Impact of Race and Performance on Major College Football Coach Retention
Keywords:
Systemic Racism, Employment Retention, College Football, CoachesAbstract
Black head coaches in major college football are consistently underrepresented compared to the number of Black players. One factor that contributes to this underrepresentation is systemic racism. The retention of Black head coaches is impeded by this racism as evidenced by comparing the performance of Black head coaches with their non-Black counterparts. In this study, a longitudinal data set featuring the tenures of nearly 250 coaches is used to evaluate differences in major college football head coach retention based on race, while controlling for performance, between 1959 and 2021. The authors found that Black coaches were more than 50% less likely to be retained when compared to their non-Black counterparts. Beyond this investigation of systemic racism in the sport industry, the findings offer insights for sport administrators as it relates to the student-athlete experience as well as fiscal management, particularly given increased costs for contractual buyouts of underperforming coaches.
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