MCTSixty years ago, Jackie Robinson broke into the major leagues with the Brooklyn Dodgers and became the first African-American to ever play in the MLB. Robinson advocated for equal rights for black players throughout his career, and major leaguers all over the country are wearing the No. 42 in his memory.
But would Robinson be happy with the situation at the University of Massachusetts?
Of 21 varsity head coaches in the UMass Athletic Department, none are African-American.
“It’s a concern for us as a department as it is a concern for the University,” Athletic Director John McCutcheon said. “The recruitment and retention of minority employees has been a challenge for the University and the athletic program as well.”
Four head coaching positions have opened up since McCutcheon took the AD job in 2004. He hired Travis Ford for men’s basketball, Justine Sowry for field hockey, Alexis Venechanos for women’s lacrosse and Don Brown as the football head coach; none are African-American.
Brown was McCutcheon’s first hire as the athletic director, but McCutcheon initially offered the football head coaching job to Norries Wilson – an African-American assistant at Connecticut at the time – who turned it down in favor of Columbia University.
The Black Coaches Association (BCA) was created to “foster the growth and development of ethnic minorities at all levels of sports both nationally and internationally,” according to its Web site, www.bcasports.org.
The BCA implemented a “Hiring Report Card” in 2003, which outlines certain criteria that colleges have to meet during the hiring process for new head coaching positions. Contact with the BCA, diversity of the search and hiring committee and diversity in the interview process are among the criterion.
The BCA gave UMass a grade of ‘B’ for its football coaching search (a school has to hire a black head coach to get an ‘A’) and McCutcheon maintains that he is going to do everything he can to actively search for minority coaching candidates.
“As you seek people, the ability to bring diversity to the program is a plus,” he said. “Everybody has their strengths. Everybody has areas where they might not be quite as prepared. In the final analysis, you weigh everybody’s pluses and areas where they’re not so good and choose the best overall for the position. That’s the way we approach it.”
McCutcheon hasn’t hired any African-Americans yet, although he came close with both the football and men’s basketball positions, and he believes that it will take time for things to change because there are many qualified coaches already in place.
“We want to have more diversity within the department,” McCutcheon said. “At this point, you’re not going to get rid of somebody just to do that. So it’s something that has to happen as people move on or as situations change. We will do everything we can to continue to try and recruit quality people if positions open up to try and improve our diversity.”
Associate Chancellor Esther Terry, who also heads the African-American studies department at UMass, trusts McCutcheon’s ability to diversify the athletic department and get rid of what she calls “unhappy statistics.”
“I am persuaded that [McCutcheon] will continue his search for talented minority coaches, and that he will prevail in convincing them to come to work at UMass Amherst,” Terry said via e-mail. “He certainly has the support of the Chancellor and upper administration in his determination to make us more inclusive at every level of our athletic program; and because we know that we didn’t get to where we are overnight, we can appreciate that things won’t get changed overnight.
“We have every confidence that under John’s guidance, things will change,” Terry said.
McCutcheon has had his share of experience with diversification. When he worked at California Polytechnic State University, McCutcheon hired two black head coaches – one for the women’s basketball team and the other for the football team.
But in Amherst, there is an obviously problem – one that McCutcheon wants to address immediately. Because head coaching positions don’t open up often, he has taken other avenues to diversify, including internships within the administration and assistant coaching positions.
There are currently three black assistant coaches in the football program, one in the men’s basketball program and another in the women’s basketball program. McCutcheon wants to bring in more minorities to assistant coaching positions and lower-level positions within the department. When head coaching and high-level administrative positions open up, he argues, minority candidates will be hired from within the system.
It will take a while for McCutcheon’s plan to take effect. He will have to wait until another coaching position opens up, and at the rate of turnover it might be a while before the athletic department’s diversity is up to the University’s standards.
While the BCA keeps close track of university athletic departments and their hiring processes, UMass has standards of its own. McCutcheon works closely with the Human Resources department during his search for head coaches.
“[Human Resources] reviews the candidate pool and makes sure that every minority who is qualified receives due consideration,” McCutcheon said. “If they felt you didn’t do diligence in your recruitment then they may come back to us and ask us to continue the search and try to diversify the candidate pool.”
In an Affirmative Action Plan developed by the Office of Equal Opportunity and Diversity at UMass, the goals for diversifying the campus are outlined.
“One of the ways that the campus seeks to provide opportunity is through its active monitoring of the search process,” says one of the plan’s initiatives. “The Equal Opportunity and Diversity Office reviews recruitment plans and advises search committees and hiring authorities on matters related to affirmative action and equal opportunity. Departments and/or search committee chairs will be informed by EO’D when, based on utilization analysis, there are affirmative action goals for a position vacancy.”
According to a March 28 article in the Boston Globe sports section, of 41 varsity head coaching positions at Harvard University there were zero black head coaches. That changed with the recent hiring of Tommy Amaker, an African-American head coach at the University of Michigan for the past six years.
UMass has a similar problem that McCutcheon is becoming increasingly aware of. McCutcheon understands that there are student-athletes at UMass who are underrepresented in the athletic department and believes that a minority coach could identify with certain athletes more than a non-minority coach.
“All you have to do is look at who we have employed and we don’t have diversity in the head coaching positions,” McCutcheon said. “I’m not going to make it something that it isn’t. But a lot of the coaches have been here for quite a while and all I can say to that student-athlete who feels underrepresented is that as we have openings, we will do everything in our power to have a comprehensive search process that will include as many qualified minority candidates as we can have.”
UMass is now the only Division I school in Massachusetts without an African-American head coach, and only time will tell if McCutcheon’s dedication to diversification will provide results in the athletic department.
Rob Greenfield can be reached at [email protected].
