College Football Hiring Is Unfair

If you follow college football much, you've probably observed hand-wringing about the number of black coaches. And this is fair. There are only (with the hiring of New Mexico's new coach) four out of 118 head coaches who are black in a sport where about half the players are black. (What I wonder is: where does the disparity start? How many black assistant coaches are there? If there aren't enough black coaches on that level, then there's where any changes would need to start, because it's no use trying to increase the number of head coaches if there just aren't qualified guys.)

Plus, if you look at the case of Auburn, there's clearly a problem. On the one hand, they could have hired Turner Gill, who took the historically terrible Buffalo program to a conference championship (by soundly beating the formerly unbeaten Ball State) and their FIRST EVER bowl game. On the other hand, they had Gene Chizik, who took the historically terrible Iowa State program, which had comparatively flourished under its previous coach, back to its regularly-scheduled terribleness, winning 5 games in two years, including ending this season on a 10-game losing streak. Aaaaaand they picked Chizik. (Hint: this was a stupid hire no matter who else was in the running. Of course, you'd expect a stupid hire from the athletic department who forced out Tommy Tuberville for having one mediocre season. Idiots.)

Just because Charles Barkley agrees with me doesn't mean I'm wrong.

However!

This is not the only way in which college football hiring is, as indicated, unfair.

Mike Leach is still the coach at Texas Tech, despite having a really great season and putting himself out there for a whole bunch of jobs. It really seems like he wanted to leave, so why didn't anybody take him?

The answer: he's weird. (Google search "Mike Leach weird." You will come up with many relevant pages.)

Clearly, atheletic diretors look at his record, look at what he's done with a school with a lot of disadvantages (facilities, location, history, neighboring powerhouses), and despite all the good that says about him, once they interview him or get him on the phone, they're like " . . . Nah."

Example the second!

What kind of coach gets mentioned for vacancies? Picture this guy: he coaches under Jim Tressel, Bill Snyder during the good years at K-State, then becomes offensive coordinator for a team that wins the national championship. He then becomes the head coach at a major conference school, though one that has traditionally languished in mediocrity, but after a few years, takes it to a BCS bowl. Wouldn't the guy you pictured come up in every Coaching Carousel discussion?

What if you pictured him like this:
Seriously--nobody talks about Mark Mangino as highly sought-after. And when you think about it, why not? I contend that it's because, you know, He Big.