When Columbia hired Norries Wilson to be its head football coach, the university joined a very elite club. Columbia became the 10th school out of over 200 I-A and I-AA programs to currently have a minority head football coach.
They are also only one of three schools to have a minority head football and head basketball coach, joining Valparaiso and Washington.
Columbia should be applauded for its efforts to bring in minority head coaches.
In no way am I indicting Penn for not having minority head basketball and football coaches. After all, it is difficult to fault the performances of Al Bagnoli and former basketball coach Fran Dunphy.
And Glen Miller certainly is a qualified choice to continue the Dunphy legacy.
Still, it is disgraceful how few minority head football coaches are in Division I and Penn is not acting as part of the solution.
In all, there are 27 head coaches at Penn but only three of them are members of minority groups: Mark Riley of men's tennis, Gwen Harris of women's track and John Ceralde of gymnastics.
Thus, only 11 percent of Penn's coaches are minorities. This is an unfortunate disparity considering the incredibly diverse student body here.
It is hypocritical to boast about our high minority acceptance rate while maintaining a low number of minority coaches. Of the admitted class of 2009, 39.2 percent were minority students. Given the diversity of Penn and its Ivy League brethren, student diversity should be used as a springboard for hiring minority coaches.
To the Ancient Eight's credit, four out of the league's eight men's basketball coaches are black: Craig Robinson at Brown, Joe Jones at Columbia, Jim Jones at Yale and Terry Dunn at Dartmouth.
If Penn and the Ivy League are to take the lead in this area, the responsibility lies squarely on the shoulders of the Ivy presidents, athletic directors and other head coaches.
Head coaches should always be on the lookout for talented minority assistant coaches. There is simply no way to hire minority head coaches if they are not developed as assistants first. Both the men's basketball and football teams have minority assistant coaches. Steven Downs is the running backs coach for the football team and former Quaker Perry Bromwell is returning as an assistant to Glen Miller.
Athletic directors and presidents need to make an effort to both interview and hire minority candidates. I would encourage Penn, if not the entire Ivy League, to adopt a policy similar to the NFL's "Rooney Rule."
The NFL requires teams to interview a minority candidate for every head coaching vacancy or be subject to a fine. If the Ivy League adopted a Rooney Rule, it would be forced to consider more minority candidates and hopefully hire more as coaches. I hope that one day Penn will have an equal proportion of minority students to coaches.
Matt Meltzer is a senior political science major from Glen Rock, N.J. His e-mail address is meltzerm@sas.upenn.edu.
