NCAA must act on coach hirings

Suggesting that the NCAA add another rule to college athletics makes me want to wash my mouth out with soap.

Add a rule? The NCAA? The good folks there come up with rules as often as most of us breathe. But the truth is, the NCAA needs to legislate one more thing — the hiring of head football coaches.

With the dismissals of Tyrone Willingham at Washington and Ron Prince at Kansas State, the number of head football coaches in Division I-A football is four. Four. With 119 programs, that comes out to 3.36 percent. That’s appalling. More, that’s unacceptable.

Sad thing is, it’s been that way for decades. The Institute for Diversity and Ethics in Sports released a study this week that said there have been 199 available head coaching jobs since 1996. Only 12 of those spots have been filled by black men.

I used to think it was just a matter of time before the numbers improved, before they better mirrored the percentage of minority players and assistants in college football.

Now, I’m not so sure.

Something needs to be done, and while I hate to think diversity needs to be legislated in college football, apparently, it does. College football needs to implement a Rooney Rule-like statute. The NFL uses the Rooney Rule, requiring its teams to interview minority candidates for head coaching jobs. It fines teams who don’t do so. The NCAA could do the same thing. The pocketbook, after all, seems to be the place that big-time college programs feel the most pain.