(NAME-MCE) Bill to require minority coach interviews

[Anselmo Villanueva]

Bill to require minority coach interviews

The proposal dictates that at least one minority candidate be considered
whenever a state college hires a football coach **

By David Steves <david.steves at registerguard.com>

The Register-Guard  Eugene OR

http://www.registerguard.com/csp/cms/sites/web/news/sevendays/12115519-35/story.csp


Appeared in print: *Saturday*, *Apr 18, 2009, page B2*
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SALEM — Oregon lawmakers Friday considered a legal requirement that public
universities’ football programs interview at least one minority candidate
for head coach whenever the position becomes open.

The proposal, contained in House Bill 3118, drew words of support and
scrutiny, but none of outright opposition during its first hearing before
the House Education Committee. It is scheduled for more work next Friday. If
passed, it would make Oregon the only state in the country with its own
version of the National Football League’s “Rooney Rule” in its statutes. The
bill imposes no penalties for universities that fail to comply.

The driving force behind it, Portland diversity activist Sam Sachs, said he
was pleased that the panel, while seeking some wording changes, appeared
willing to consider his plan. It would apply only to the six public Oregon
universities with football programs. But Sachs, who played football for
Western Oregon University before transferring to Portland State University,
said he hoped it could start a discussion that would reach the National
Collegiate Athletic Association.

“If we can change things in Oregon, perhaps that would have a ripple effect
across the country — maybe the NCAA will wake up and take notice,” he said.

None of Oregon’s public university football programs has a black head coach.
The only one was at Portland State University in the early 1970s.
Nationally, six of the 120 biggest college football programs are led by
minority head coaches, Sachs said.

No university athletic department officials testified on the bill. In an
interview, University of Oregon’s athletic director, Pat Kilkenny, said he
didn’t consider such a legal requirement necessary — either as part of state
law or as an addition to the NCAA’s rulebook, which he said was already
oversized enough to take up 700 pages.

There are times when college football programs must be allowed to move
quickly to hire or promote the best coach available, Kilkenny said, an
especially important consideration, given the sport’s “self-supporting
nature,” in which successfully competing for a top-notch head coach can mean
success both on and off the field.

Kilkenny cited the UO’s rapid pursuit late last year of offensive
coordinator Chip Kelly as the Ducks’ next head football coach — a move that
was made without opening up the hiring process to outside candidates, white
or minority — because of concerns that Syracuse might lure Kelly to be its
next football coach if things dragged out.

“That was an instance in which another institution was interested in
contacting and potentially hiring Chip Kelly so we had to respond,” Kilkenny
said.

The bill was introduced March 9, when Kelly was under contract as the
successor to then-Coach Mike Bellotti. The bill made accommodations to that
situation, exempting any university from the mandatory interview of a
minority job candidate if it was “bound by contract to promote a member of
the institution’s current coaching staff.” Since then, Bellotti has formally
stepped down to become the UO athletic director and will replace Kilkenny on
July 1. Kelly became the head coach on March 30.

Sachs said his proposal was motivated by Portland State University’s process
in hiring a head football coach, in which it obtained a speedy waiver to
sidestep Oregon University System affirmative action hiring requirements so
it could hire Jerry Glanville in 2007.

But he said the UO’s coaching succession could have been opened to include
minority applicants, too. Sachs compared the UO situation to that of the
NFL’s Pittsburgh Steelers, which had on its staff a logical successor to its
retiring coach. That potential successor, Ken Whisenhunt, is white. Instead
of promoting from within, Pittsburgh followed the NFL’s Rooney Rule, which
was named for the Steelers’ chairman, Dan Rooney, because he chaired the
committee that came up with the rule in 2003, requiring NFL teams to
interview at least one minority candidate for head coach openings.

Pittsburgh ended up hiring Mike Tomlin, who is black. This year, Tomlin led
the Steelers to a Super Bowl victory. “They took the time to invite other
coaches, including a minority candidate and the University of Oregon could
have done the same thing,” Sachs said.