Former Auburn basketball player, outspoken media member and possible future Alabama governor Charles Barkley believes that race was the deciding factor in Auburn’s decision to hire Gene Chizik.

“I think race was the #1 factor.  You can say it’s not about race, but you can’t compare the two resumes and say (Chizik) deserved the job.  Out of all the coaches they interviewd, Chizik probably had the worst resume.”

Alright before we dig deeper into this, let me say two things:

1) I have become a huge Barkley fan because he’s smart, funny and candid on television.

2) I believe there is absolutely racism at play in the NCAA when 70% of players are black and less than 1% of the coaches are black.  That’s too coincidental.  (More on how I beleive racism manifests itself a little later.)

That said, Chizik’s resume may be weak (that’s debatable), but that doesn’t mean he was hired solely because of the color of his skin.

Chizik had to stand out for some reason other than race.  How else did he best the other white candidates?

Was it because he had a good relationship with Bobby Lowder and the Auburn good ol’ boys when he left in 2004?  Was he the cheapest guy out there?

His resume includes that horrible 5-19 stint at Iowa State, but he was also considered one of the nation’s top defensive coordinators before taking the job in Ames.  Had he stayed at Texas, it’s likely he would have been the man Auburn fans wanted… rather than Will Muschamp.

“I’m just very disappointed.  I just thought Turner Gill would be the perfect choice for reasons: He’s a terrific coach and we needed to make a splash.  I thought we had to do something spectacular to bring attention to the program.  Clearly, if we’d hired a black coach, it would have created a buzz.”

Yes, it would have.  But so would hiring a dwarf, an albino or a lesbian.

Not hiring a man because of the color of his skin is boneheaded.  So is HIRING a man just because of the color of his skin.

Turner Gill took over a dreadful program at Buffalo.  This year he led UB to an 8-5 record.  He won five games last year.  Several of this season’s eight wins were last-second victories and overtime games.

Is it not possible that he simply had one good year in which all the breaks went his way?

Look, I’m not trying to down Gill.  I think he’s a solid up-and-coming coach.  But for some reason his own coach, Tom Osborne, chose Bo Pelini over him at Nebraska last year.

Was Osborne being racist in going with the never-been-a-head-coach Pelini over a man he’s known since his teens?  Don’t you think Osborne might know more about Gill’s resume and coaching acumen than those of us who’ve seen him in five minute “SportsCenter” highlight clips?

Sadly, on this topic, there seems to be no middle ground.

There are few black football coaches at the FBS level and those blacks who do get jobs usually get bottom-feeder jobs.  That’s one side.

Those who want to see more black coaches hired, want to see more black coaches hired — period.  It doesn’t matter if the black coach’s resume is any better than a white coach’s resume… a black coach simply “must” be hired.  That’s the other side.

There needs to be a middle ground.  The NFL put in place the Rooney Rule several years ago in the hopes of bringing about more minority hires. 

It was not a quota system.  It did not require teams to hire black coaches, it only required teams to interview black coaches.  It’s worked.  Owners who might not have interviewed a black candidate before the Rooney Rule have not only interviewed, but hired black coaches.

It’s probably time, in my opinion, for the NCAA to make a similar move.  But that’s still no guarantee.

Most schools (Auburn included) do interview black candidates to keep the activists at bay.  Yet the hires are still few and far between.

Why?

There is a large difference between the NFL game and college game and it’s in this area that I believe race still comes into play.

In the NFL, coaches don’t have to meet with boosters in order to drive up donations and season ticket sales.  In the college world, they do.

If there is racism involved in hirings and firings at the collegiate level, THIS is where I believe it exists.  Older fans, in the South and elsewhere, might not be as welcoming to a black coach as they would be to a white coach.

If you saw the exit polls in last month’s presidential election, you know that senior citizens went with the old white man, not the young black man.

Growing up in a world with separate schools and separate restrooms and seperate water fountains will effect the way you see the world. 

And the folks with the biggest dollars in terms of boosters tend to be older individuals… who probably didn’t grow up going to school with blacks, being friends with blacks, etc.

So at that level, it wouldn’t surprise me if athletic directors and presidents might wonder to themselves, “can this black coach win over the older white folks in our fanbase?”

And that might play a role in their decisions.

But to suggest that Chizik was hired simply because of race is taking it a bit too far. 

Too say that Gill should have been hired because of his skin color is as silly as saying he SHOULDN’T haven been hired because of skin color.

I have no problem with Barkley for barking on this issue.  I just think he’s barking up the wrong tree. 

If there is racism involved in collegiate non-hires (and I believe there is), it’s not in the presidents’ offices… it’s in the boosters’ minds.

And as the kids of the 70s and 80s become the biggest boosters, replacing the children of the 40s, 50s and 60s, then I believe you’ll start to see more schools hire black coaches.

Great read from Mark Schlabach of ESPN.com.

This entry was posted on Monday, December 15th, 2008 at 2:23 pm and is filed under Auburn, Homepage . You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.