Born2BKing
Veteran
Dude has balled out at 2 HBCU's and completely turned the programs around but couldn't get no FBS job offers? shyt is fukked up how little respect HBCU headcoaches are getting.
Willie Simmons, the new running backs coach at Duke, is unquestionably excited about the opportunity. On multiple occasions, he uses the words “thankful” and “grateful” to describe his feelings. But the 43-year-old Florida native also admits to being frustrated.
His dream is to be a head coach at a Power 5 school, and he seemingly had done everything possible to prepare himself for the opportunity. He played quarterback at Clemson, a Power 5 school, where he graduated in three years. He spent nearly a decade as a college assistant coach, with multiple years as a passing game coordinator, offensive coordinator and play caller. He’s had no losing seasons in nine years as a head coach, resurrecting struggling FCS programs at Prairie View A&M and Florida A&M. Next month, he will be honored by the National Coalition of Minority Football Coaches as their Coach of the Year for leading the Rattlers to a 12-1 record and a Celebration Bowl win and HBCU national championship last month.
Simmons thought there would be inquiries from FBS openings either as a head coach or coordinator after the Celebration Bowl victory, but his phone rang only once — while he was driving — with the informal 10-minute conversation with a compliance official from an undisclosed school failing to result in a formal interview.
“Since I got in the profession, I’ve heard the narrative that minority coaches don’t get opportunities,” he said this week. “I look around and I’m not the only one; it would be different if I was an anomaly, but there are so many instances of guys who have had tremendous success as position coaches, as recruiters, as head coaches, who, in many cases, haven’t gotten legitimate interviews, let alone true opportunities to lead their own programs or be coordinators at Power 5 schools. It speaks to a systemic issue, in my opinion. I wish I knew the answer of how to change it, but I’m hoping somebody comes up with it quickly because it seems like we’re beating a dead horse.”
It’s one thing to hear the narrative, it’s another to live it.
“Naturally, the frustration sets in at some point,” Simmons said. “You start to question, not yourself, but the establishment. By nature we want to have faith in the establishment, we want to have a belief that there are legitimate opportunities out there for us. It goes all the way back to Dr. (Martin Luther) King’s speech and before that. That was his dream that we have an equal opportunity to advance as a people. And so when these type of situations happen, it kind of derails that hope and it puts us in a really precarious predicament to have to navigate and the decisions we have to make as coaches to try to play ‘the game,’ so to speak, to position ourselves to get the opportunities that we feel we’re deserving of.”
He stressed that he is not speaking from a place of bitterness. His preference is to not discuss the issue at all. But silence can be construed as complicity, and like any good coach, he prefers to meet difficult situations head-on.
The simple explanation for the lack of opportunities would appear to be as obvious as the skin color of the coaches. As of last month, only 15 of 133 head football coaches at the FBS level were Black. The Southeastern Conference, regarded as the most powerful and influential consortium of collegiate football programs, does not have a single minority among its 14 head coaches and has not had a Black coach leading a football program since Derek Mason at Vanderbilt in 2020.
But Simmons wanted to dive deeper to find if there might be more at play, so he spent parts of the past few years seeking the opinion of decison-makers at the Power 5 level. In particular, he cites what he was told by a prominent athletic director and a top coach who, without divulging their names, separately said he needed to leave the FCS level and find his way to a Power 5 program, even if it meant a reduction in title and authority.
“I was basically given the same message: Unfortunately it doesn’t really matter what you do at the FCS level because of the changing landscape of college athletics and NIL and things of that nature,” he said. “Getting to the Power 5 level had a lot more weight, so to speak, in the eyes of decision-makers than any success I would have at the FCS level. That was also the feedback from one of the schools that I interviewed with a couple of years ago, from the athletic director. He said my lack of Power 5 experience weighed in the decision to hire who they hired. That person had that experience, and I didn’t.”
Some find this thinking short-sighted. Coaching is coaching, they say. Track records should matter. Yet, Simmons finds himself handling running backs instead of calling plays or leading a team.
“It’s unfortunate that a talented and proven coach like Willie Simmons would not have opportunities at Power 5 jobs and/or Group of 5 jobs,” said Reggie Barlow, whose DC Defenders won the XFL championship last season. “It’s obvious the playing field is still not level when it comes to minority hires. There have been steps made, but the job demands more.”
Like Simmons, Barlow’s background includes playing experience, having spent eight seasons in the NFL. Like Simmons, Barlow excelled as a college head coach at two HBCU programs, leading Alabama State to five winning seasons in eight years and Virginia State to three winning campaigns in five seasons, including the first undefeated record in school history. Also like Simmons, the door for advancement has yet to open for Barlow.
They are not alone. Jerry Mack won three conference championships and never had a losing season in four years at HBCU program North Carolina Central. His teams were 31-15 overall, and in 2016, he was named HBCU Football Coach of the Year after the Eagles broke the school record for total offense. But with no visible path for advancement, he left the following year to be the offensive coordinator and quarterbacks coach at Rice, an FBS school. He’s currently the running backs coach at Tennessee.
Trei Oliver is North Carolina Central’s current coach. He has had only one losing season in four years and won the Celebration Bowl in 2022, the same year he was named Mid-Eastern Athletic Conference Coach of the Year. No one is saying he should be hired at this time at a higher-level program, but it’s interesting that men such as him, Simmons, Barlow and Mack aren’t viewed as being worthy of an interview.
It is interesting that coaching at the FCS level did not prevent Matt Entz from being interviewed or offered a Power 5 job while coaching at the FCS level. He was wildly successful during his tenure at North Dakota State, where he was 60-11 and won two FCS national championships in three appearances and reached the semifinals another year. In December, he resigned to become linebackers coach and assistant head coach/defense at USC in part because he was told some of the same things Simmons was told regarding career advancement.
“I have head-coaching experience … but to be transparent, I’ve had some people tell me, ‘Well, you don’t have FBS recruiting experience, you haven’t really dove into NIL,’” he told reporters. “Those have been marks against me, if you will. I saw this as an opportunity to continue to further and broaden my circle of people. Still gonna have some relevance here in the Midwest, which is comforting, and hopefully this will lead to some other opportunities.”
The fundamental difference between Entz and Simmons — or Barlow, Mack and Oliver, for that matter — is that he at least had the opportunity to interview for Power 5 jobs. Simmons et al have not, which some Black coaches believe stems from a bias against HBCU football. In the history of college football, only two African American coaches have ever been hired from an HBCU to lead a Division I program at the upper level: In 1979, Willie Jeffries became the first Black head coach of a predominately White Division I-A university after leaving South Carolina State for Wichita State, and last season, Deion Sanders became the second when he left Jackson State for Colorado.
“That’s the part that’s most frustrating,” Simmons said. “We can’t even get in front of the decision-makers so they can say, ‘Hey, so-and-so search firm, so-and-so friend of the AD, I didn’t hire Willie Simmons, Jerry Mack or Trei Oliver, but, man, I was really impressed when I interviewed them.’ What else do we have to do to get the interview? If we get the interview and can’t win the job, it is what it is. But at least give us a chance to fail.”
Maybe decision-makers are afraid individuals such as Simmons won’t fail? Makes you wonder.
Willie Simmons, the new running backs coach at Duke, is unquestionably excited about the opportunity. On multiple occasions, he uses the words “thankful” and “grateful” to describe his feelings. But the 43-year-old Florida native also admits to being frustrated.
His dream is to be a head coach at a Power 5 school, and he seemingly had done everything possible to prepare himself for the opportunity. He played quarterback at Clemson, a Power 5 school, where he graduated in three years. He spent nearly a decade as a college assistant coach, with multiple years as a passing game coordinator, offensive coordinator and play caller. He’s had no losing seasons in nine years as a head coach, resurrecting struggling FCS programs at Prairie View A&M and Florida A&M. Next month, he will be honored by the National Coalition of Minority Football Coaches as their Coach of the Year for leading the Rattlers to a 12-1 record and a Celebration Bowl win and HBCU national championship last month.
Simmons thought there would be inquiries from FBS openings either as a head coach or coordinator after the Celebration Bowl victory, but his phone rang only once — while he was driving — with the informal 10-minute conversation with a compliance official from an undisclosed school failing to result in a formal interview.
“Since I got in the profession, I’ve heard the narrative that minority coaches don’t get opportunities,” he said this week. “I look around and I’m not the only one; it would be different if I was an anomaly, but there are so many instances of guys who have had tremendous success as position coaches, as recruiters, as head coaches, who, in many cases, haven’t gotten legitimate interviews, let alone true opportunities to lead their own programs or be coordinators at Power 5 schools. It speaks to a systemic issue, in my opinion. I wish I knew the answer of how to change it, but I’m hoping somebody comes up with it quickly because it seems like we’re beating a dead horse.”
It’s one thing to hear the narrative, it’s another to live it.
“Naturally, the frustration sets in at some point,” Simmons said. “You start to question, not yourself, but the establishment. By nature we want to have faith in the establishment, we want to have a belief that there are legitimate opportunities out there for us. It goes all the way back to Dr. (Martin Luther) King’s speech and before that. That was his dream that we have an equal opportunity to advance as a people. And so when these type of situations happen, it kind of derails that hope and it puts us in a really precarious predicament to have to navigate and the decisions we have to make as coaches to try to play ‘the game,’ so to speak, to position ourselves to get the opportunities that we feel we’re deserving of.”
He stressed that he is not speaking from a place of bitterness. His preference is to not discuss the issue at all. But silence can be construed as complicity, and like any good coach, he prefers to meet difficult situations head-on.
The simple explanation for the lack of opportunities would appear to be as obvious as the skin color of the coaches. As of last month, only 15 of 133 head football coaches at the FBS level were Black. The Southeastern Conference, regarded as the most powerful and influential consortium of collegiate football programs, does not have a single minority among its 14 head coaches and has not had a Black coach leading a football program since Derek Mason at Vanderbilt in 2020.
But Simmons wanted to dive deeper to find if there might be more at play, so he spent parts of the past few years seeking the opinion of decison-makers at the Power 5 level. In particular, he cites what he was told by a prominent athletic director and a top coach who, without divulging their names, separately said he needed to leave the FCS level and find his way to a Power 5 program, even if it meant a reduction in title and authority.
“I was basically given the same message: Unfortunately it doesn’t really matter what you do at the FCS level because of the changing landscape of college athletics and NIL and things of that nature,” he said. “Getting to the Power 5 level had a lot more weight, so to speak, in the eyes of decision-makers than any success I would have at the FCS level. That was also the feedback from one of the schools that I interviewed with a couple of years ago, from the athletic director. He said my lack of Power 5 experience weighed in the decision to hire who they hired. That person had that experience, and I didn’t.”
Some find this thinking short-sighted. Coaching is coaching, they say. Track records should matter. Yet, Simmons finds himself handling running backs instead of calling plays or leading a team.
“It’s unfortunate that a talented and proven coach like Willie Simmons would not have opportunities at Power 5 jobs and/or Group of 5 jobs,” said Reggie Barlow, whose DC Defenders won the XFL championship last season. “It’s obvious the playing field is still not level when it comes to minority hires. There have been steps made, but the job demands more.”
Like Simmons, Barlow’s background includes playing experience, having spent eight seasons in the NFL. Like Simmons, Barlow excelled as a college head coach at two HBCU programs, leading Alabama State to five winning seasons in eight years and Virginia State to three winning campaigns in five seasons, including the first undefeated record in school history. Also like Simmons, the door for advancement has yet to open for Barlow.
They are not alone. Jerry Mack won three conference championships and never had a losing season in four years at HBCU program North Carolina Central. His teams were 31-15 overall, and in 2016, he was named HBCU Football Coach of the Year after the Eagles broke the school record for total offense. But with no visible path for advancement, he left the following year to be the offensive coordinator and quarterbacks coach at Rice, an FBS school. He’s currently the running backs coach at Tennessee.
Trei Oliver is North Carolina Central’s current coach. He has had only one losing season in four years and won the Celebration Bowl in 2022, the same year he was named Mid-Eastern Athletic Conference Coach of the Year. No one is saying he should be hired at this time at a higher-level program, but it’s interesting that men such as him, Simmons, Barlow and Mack aren’t viewed as being worthy of an interview.
It is interesting that coaching at the FCS level did not prevent Matt Entz from being interviewed or offered a Power 5 job while coaching at the FCS level. He was wildly successful during his tenure at North Dakota State, where he was 60-11 and won two FCS national championships in three appearances and reached the semifinals another year. In December, he resigned to become linebackers coach and assistant head coach/defense at USC in part because he was told some of the same things Simmons was told regarding career advancement.
“I have head-coaching experience … but to be transparent, I’ve had some people tell me, ‘Well, you don’t have FBS recruiting experience, you haven’t really dove into NIL,’” he told reporters. “Those have been marks against me, if you will. I saw this as an opportunity to continue to further and broaden my circle of people. Still gonna have some relevance here in the Midwest, which is comforting, and hopefully this will lead to some other opportunities.”
The fundamental difference between Entz and Simmons — or Barlow, Mack and Oliver, for that matter — is that he at least had the opportunity to interview for Power 5 jobs. Simmons et al have not, which some Black coaches believe stems from a bias against HBCU football. In the history of college football, only two African American coaches have ever been hired from an HBCU to lead a Division I program at the upper level: In 1979, Willie Jeffries became the first Black head coach of a predominately White Division I-A university after leaving South Carolina State for Wichita State, and last season, Deion Sanders became the second when he left Jackson State for Colorado.
“That’s the part that’s most frustrating,” Simmons said. “We can’t even get in front of the decision-makers so they can say, ‘Hey, so-and-so search firm, so-and-so friend of the AD, I didn’t hire Willie Simmons, Jerry Mack or Trei Oliver, but, man, I was really impressed when I interviewed them.’ What else do we have to do to get the interview? If we get the interview and can’t win the job, it is what it is. But at least give us a chance to fail.”
Maybe decision-makers are afraid individuals such as Simmons won’t fail? Makes you wonder.
