Football and racism

As a graduate of the University of Notre Dame, I am a long-time—and, recently, a long-suffering—fan of Fighting Irish football. Since our last national championship in 1987 under Lou Holtz, the Irish have had to suffer several indignities: lots of humiliating losses, especially to great teams like Southern Cal; more humiliating losses, especially to mediocre teams like North Carolina State; and even phasing out of the Leprechaun mascot in his “fighting” stance for pc-reasons.

Now we have been subject to sermonizing about the firing of ineffective Tyrone Willingham as head coach. Since he was black, some people claim that the reason he was fired must therefore be racism, or even “systematic racism.” (For some sillier examples, see here and here.)

I have a hard time believing that racism had anything to do with Willingham’s firing, or with the relative dearth of black coaches in NCAA football generally. The one thing those college football programs want to do is win. They don’t care what color the players, coaches, staff, or anyone else is. In this they are quite unlike college and university administrators’ attitudes about other students—where their color does matter quite a bit. But in big-time football programs, like Notre Dame’s, Oklahoma’s, Alabama’s, Miami’s, and on and on, my suspicion is that if they thought they could win by hiring a particular black coach, they’d do it. Without batting an eye.