The spring and summer of 2020 was a fraught time for college football coaches. Their sport was shut down by the COVID-19 pandemic, cutting them off from recruiting future players and on-field interaction with their current players. Then George Floyd’s murder beneath the knee of a police officer in Minneapolis added to the angst.
In an attempt to stay connected with his peers, and using newly popular technology, then-San Jose State running backs coach Alonzo Carter started what was titled the “West Coast Zoom Clinic.” What began with about 35 running backs coaches talking football in the early weeks of the pandemic exploded into a movement of sorts. It became a conduit for hundreds of Black people in football, and other coaches of color, to come together—to discuss their sport and how they might improve their position within it.
The calls were unofficially termed the “Underground Railroad” by some participants.
By midsummer, hundreds of Black coaches from high school to the professional ranks were flocking to the twice-weekly meetings, which lasted up to seven hours. (White coaches and other minorities were welcome as well.) Many of the most prominent Black names in the business, from the NFL and college, were invited speakers.
Among the headline speakers in the series of Zoom meetings that summer was James Franklin, coach of the Penn State Nittany Lions. The Franklin who spoke on one particular call I listened to was markedly different from the hyper-polished man who speaks to the public and media. His delivery was real, raw and unguarded.
One thing Franklin made clear: He wanted to see a Black coach hold up the College Football Playoff championship trophy sometime in the future.
Five football seasons later, that future may be now. And Franklin may be that coach. Or it may be Marcus Freeman of the Notre Dame Fighting Irish. Franklin and Freeman face each other in the Orange Bowl on Thursday night, with the winner advancing to play for the national championship on Jan. 20. It is, far and away, the most significant game between two Black head coaches in the annals of their sport.
“This is a historical moment,” says Carter, now the assistant head coach of the Arizona Wildcats and the chair of the National Coalition of Minority Football Coaches (NCMFC) executive committee. “This is a milestone that should be noticed and should be celebrated. It just gives you a sense of pride.”
It is a proud moment for coaches of color, but one that is embarrassingly slow in coming.
Franklin noted the 2007 Super Bowl between the Chicago Bears and Indianapolis Colts as a noteworthy moment for him as a young Black assistant coach on Ron Prince’s staff with the Kansas State Wildcats. That Super Bowl matched Lovie Smith against Tony Dungy, the first meeting of Black head coaches in the history of America’s signature sporting event, with Dungy becoming the first Black head coach Super Bowl champion.
“I remember thinking that as a coach, how significant that was in the profession and how significant that was for young coaches coming up in the profession to see those guys in that role,” Franklin said.
Now Franklin and Freeman are in a similar breakthrough position.
“At the end of the day, does this create opportunities for more [aspiring head coaches] to get in front of athletic directors?” Franklin asked. “Does this create more opportunities for search firms? I hope so. I think at the end of the day, you just want an opportunity and want to be able to earn it through your work and through your actions.
“So we’ll see. I take a lot of pride in it. I think you guys know there’s been some conversations in the past I kept private for a long time. But I take a lot of pride in it. I’m honored.”
Fact is, it took 18 years since that Super Bowl for the college game to come close to a similar milestone moment. College football has long lagged behind the NFL in minority hiring and promoting—and it’s not like the NFL is a beacon of enlightenment in that area.
At present, there are 16 Black head coaches out of 134 jobs at the FBS level, or 11.95%. For the 2024 season, the NFL was almost exactly 10% higher, at 21.88%. At the power-school level—programs in the Atlantic Coast, Big 12, Big Ten and Southeastern Conferences, plus Notre Dame—there are seven Black head coaches out of 68 jobs (10.29%).
The FBS ranks also have two Cuban American head coaches (Mario Cristobal of the Miami Hurricanes and Manny Diaz of the Duke Blue Devils), a Latino (Dave Aranda of the Baylor Bears) and a Polynesian (Kalani Sitake of the BYU Cougars) at the power-conference level.
Including those four increases the percentage of minority head coaches to 16.18.
Franklin notes when he was at Kansas State, the percentage of Black head coaches at the FBS level was 4.72. He’s encouraged by the upward trend.
“I know some people will say, that’s not a huge increase,” he said. “But it is an increase.”
It is. But this is also true: The percentage of Black leaders in FBS college football still trails far behind the percentage of Black players, which is near 50%. And more than half the power-conference schools (36) have never had a full-time Black head football coach.
That includes many of the elite programs in the sport: the Alabama Crimson Tide, LSU Tigers, Georgia Bulldogs, Auburn Tigers, Tennessee Volunteers, Ohio State Buckeyes, Nebraska Cornhuskers, USC Trojans and Clemson Tigers, just to name a few national champions from the last 30 years. The mighty SEC is heading into a fifth consecutive season of all-white football coaches in 2025.
“There’s plenty of qualified minority coaches who need the chance to prove they can be CEOs of major football programs,” Carter says.
It’s one thing to get a head coaching job at the lower echelon of FBS, or at a power-conference program trying to claw its way up. (Deion Sanders is showing great things can happen for the Colorado Buffaloes, as is Fran Brown with the Syracuse Orange.) But it’s something entirely different to get a job where there is an immediate chance to win big.
Sherrone Moore is getting that opportunity now with the Michigan Wolverines. His first season was a championship hangover edition, playing without a capable quarterback. Michigan struggled for much of the season but concluded with a seismic upset of Ohio State and a takedown of Alabama in the ReliaQuest Bowl to finish 8–5. The Wolverines will be a team to watch in 2025.
The 52-year-old Franklin got that chance at Penn State in 2014 and has never had a losing record in a non-pandemic season. This is his sixth season with double-digit wins. His current team could be his best yet, with an opportunity to win the school’s first national title since 1986.
Freeman, age 38, got that chance at Notre Dame in 2021, earning a rather surprising promotion from defensive coordinator when Brian Kelly left for LSU. His record: 32–9, as he tries to win the Irish’s first national championship since 1988.
“There’s a lot of people in this coaching profession that have come before me that have given me this opportunity,” Freeman said Wednesday. “But the other person that I think deserves a lot of credit is our former AD Jack Swarbrick, because he’s the one—and our president John Jenkins at the time—that made the decision to hire a guy that was 35 years old and had never been a head coach.
“If this creates more opportunities for other coaches, other minority coaches, great. It’s great. It is great for the future generations of coaches, of college football coaches, of leaders. I am all for it, and I’m grateful to be a part of that. But at the end of the day, the attention on one person takes away what really gives your program a chance to get here, and that’s team, and that’s committing to something bigger than yourself. That’s important to me.”
Carter is similarly conflicted about the attention given to this Black coaching showdown. One of the points of emphasis for him, and for the National Coalition of Minority Football Coaches, is not to create friction with white members of the coaching fraternity. (“Don’t separate, educate,” was a mantra during the 2020 Zoom calls.) But he also realizes the significance of this game, and the inspiration that can carry over from it to the NCMFC Conference in Las Vegas in February.
“It’s damned if you do, damned if you don’t,” Carter says. “If you put the emphasis on the coaches, you’re taking away from the team accomplishments. But if you don’t, people want to know why you’re not giving them their due. And they do deserve their roses.
“It gives people like me the motivation that I can be the next Marcus Freeman or James Franklin. You want to be part of this movement, to be men who show they can run a Power 4 program and lead it to the highest level. This game is an opportunity to say, ‘Look at these two leaders, these two CEOs, these two great coaches. Look what we can do.’ ”
This article was originally published on www.si.com as Why James Franklin–Marcus Freeman Matchup Is Progress for Black Coaches.