership as the league's commissioner. SEC commissioner Greg Sankey said he hears and feels Croom's frustration and that it is "troubling" the league is without a Black head football coach for a second straight season. And yet, here we are in the hotbed of college football, and there are no Black head coaches in the SEC anymore." "Look at how disproportionate it is, the large percentage of players and assistant coaches who are Black. I was the first in the SEC, and you look around now, and nobody really says anything about it," Croom said. In the Big 12, Baylor's Dave Aranda is Mexican American. The Pac-12 and Big Ten each have three Black head coaches, while the ACC has two. The SEC is the only Power 5 conference without any minority head coaches. And he doesn't need to be reminded that in 2022, for the second straight season, the SEC - a league in which more than 60% of the players and 48% of the on-field coaches are Black - won't have any Black head football coaches despite 10 jobs having come open in the past three years. He knows the sport and knows the rigors of being a Black man trying to claw his way to the top of his profession.Ĭroom also knows his history. He will go into the College Football Hall of Fame as a player later this year as part of the 2022 class. "What we're asking is for guys to get a legitimate chance and to be elevated to the kinds of positions that they're going to get those chances."Ĭroom, now 67 and retired from coaching, hasn't stopped doing his part to try to ensure more Black coaches get head-coaching opportunities. "It's not like anybody is asking for any favors," said Croom, who became the SEC's first Black head football coach when he was hired by Mississippi State on Dec. That was nearly two decades ago, and Sylvester Croom isn't convinced that much, if anything, has changed for Black head coaches in college football, particularly those in the Deep South. HIS HIRING WAS viewed as a breakthrough, long overdue and something college football desperately needed.
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