Western Kentucky University received an overall grade of “A” in the 2009-10 Black Coaches and Administrators Report Card, the BCA announced Thursday in its seventh annual report. The ‘Hiring Report Card’ (HRC), analyzed the hiring process of the FBS and FCS schools that hired a head football coach in the last hiring cycle.
A total of 34 universities, 20 from the Football Bowl Subdivision and 14 from the Football Championship Subdivision, had their respective head coaching hiring practices analyzed by the BCA. WKU named Willie Taggart as its head football coach on November 23, 2009. Taggart had previously served as running backs coach at Stanford from 2007-09. There have been 33 full-time African-American head coaches in the history of the FBS schools.
“We are very proud to receive this report from the Black Coaches and Administrators, and we appreciate the efforts of Floyd Keith and the BCA to promote diversity in college athletics and improve our profession,” WKU Director of Athletics Ross Bjork said. “I applaud the efforts of Dr. Ransdell, Dr. Selig and the Search Committee for their thorough efforts to find the best candidate for WKU’s head football coaching position. This is another example of how we are doing the rights things here at WKU. I had a chance to watch Coach Taggart when I was at UCLA and he was at Stanford, and we knew he was an outstanding coach. Ever since he has been hired, he has worked tirelessly each and every day to make our program better and to enable us to compete for and win championships.”
WKU’s grade was derived following the compilation of data in four categories: diversity of candidates, diversity of the search committee, time frame in making the hire, and communication with the Executive Director of the Black Coaches and Administrators (BCA) and/or the Chair of the Minority Opportunity Interests Committee (MOIC).
The report was authored by Dr. Richard Lapchick, the Director for the Institute for Diversity and Ethics in Sport at the University of Central Florida. The research team at The Institute for Diversity and Ethics in Sport (TIDES) collected the data from November 2009 through October 2010 from each predominately white FBS and FCS institution that filled a head football coaching position.
