HeartBreakKid wrote:Dr Positivity wrote:HeartBreakKid wrote:Shouldn't it be proportionate to the amount of black football players? Otherwise, there should be a lot more black coaches in the NHL
While that's fair, football is as popular a sport to play or watch with white people as black people, they just aren't as good at it as they're not as athletic. Therefore there's plenty of white football fans to dream of being scouts or coaches. There's not as many black hockey players cause the culturally they don't like the sport as much (in addition to Canada being 3% black) which would also make for less who grow up to be coaches. Otherwise there would be lots of black players who can skate faster than anyone.
I mean sure, that is the literal reason why the NHL doesn't have a lot of black people in it in general. But I am saying - you cannot say that because black people make up 10% of America that there being 3 head coaches seems right - demographically speaking.
More than 10% of the NFL is black, and more than 10% of high level NCAA football is black as well. Head coaches are former football players. So you can't just compare the number of coaches to the general demographics of USA. Ratio isn't the same.
I'd draw a distinction between "high level NCAA football" and the college football that top coaches come from.
Belichick went to Wesleyan.
Carroll transferred to Pacific.
Walsh transferred to San Jose State at a time when San Jose State wasn't in any conference.
Parcells transferred to Wichita State.
I don't really want to argue about what constitutes "high level NCAA football", but to me the route to being an NFL coach has always been working your way up the coaching ranks, and that no one really minded if you played for some podunk little school.
I don't think there's any doubt that it was easier to get opportunities to do this if you were white because racism, but in terms of actually being a celebrated college football player in a big time program, there really isn't a history of that.
And the thing is: I think the NFL's mentality here is smarter than the NBA's. I think it is smarter to invest in guys from podunk schools who work their way up the coaching ranks than it is to hand the top job to a guy who played in the NBA and has no coaching experience.
I feel like I'm just going around in circles here so I don't know if my points are getting through.
In general I just feel a need to emphasize: There is no easy answer to the racial disparity between players and coaches. There's a ton I don't like about how the NFL does business that has racial overtones, and this is part of it, but that doesn't mean that it makes sense to think that X% of the best coaches will be black because X% of the best players will be black. The disagreement in those ratios is proof of a problem, and one the NFL should look to combat to the extent it can, but there is no way to eliminate it short of using artificial measures that piss people off.
When something is a problem on the level of society as a whole, it's going to remain a problem so long as the society remains as it is.
