Buried in the back pages of newspapers across the country was the hiring this past Friday of Kevin Sumlin by the University of Houston. Sumlin, 43 is the first African-American to be hired as head man of a Division I football program in the state of Texas. Sumlin spent the last five years as an assistant at Oklahoma, where he served as both the co-offensive coordinator/wide receivers coach (2006-2007) and special teams/tight-end coach (2003-2005). Sumlin replaces Art Briles, who resigned to accept the head coach job at Baylor. Briles was 34-28 in 5 seasons.
What makes this hire significant is Sumlin marks only the sixth black head coach out of the 119 division 1 schools.
Sumlin joins Randy Shannon (Miami), Turner Gill (Buffalo), Syvester Croom (Mississippi State), Ty Willingham (Washington) and Ron Prince (Kansas State). Karl Dorrell (UCLA) was fired at the end of this season.
Even in 2oo7, there is still a hesitancy among college presidents to give African-American coaches a reasonable chance. While they seem content on re-cycling average white coaches, they fail to grasp the reality that 40% of division I players.....are black.
This type of thinking will never change until the elite Af
rican-American athletes refuse to continue to be "slave labor" for the white establishment ......and sign all those letters of commitments to Black head coached programs. Maybe in our lifetime.
rican-American athletes refuse to continue to be "slave labor" for the white establishment ......and sign all those letters of commitments to Black head coached programs. Maybe in our lifetime.
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