Headline from the NCAA News: “Percentage of ethnic minority athletics administrators remains relatively stagnant in latest four-year period.”
The NCAA, like any large corporation, is committed to diversity. In fact, the NCAA encourages, if not subtly mandates, that member schools place qualified minorities in administrative positions.
Do you know how many ethnic minorities hold administrative positions in the Kansas University athletics department right now?
None. That’s right. Zero. Zip. Nada.
During the 1999-2000 school year, KU had two men of African-American heritage in administrative roles. But John Jefferson left his post as Director of Student-Athlete Life for a job in pro football, and Dino Bell, head of the Jayhawk Job Network, departed for a post in Arizona.
Jefferson was replaced by Gary Kempf, KU’s long-time swim coach, and athletics director Bob Frederick is looking for a successor for Bell.
“Quite frankly,” Frederick told me, “we have had difficulty keeping minorities in student support services.”
Quite frankly, jobs in student support services are not the highest-paying in athletics departments, and the highest-paying jobs in the KU athletics department don’t come open very often.
“The reason we don’t seem to be doing so well (in administrative diversity),” Frederick said, “is we don’t have turnover in our administration.”
Frederick has been in charge of KU athletics since 1987. Most of the KU associate and assistant ADs have been on the job for a decade or more. The “short-timer” is Amy Perko, the Senior Woman Administrator only since 1996.
While Kansas has an embarrassingly low number of ethnic minority administrators, the Jayhawks have a large percentage of minority coaches. During the 1999-2000 school year, 13 of the 50 people employed as KU coaches fit the minority category. That’s 26 percent. Commendable. And not a fluke, either.
“We’ve made an effort to hire minority coaches,” Frederick said. “That’s been on our radar screen.”
Two of the 13 ethnic minority coaches long-time women’s basketball coach Marian Washington and fourth-year men’s tennis coach Mark Riley are head coaches. The remainder are aides.
Still, as you know, within the last couple of weeks, the number of KU head coaches of African American extraction grew to three with the hiring of Stanley Redwine as men’s and women’s track and cross country boss.
Redwine is a former Arkansas All-American who had been at Tulsa U. for the last five years. He replaced Gary Schwartz.
Was Frederick, whose pro-diversity and pro-women stances are well documented, determined to hire an African-American head track coach to counterbalance the Kempf-for-Jefferson trade? Was Redwine’s race a factor in his hiring?
“Yes, it was a factor a small factor,” Frederick replied. “We interviewed eight people and two were minorities. Then the committee cut it to three, including Redwine. From that point, we tried to hire the best person.”
Redwine, Frederick confirmed, was the only ethnic minority among the three finalists.
Time will, of course, tell if the Redwine decision was the correct one.
It’s no secret Redwine wasn’t the choice of several former KU track athletes who favored Kent State coach Steve Rainbolt, the only former Jayhawk who interviewed for the post. But that’s to be expected. Alums always favor alums.
Nevertheless, the pro-Rainbolt crowd will believe Kansas hired Redwine for diversity reasons until Redwine proves otherwise. That may not be fair and it may not be right, but that’s the way it is.