An Uncomfortably American Sport

Lane Kiffin has managed, at 34, to put together quite an impressive resume despite a record of undistinguished mediocrity. As head coach of the Oakland Raiders for all of 2007 and part of 2008, he had a losing record of 5-15 before he was acrimoniously fired. He managed to land at the University of Tennessee where he led the Volunteers to a just better than even season of 7-6. Now, Kiffin is the head coach of the University of Southern California (USC)'s Trojans, one of the most high-profile jobs in college football.

Compare Kiffen's career to that of Turner Gill, another young coach who, unlike Kiffin, had a record of success before he became head coach of the Kansas Jayhawks this past December. But first, Gill put in more than a decade as an assistant coach in the NCAA and NFL from 1989 to 2005. He first got his chance to be a head coach when the University of Buffalo, a perennial loser in the relatively minor Mid-America Conference, offered him the head coaching gig in 2005. He coached there four years and led Buffalo to its first ever conference championship. Yet when his alma mater Nebraska had a head coach opening in 2007, he wasn’t hired. When Auburn University, one of the most storied football programs in the country, had a job opening in 2008, Gill interviewed for the job but Gene Ghizik, who had a career 5-19 record at Iowa State, ultimately got the job. The University of Kansas only hired Gill after their former head coach Mark Mangino resigned because of allegations that he abused his player.

What’s the key difference between Gill and Kiffin? Why does one have to prove himself at one of the worst programs in Football Bowl Subdivision before a mediocre major-conference team will hire him while the other seems to fall continually upward? College football, it turns out, is not very different from the rest of America. And just like the rest of America, it always helps to have lots of connections and white skin. Lane Kiffin has both, Turner Gill has neither.

Football should be very close to a colorblind meritocratic ideal—after all, quarterbacks who can’t complete passes aren’t given very many chances— but the unearned privileges of race and class lead to stark, systematic discrepancies in the head coaching ranks. And it’s not just that there is a prejudiced preference for white guys among athletic directors; instead, it is much easier for already advantaged, and overwhelmingly white, coaches to get on the head-coaching track that makes them attractive candidates for head coaching jobs.

It’s no wonder that the college and professional football system tends to reward the already privileged. Only nine of the 120 head coaches in the Football Bowl Subdivision are minorities, a mere 7.5 percent in comparison to 54 percent of the players. The Southeastern Conference only had its first minority coach in 2003. And of those nine coaches, several of them, like Gill, Randy Shannon of Miami and Kevin Sumlin of Houston, had especially successful careers as players before they became coaches, which gave them a way to distinguish themselves when they entered the field. Lane Kiffin, needless to say, was hardly a standout during his playing days at Fresno State University as a backup quarterback.

Lane Kiffin’s hiring at USC, like Gene Chizik’s at Auburn, is not totally inexplicable. Kiffin, after all, was an assistant coach at USC, eventually becoming an offensive coordinator, from 2001 to 2006. During Kiffin’s tenure, which included stints as recruiting coordinator and wide receivers coach, the team had a record of 64-12. Similarly, Chizik, who got the Auburn head coaching job over Gill, was defensive coordinator at Auburn for two years, the last of which, 2004, Auburn went undefeated and when he moved to the University of Texas to work as an assistant, the Longhorns won a national championship in 2005. But both Chizik and Kiffin who have two of the best jobs in college football had no shown no ability to improve teams or lead them to impressive records as head coaches.

Kiffin may have been a better candidate for the USC job because of his assistant coach, who at both the college and professional levels, is widely regarded as one of the best and most innovative defensive coordinators in history. He is also Lane’s father.

Monte Kiffin is probably also the reason why Lane ever got the chance to become a college football coach at all. Typically, to become a head coach, one has to start among the lowly ranks of graduate assistant and can only then rise to a position coach or an assistant coordinator job, then offensive or defensive coordinator and then head coach. The thing is, there is a wide range of people qualified for these starting positions and there is not a great way to evaluate candidates, so coaches' sons can usually get their foot in the door. And when it comes to getting an inside track on a head coaching job because of genes, Kiffin is hardly an outlier. Bobby Bowden, the legendary former Florida State University coach, had two sons go on to become head coaches, while the sons of former Notre Dame coach Lou Holtz and former Georgia coach Vince Dooley are Football Bowl Subdivision coaches.

Beyond starting out, the benefits of connections to a big-time coach are immeasurable. The big-time Football Bowl Subdivision and NFL coaching community is a relatively small one where networks and connections matter. It is not uncommon for a successful, long-tenured head coach to have his assistants become head coaches after a stint under him. Similarly, many NFL teams and Football Bowl Subdivision programs are most comfortable hiring coaches who are either well credentialed or are a known commodity in the coaching community. Of course, football is hardly unique with its favoritism, nepotism and the reproduction of privilege.

But one would think sports like football, which are filled with statistics of wins and losses, should be different. After all, Tuner Gill clearly has a better record than Lane Kiffin. Also, considering that the pool of potential college football coaches consists of former college football players, around half of which are black, the disparity in the coaching ranks becomes that much more galling.

Although Kiffin’s outlook is hardly certain at USC; he’s inheriting a program that’s under the cloud of recruiting improprieties, underperformed this last year, and has just lost its superstar coach Pete Carroll to the NFL, it is hard to doubt that he won't find a lasting career as a head coach. He’s legendarily charming and a good interviewer; it’s not like his uneven record has stopped his rise. But what about Gill?

Black coaches at major programs are often given only one chance to succeed. Tyrone Willingham, the first black coach at Notre Dame, compiled a 21-15 record in South Bend; while his successor, Charlie Weis coached five seasons and went 35-27 before he was fired after three seasons during which his teams didn’t win more than seven games. Weis’ first two seasons, when he was 19-6, he largely was coaching Willingham’s recruits. Weis, unlike Willingham, was a Notre Dame alumnus.

Cultural critics have long argued that football, especially its violent nature, reflects some of the nastier aspects of American life. When it comes to the opportunities afforded to the privileged and white, privileges which multiply themselves through generations and are reinforced by an interlocking web of institutional inertia and individual action, football seems uncomfortably American.

Matt Zeitlin is a staff writer for Campus Progress. He attends Northwestern University.

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