Perhaps, but I'm not saying that most good coaches have never been players. I'm saying that few players have what it takes to be good coaches. As an analogy, how many current Rockets players do you think will make good coaches in the future? Only a couple. That's all I'm saying, I'm not trying to say a lack of black coaches is ok. But arguing that "there are tons of black players, so there should be tons of black coaches" is faulty, in my opinion.
Talent evaluation, recruiting and the teaching of skills are a coach's job, therefore your argument has no merit. No one has answered my basic question: Why is there an inherent distrust of the free market system in selecting coaches, when there is a high degree of trust for that system in selecting players?
How hard is it to figure out Cedrick Benson is one of the best running backs in the country. I knew who Cedrick Benson was before he was a senior in High School. There isn't much talent evaluation going on at the College level. The big schools recruit the hands down best talent. The argument for talent evalution comes into play when talking pro sports, because you have money coming into play, and a draft system where you can't pick who you want. I don't think the coaches at Miami are great talent evaluators when they have the best high school football in there back yard and all they have to do is offer available scholorships to the best players. How hard is that. Recruiting is a skill, but it has to do with salesmanship, nothing about talent evaluation on the large university level.
Thanks for reinforcing my point. Blacks simply do not trust whites' intelligence in the arena of sports. You tell me who is being racist here.
You just mentioned the consensus best running back in the nation. What about the players who are barely recruited at all but turn out to be stars? Is that just luck? Or did the coach do a good job in seeing the player's potential?
As an analogy, how many current Rockets players do you think will make good coaches in the future? Only a couple. Agreed. However, if only a couple of the Rockets players become good coaches, what are the odds that all of them would naturally be from the few that are also white. Let's say your average NBA team is 10 black players, 2 white players. On average, 1 of them will become decent NBA coaches. In a large sample size, if it was purely random, 5 out of 6 coaches would turn out black. It's peculiar that the coaches always come out of the small minority of white players. (this doesn't really apply in the NBA which actually has a good and improving mix of coaches) That said, this alone doesn't imply racism - however, it implies something fundamentally different about black and white players (either internal or external). On the internal side, as TJ and others have pointed out, the skill set needed for coaching is different than that of playing. So we have to look at whether black and white players have fundamentally different skill sets. I would argue that they don't - certainly not to the point that virtually NO black players have the coaching skills that apparently quite a few players have. I agree that there are fundamental differences in how black and white individuals in our society are raised (parenting, socioeconomics, education quality, etc). However, I would argue that black and white football players are far more similiar than different, just as black and white doctors have far more similarities than differences. Whatever their background may be, more spend well over a decade of their life together in a football-centered environment and develop the same general skills. It would be one thing if there was a positional breakdown. For example, if most coaches were ex-QBs and in the past, QBs were white, thus coaches are now white. Then you could argue it will naturally filter away as the current crop of black QBs move on to coaching. However, the coaches cover all positions and styles of play. Then you have to look on the external environment. We know blacks and whites (along with men and women) are treated differently in the real-world environment. Regression analysis shows that holding other things constant, they are paid different rates for identical work. So the question is, could this reasonably happen in this industry? I don't see why not. Coaches and players undergo different evaluation processes. Players are hired by coaches, GMs, and scouts - almost all of whom are ex-players who've been in the industry. Head coaches are hired by owners, who tend to be older and far more removed from the players. The statistics show that there's a clear difference in the career paths of black and white players. Whether its internal or external can't conclusively be determined, but I think the evidence favors the latter over the former, especially as other sports have far more integrated coaching with no noticable performance differences.
I'll play devil's advocate here. Let's say you are a racist owner. You don't like black people, but you also have to win. If you are building a team, you have little choice but to have several black players on the team. If you ignore that talent base, you will lose. However, when it comes to selecting coaches, being racist and hiring only whites doesn't really hurt you. A coach doesn't have as much impact as a star player, so hiring whites only is a policy that you can still win with.
Instead of making baseless claims with no argument, why don't you refute the point I just made. I said recruiting isn't about evaluating talent, its about salesmanship, and I stated reasons. Since when did I say I don't think whites are good coaches, or good recruiters, or anything of that ilk. I have a lot of respect for football coaches. I guess you just ignored when I said I thought Ken Hatfield was a good coach. If I was racist I wouldn't have said that. Refute my argument instead of grandstanding.
No one has answered my basic question: Why is there an inherent distrust of the free market system in selecting coaches, when there is a high degree of trust for that system in selecting players? Because the hiring sources are different. One set (players) are hired by people who have been involved in the industry their whole lives and players can then be judged by very concrete means (statistical performance). The other set (coaches) are hired by people who are more removed from the industry itself and are employed based on far more murky characteristics and evaluated on murky characteristics that can't really be measured. This leaves the possibility of racism to be far more possible. In the NFL, it plays out similar to the glass ceiling concept w/ gender discrimination. Women have no issues moving up in an organization up until a certain level of management, after which it is far harder to move forward.
Peter, it's very simple. Identifying talent means identifying an entire football team of close to 100 players. It doesn't mean just picking players off the all-star teams, or picking the most heralded recruit. One player, or even a handful of heraled players, is a mere fraction of a football team. Indentification of talent is only step 1. Step 2 is convincing them to come to your school. This is a job that requires a strategy. You must allocate the appropriate amount of scholarships, convince the family that it's a good choice, figure out what your expected yield will be of the offers that you make, and figure out which players will fit into the chemistry of the team. Step three is integrating the players into your system. This means teaching them the playbook, teaching them the mindset and attitude required to play at the new level, and teaching them how to adjust to the strenous requirements of attending a university. All of these things are huge undertakings. For you to imply that any dolt could do this job is simply ridiculous. My point stands. In this argument, blacks are simply unwilling to give whites credit for the job they do, while they simultaneously heap praise on the job of blacks. Constantly accusing whites of being racist is an old, tired excuse that frankly people are sick of hearing. I speak for a great many people when I say this.
Do you think the head coach of Texas is out in West Texas recruiting some running back that no one outside of Texas has ever heard of who is only being seen because his high school coach has been pleading people to come look at him, or is it the assistant coaches? And to add to that, how many players in Texas Starting line up were these types of players. Benson no, Simms no, the blue chip offensive line no, Roy Williams no, Bo Scaith TE (sp), B.J. Johnson no.
Coaches don't have statistics which they can be judged on? Ever heard of a win-loss record? Ever heard of offensive and defensive statistics? How do you explain AD's like Vince Dooley and Bo Schembechler who were former football coaches? How can you claim that an athletic director hasn't been involved in sports his whole life? You can't. An inappropriate comparison which is backed up by an opinion statement.
You think Mack Brown knows the name of 100 players on his team? Do you think even NFL Head Coaches no the names of an entire roster, let alone the practice squad. If you think Mack Brown is the one who identified Ced Benson, Roy Williams, and Chris Simms, you are living in la la land. The evaluation process falls to assistant coaches when it comes to players who may or may not play, but I guarnatee you, Mack Brown knew the names and stats of every player in his starting line up before he stepped foot on their high school campus.
Peter, you took one line from my argument and attempted a response to that one line. That one line was a part of a larger argument, which either you didn't understand or you choose to ignore because you agree with me. If you would like to have a civil debate about my rebuttal to your post, then please take my entire post in context and respond to it. Do not take one line and think you've made a point.
I guessed you just missed my whole point of Mack Brown not having to evaluate talent because it is well known who the best players in the country are? Now who took one point from a post and chose to respond to only it. If I need to explain further to you, I am saying that talent evaluation doesn't have as much to do with integregating players that fit your system. Mack Brown in two years recruited the best quarterback in the nation, the best wide reciever in the nation, and the best running back. I doubt he was looking to fit players into his system rather than just going out and getting the best talent. To take that point even further, Mack Brown has recruited Chris Simms, Chance Mock, and Vincent Young. Are those the same type of quarterbacks that quote "fit Mack Brown's offense", or did two of those players, who happen to be two different types of players, happen to be the best at that position coming out of high school. Selvin Young and Cedrick Benson are two different types of backs, it came down to them being the most talented.
I did not miss that point, I successfully refuted that point when I said that it takes more than simply picking players off all-star games and Street & Smith lists. I did this by pointing that the many aspects of filling out a team that extend beyond simply identifying talent. You ignored this point, and you continue to harp on one sentence of my larger response. You are incapable of debating me. I will no longer stoop to your level. Welcome to my ignore list.
Thanks loser, I wrote a whole paragraph refuting your point but I guess that's when you started to ignore me, when I proved you wrong again. Take your ball and go home.
Mad Max, good post, I think it gets to the crux of the argument. My question to this argument is- can't there be both internal and external reasons that have nothing to do with racism? In other words, can't there be something unique about football and football players that tilts the scales a little bit for the time being? For example, it seems to me that college programs retain their coaches for a long period of time, and that new coaches hired usually have plenty of experience working under other coaches. How long was Slocum coach at Texas A&M? Franchione (sp?) might be there another 10-15 years. That's a long time, and it might apply to other programs. In the NBA and other professional sports, turnover is a lot higher and much younger coaches are often given a chance. I don't doubt that racism plays a part, but I am hesitant to say that it is the dominant factor. If I'm not mistaken. there are a lot of black college basketball coaches. Aren't the same people making the hiring decisions for football?
You know I'm so god damn sick of people trying to defend this stupid bull****. Manny with his r****ded ass well maybe this isn't the right job for a black coach and now this crap. Here is the question TJ Campanis responded to. Isn't it odd that most coaches in Division I are white while most players are black? He responded with a skill set argument that was veiled racist bull****, then expanded on it with blacks are okay for being assistants because of the aforementioned racist skill set bull**** answer, and then he went on with his crap high school nonsense. Now he's whining and b****ing about racism against whites, AGAIN. I mean we're talking about a situation where 4 of 117 Division 1A coaches are black and he dismisses it while crying about racism against white administrators who've historically instituted these racist practices in the first damn place. What the hell? He's a freaking arrogant obtuse moron, he should be a SNL character or something. His arguments here were the same reasoning as to why there were no black quarterbacks at one time. They just weren't intelligent enough or good enough leaders, blah blah blah. The quarterback position required a certain "skill set". It's all the same crap. What the hell ever.
This is the last point I want to make in this thread, will people quit saying that blacks are just yelling racism when ever we don't get something. It has been proven time and time again that racism has held blacks back, not our failures, and it didn't end with the Civil Rights Movement as some people will claim. Just ten years ago they're were maybe 5 black quarterbacks in the NFL. It was a big deal when Doug Williams won the super bowl. Before him, a black quarterback could hardly get a sniff. I guess blacks just all of a sudden started becoming capable of playing the position. It had nothing to do with prejudice holding them back. Saying racism doesn't exist is weak, and tired. It has been proven time and time again when blacks get a chance, we can perform just as well as our white counter parts. But I bet some of you guys were the ones in the eighties saying there were no capable black quarterbacks, and it has nothing to do with racism.
