Job market for black coaches improving

Alabama A&M University Coach Anthony Jones has played in the NFL, coached successfully at the NCAA Division III, II and I-AA levels, but has not received any head coaching offers to move to the Division I-A level. Why?

Anthony Jones and Henry Frazier III can match resumes with any football coach in America. Both have taken over programs that were among the worst in the country: Frazier's Prairie View A&M team once went 0-80 in the 1990s and Alabama A&M's Jones got his first head coaching job at Morehouse College, which he says had won "eight games in 70 years" before he got there. Today in the Southwestern Athletic Conference Championship Game at Legion Field, Frazier has Prairie View playing for its first SWAC championship since 1964, which could lead to the school's first Black College National Championship since that year. Hoping to stop him is Jones, who left Morehouse for Alabama A&M and has the Bulldogs playing for their second SWAC title in his eight years.

"Anybody else with that resume, taking over programs like that and turning it around, would be considered a hot (coaching) prospect," Jones said. Yes, this another column about the shocking lack of opportunity for minority head coaches at the college level. Only this time, the situation seems to be getting better. Four minority head coaches have been hired at the Division I-A level this offseason: Charlie Strong at Louisville; Mike London at Virginia; Larry Porter at Memphis; and Willie Taggart at Western Kentucky. The hiring of Strong and London at BCS schools is a particularly good sign, considering that Miami's Randy Shannon was the only black coach among 66 BCS programs this past football season.

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