- Black coaches are rarely given second chances after being fired, unlike many of their white counterparts.
- Experts suggest Black coaches are often judged collectively, while white coaches are evaluated as individuals.
- The number of Black head coaches in the FBS has decreased from 17 in 2011 to 14 today.
The two most powerful leagues in college football began the 2025 season with a combined four Black head coaches out of 34 schools from coast to coast.
∎ There were no Black head coaches in the Southeastern Conference.
∎ In the Big Ten, there were four, including Sherrone Moore, the first Black head coach in Michigan history.
Four months later, only one remains — Mike Locksley at Maryland. The others were terminated, most notably Moore, who fell from grace in the kind of scandal that can unfairly affect perceptions of other Black coaches in ways that don’t affect white coaches after similar scandals, according to experts contacted by USA TODAY Sports.
“These Black coaches are often evaluated collectively, while white coaches, our peers, are evaluated individually,” said former San Jose State head coach Fitz Hill, who is Black. “That’s the difference. And that’s because when you look at minorities, you group minorities. That’s just a rational cognitive process.”
That doesn’t make it fair, however, Hill said.
After another round of firings and hirings in college football, USA TODAY Sports updated its historical data on Black head coaches and gathered additional context to put the fallout from Moore’s firing into perspective from the standpoint of race. The picture it paints isn’t exactly bright.
What it means and why it might get worse
The data compiled by USA TODAY Sports shows Black coaches still rarely get second chances after failures, primarily because they seldom get first chances. There are only 14 Black head coaches out of 136 schools in the Football Bowl Subdivision (FBS), where nearly half the players are Black. That’s down from 17 out of 120 major college teams in 2011.
Meanwhile, the SEC hasn’t had a non-interim Black head coach since 2020. Out of 34 coaches in the Big Ten and SEC, 33 are white and one is Black.
In the bigger picture, all of this comes against the backdrop of colleges living in fear of the Trump Administration’s crackdown on efforts to improve diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI).
“I’m afraid that in the current climate, where DEI and efforts along those lines have been really sidelined in a major way, that it’s going to get worse, not better,” said Richard Lapchick, founder of Institute for Sport and Social Justice.
Short list of Black coaches with second chances vs. white coaches
In all of college football history, only five Black coaches have been given second chances as non-interim head coaches in the Power Four conferences after previously being fired from another head coaching job in the Football Bowl Subdivision (FBS), according to USA TODAY Sports research. It’s a short list: Tyrone Willingham, Mike Locksley, Kevin Sumlin, Karl Dorrell and James Franklin, who recently was hired at Virginia Tech after getting fired from Penn State in the Big Ten.
Outside the Power Four leagues, only three Black head coaches in FBS history have gotten second chances after firings as FBS coaches: Charlie Strong, Willie Taggart and Derek Mason.
By contrast, 17 current white head coaches in the FBS are on their second or third chance after previously getting fired as an FBS head coach, including three in the Big Ten and two in the SEC. New LSU coach Lane Kiffin, who is white, even was considered the hottest candidate on the market after previously being fired as head coach of Southern California and the NFL’s Oakland Raiders.
White coaches survive scandals, too
Several white head coaches also have survived getting arrested or hiding an extramarital affair with a staff member to get a second chance as head coach. But some don’t think Moore will get that same opportunity despite leading Michigan to a 9-3 record in 2025. He violated school policy for hiding an extramarital affair with a staff member and then got arrested for allegedly invading her home after his firing.
“Will Moore get the same second chances his white counterparts receive?” asked Sandy Young, CEO of J. Walcher Communications, which specializes in crisis communications. “In today’s society, in which race is ‘othered’ and simplified as ‘persons of color bad’ and ‘white people good,’ Moore may have blown his one chance.”
Why don’t Black coaches get second chances?
Several factors help explain it, including that people hiring head coaches are often white and tend to hire those like themselves. Of the 131 athletic directors who oversaw FBS football programs in 2022, 100 were white, according to the most recent leadership report card from the University of Central Florida.
Another reason relates to Hill’s comment about how minorities are unfairly “grouped” together despite their individual differences. For example, after Charlie Strong was fired as head coach at Texas in 2016, he seemed to recognize this effect in comments he made to Fox Sports. He later was hired as head coach at South Florida, outside the power conferences. But he worried his failure at Texas would be symbolic.
‘When you’re the first minority coach at a major university like that, you feel like there’s so many people counting on you,’ Strong said then. ‘I got upset at myself for not being successful, and I got upset at myself because you feel like you let a lot of people down. There are only so many African-American coaches, so when you get on a stage like that. …’
Likewise, former NFL safety Ryan Clark said the same applies to the effect of the Moore firing at Michigan.
“He not only failed himself, but a community of coaches,” Clark said on Instagram. “Had he succeeded the next ‘Sherrone Moore’ would have a favorable comp during his interview process. If you’re Michigan’s AD would you be comfortable hiring someone who reminded you of your dismissed former coach?”
Few schools ever have hired more than two Black coaches
The “grouping” of minority coaches after they have failed also is supported by the evidence only four major college teams have hired at least three Black coaches in their history: Colorado, Stanford, Kent State and Bowling Green.
After Hill was forced out at San Jose State in 2004, he said he told a school administrator he hoped his lack of success didn’t keep the school from considering a person of color as his replacement.
“Do you really think there’s somebody out there we should consider?” the administrator asked, according to Hill.
“By your statement, I realize you do not understand the challenges,” Hill said he replied.
San Jose State never hired a non-interim Black head coach after that. Its current coach, Ken Niumatalolo, is Samoan.
Deion Sanders made a similar point
Colorado is the only FBS school to have hired four non-interim Black head coaches, two of whom were fired.
Current Colorado coach Deion Sanders addressed this same issue when he was hired by Colorado athletic director Rick George in December 2022. Sanders, who is Black, replaced Karl Dorrell, who is Black and was fired after an 0-5 start in 2022. Dorrell had replaced Mel Tucker, who is Black and left Colorado after one season in 2019 to become head coach at Michigan State.
“Rick, thank you once again, because there are several African-American head coaches around the country that were terminated, and they were not replaced by an African-American coach,” Sanders said then. “But you had the audacity to do such a thing, not only to do such a thing on this time but several times you’ve done such a thing. So I thank you for your nerve. I thank you for your courage. I thank you for seeing past the color and the ethnicity.”
The Mel Tucker and Sherrone Moore ‘grouping’
Another undercurrent to the firing of Moore was that Michigan State fired Tucker in 2023 after rape survivor Brenda Tracy said Tucker made sexual comments about her and masturbated during a phone call in 2022.
The similarities of their scandals and their firings from two rival Big Ten schools have led to racist jokes on social media and similar grouping of the two.
“The fact that we are so quick to place (Tucker and Moore) in the same pot shows how stereotypes operate about Black men and sexual promiscuity,” said Lou Moore, a sports history professor at Michigan State who is not related to Sherrone Moore.
Both Tucker and Sherrone Moore instead had separate scandals at separate jobs, the same way other white coaches have but weren’t grouped for it negatively based on race.
“I think the way we have to look at it is that, as bad as it is, it certainly does not paint a picture of anybody else in college sports,” Lapchick said of the Sherrone Moore scandal.
So what’s the answer?
After 110 years of college football starting in 1869, the first Black head coach at the major-college level didn’t come until 1979 — Willie Jeffries at Wichita State.
Since then, USA TODAY Sports counted only 70 total non-interim Black head coaches in major college football history. In 2005, there were only three. Today there are 14.
So what’s the fairest way forward in the meantime? Casting a wider net for candidates always helps. Hill said it’s about Black coaches getting better “access” to these jobs. Unfortunately, unfair perceptions often override reality.
He authored a 2012 book about the subject titled “Crackback! How College Football Blindsides the Hopes of Black Coaches.”
“Perception always impacts the access in the hiring process,” Hill said. He said this in turn has led to unrealized potential among Black coaches who weren’t given first or second chances. Many schools, such as Alabama, never have hired a non-interim Black head coach.
“What would have happened if Nick Saban (the former Alabama coach) would have been born Black?” Hill asked. “He would have been a great coach that never would have been realized at Alabama.”
Another consideration would help Black coaches, too, as evidenced by the successful rehabilitation of white coaches like Lane Kiffin.
Sometimes failures make a coach better, not worse.
Follow reporter Brent Schrotenboer @Schrotenboer. Email: bschrotenb@usatoday.com