Black coaches have shot at college football title a generation after that milestone was hit in hoops
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In college basketball, the scene of an African American coach cutting down the nets on their way to a national title is not new, even if it is still a relative rarity. John Thompson led Georgetown to the championship in 1984, the first of four Black coaches to win it all. Carolyn Peck and her Purdue women did it in 1999 and Dawn Staley of South Carolina joined her in 2017 with the first of her three titles.
College football is behind that curve by 41 years and counting, with a chance to finally reach that milestone this year. The winning coach of Thursday's national semifinal in the Orange Bowl — either Penn State's James Franklin or Notre Dame's Marcus Freeman — will have a chance to become the first Black coach to win a national title at college football's highest level.
If it happens, it would mark a significant moment. Still, it would come a full generation after college hoops and 18 years after Tony Dungy broke the same barrier in the NFL (in the same stadium where Franklin and Freeman will square off), a league that also has struggled in the area of diversity hiring.
“The fact that we're celebrating this — it is 2025," said Richard Lapchick, the founder of The Institute for Diversity and Ethics in Sport at UCF. "That's a long time coming for that, and it still doesn't mean a Black head coach will have won that national championship" once the season is over,.
Plenty of role models, not enough mentors. Franklin, 52, says he remembers Dungy coaching against Lovie Smith in the 2007 Super Bowl and recognizing “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.”.
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