[Peace-discuss] Dave Zirin on Racism

[Karen Medina]

Neil, 
Zirin comes to campus every once in awhile and is very worth hearing in person 
as well.

-karen medina
---- Original message ----
>Date: Thu, 18 Dec 2008 18:31:45 -0600
>From: Neil Parthun <lennybrucefan at gmail.com>  
>Subject: [Peace-discuss] Dave Zirin on Racism  
>To: AWARE Peace Discuss <peace-discuss at lists.chambana.net>
>Cc: IMC Print <print at ucimc.org>
>
>   Dave Zirin with a fantastic article about modern
>   racism right near us.  For those interested in an
>   intersection of sports and politics, he poses the
>   question: Is it easier to become the first African
>   American president of the US or an NCAA Division I
>   football coach?  May be a topic worth further
>   breaching.
>   Enduring Dixie: College Football Today
>
>   by Dave Zirin
>
>   In 2008 we are faced with a question: What is the
>   easier path for an African-American male, becoming
>   president of the United States or an NCAA Division I
>   football coach? The answer reveals something sordid
>   about college sports, as well as university
>   presidents and the boosters who back them.
>   At present, there are 120 Division I-A football
>   programs, and you can count the number of
>   African-American head coaches on one hand...
>   literally. There are currently four: Turner Gill at
>   Buffalo, Randy Shannon at Miami. Kevin Sumlin at
>   Houston, and Illinois offensive coordinator Mike
>   Locksley, the new head coach at New Mexico.
>
>   This number had been 50 percent higher, but then Ty
>   Willingham of Washington and Ron Prince of Kansas
>   State were pushed out the door--leaving just the
>   four, half the number of a decade ago.
>   That's 3.3 percent, in a sport where 50 percent of
>   the players are African-American. It's not as if
>   there are no black assistant coaches either.
>   African-Americans make up 312 of the 1,018 assistant
>   coaches. Therefore, the message being sent by the
>   NCAA football world truly is as simple as black and
>   white: African-Americans are only good enough to
>   bleed, sweat and get their ACLs torn out. Only then
>   are you qualified to hold a clipboard. But the top
>   job has a "Whites Only" sign on the door.
>
>   Charles Barkley called this out when his alma mater,
>   Auburn, hired Iowa State's Gene Chizik for the
>   coaching job instead of Gill, who against all odds
>   has made a winner out of Buffalo. "You can say it's
>   not about race, but you can't compare the two
>   résumés and say [Chizik] deserved the job. Out of
>   all the coaches they interviewed, Chizik probably
>   had the worst résumé.... My biggest problem with
>   the black coaches is they're not getting jobs and
>   they're getting [expletive] jobs when they are
>   hired," Barkley said. "They're not getting good
>   jobs. They're not getting jobs where they can be
>   successful. That's why I wanted Turner to get the
>   Auburn job. He could win consistently at Auburn. You
>   can't win consistently at New Mexico. You can't win
>   consistently at Kansas State. He could have won at
>   Auburn."
>
>   This reality is especially stark in the South
>   Eastern Conference. The SEC is the gold standard
>   division in college football. Top teams like
>   Florida, LSU and a resurgent Alabama field the best
>   players and have become pipelines to the pros. It's
>   also the conference that has the schools with a
>   background of the most bitter integration struggles
>   during the civil rights movement--among them,
>   Alabama, Mississippi and Mississippi State. It could
>   be the conference that sets a trend nationally and
>   makes a statement that the whole era of the old
>   South is gone with the wind. But the SEC has had
>   only one African-American head coach in its history,
>   Sylvester Croom at Mississippi State, and he just
>   resigned.
>
>   A number of college coaches, off the record, give
>   explanations like the "small-mindedness" of
>   university presidents, or say that the culture of
>   college administrators is "resistant to change." 
>   Coach Johnny Lopes, who coached on the defensive
>   side of the ball at
>   USC from 1979-1985 said to me, "Many white coaches
>   feel that black
>   coaches don't have the intelligence to coach at the
>   college level.
>   The white fans still hold to their prejudiced
>   feelings. College
>   Presidents need to have a good relationship with the
>   fans. It's about
>   money."
>
>   But all of this is a kind, roundabout way of saying
>   the word "racism." Qualified candidates are passed
>   over because they have the wrong color skin. The sad
>   facts are that 92.5 percent of university
>   presidents, 87.5 percent of athletic directors and
>   100 percent of conference commissioners are white.
>   Even more important, the boosters who pull the
>   strings aren't looking for change. The wealthy
>   funders of pigskin are the ones calling foul on any
>   pretensions of diversity. They are looking for the
>   familiar guy they can have a beer with, the guy they
>   know. It's like Eddie Murphy's famous "White Like
>   Me" SNL sketch come to life. As soon as all the
>   black folks are out of the room, it's a party for
>   everyone in the box, including the new coach. The
>   strength of boosters also makes affirmative action
>   plans like the NFL's somewhat successful " Rooney
>   Rule" less than helpful. The "Rooney Rule" dictates
>   that NFL owners must at least interview a person of
>   color when a coaching opening arises. This has
>   helped break down some of the walls in the NFL. But
>   in the NCAA, where boosters call the shots, the
>   individual choices of university presidents have far
>   less sway.
>
>   College football, in particular, should be sensitive
>   to these charges. The game has been referred to as a
>   "plantation economy" because the student athletes
>   don't get a dime in a sport that produces billions
>   of dollars in revenue. The solution is going to have
>   to reside in sanctions far stricter than the "Rooney
>   Rule." The qualified assistants are there so
>   conferences should have diversity quotas or be
>   penalized bowl money and scholarships. This is the
>   only strategy that will actually work. It's time for
>   NCAA president Myles Brand to show some real
>   leadership. Or maybe sports fans should begin to
>   turn the channel. Even better, students on these
>   college campuses should take out the clipboards they
>   were using to register people to vote and start
>   registering people in the struggle for a more
>   diverse athletics department. The message is simple:
>   the path to the White House shouldn't be easier than
>   the path to coach football at Oregon State.
>   Live without dead time,     
>        Neil
>    With the people, for the people, by the people. I
>   crack up when I hear it; I say, with the handful,
>   for the handful, by the handful because that's what
>   really happens.
>   [fannie lou hamer, 1917-1977]
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