Quote Originally Posted by zook
I take no offense Lukie and I don't think you sound racist, prejudiced, etc. Affirmative action gets a lot of people worked up and you're taking a high road compared to many. The problems of black America (higher poverty, lower levels of education, higher crime and drug abuse rates) are complex in origin and even moreso in solution. Affirmative action is an extremely crude remedy, but I think it does much more harm than good (except for the fact that it got ratbastard Clarence Thomas onto the Supreme Court).

The jist of the argument in this situation is... 1) connections play a huge role in who hires who, in any industry, 2) the vast majority of Div. 1 college presidents (95%) and athletic directors (85%) are white, 3) it makes sense that white people have more connections through life with other white people (no one's saying they're necessarily racist, although some of them are certainly prejudiced), 4) in a sport where 50% of the players are black, and 29% of assistant coaches are black, it seems surprising that there are so few black head coaches, 5) maybe this is due to their lack of connections, or a subtle institutional bias?, 6) if we force schools to interview as least one black candidate for every open position (not hire! just interview) this might cancel out the effect of connections.

No one (that I know of) is suggesting quotas, just more access to the hiring process.
A lot of this makes more sense and is very reasonable and well thought out. I still disagree with some of the underlying points though.

I agree that the problems of black america (higher poverty, higher crime, all that) are very complex. A lot of it IMO has to do with black hip hop culture but that certainly isn't all of it. I also agree with you in that Affirmative Action does more harm than good, predominantly because of reverse-discrimination and the fact that it perpetuates so many excuses that minorities use for their troubles. That said, in context of what you said, I'm not so sure you wrote what you meant.

My biggest problem with bringing the rooney rule, or something similar, into college sports is this: NOT because it would give black coaches an advantage or more access to the hiring process (I would agree with both of these), but that it's a blatantly unfair to both white coaches and the universities themselves. Take the following assumption: There are 6x more white people than blacks in this country. So wouldn't it only be fair, hypothetically, that if a university were to be required to interview at least one black coach, that they would be required to ALSO interview SIX white coaches? That would be mathematical equal representation. That is a huge and unfair burden to put on the university.

Another angle to take a look at: What if there really is no good black candidates? Or what if there is a hot coaching commodity that a university KNOWS it wants but is forced to set up an arrangement with a black coach for the mere purpose of satisfying a rule? Should they really be forced to interview a Ron English, who's talent-loaded defense underperformed so badly all year, just for the sake of satisfying a silly rule like that?

Honestly, from what I've seen, black coaches and assistants that perform GET recognition, both in college and in the pros. I'm not claiming that there is equal representation, but I'm not sure that there should be IF the only reason to do that is to satisfy a quota. The reasons for that being the case are just as complex and tough to answer as the first thing you were talking about.. problems that plague black America. I don't think you can equate the quantity of black football players to the quality of black football coaches-- it's just such an absurd difference that the correlation doesn't matter a whole lot.

Just my opinion of course, I look forward to hearing what you have to say.