Notre Dame's Marcus Freeman seeks breakthrough for Black coaches on an historic day in America
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Notre Dame football coach Marcus Freeman felt more comfortable talking about the national championship his players have a chance to win Monday night than the history attached to it if they pull it off. Still, it’s hard to ignore the connections between Freeman’s fate — he is trying to become the first African-American coach to capture a college title at the highest level in America’s favorite sport — and all that's happening in the U.S. on the day of the big game.
Monday, Jan. 20 is national-title day, but also the day the United States celebrates Martin Luther King Jr., and inaugurates Donald Trump to his second term as president. King devoted his life to fighting for inclusion and equality, and today diversity initiatives are increasingly under scrutiny on college campuses.
“The timing of Marcus Freeman and Martin Luther King Junior Day is a powerful symbol that should be viewed with cautious optimism,” said Joseph Cooper, the director of the Institute for Innovative Leadership in Sport at UMass. “And with the incoming administration and their professed commitment to undo DEI policies, it reflects the peril and the long journey we still have to go, beyond just breaking barriers with pioneers.”.
That Freeman's potential breakthrough comes more than 40 years after a Black basketball coach first did the same, and that it comes against a backdrop of a mediocre minority hiring record that has shadowed college sports for decades, is a sign of how far those sports still have to go.
