There’s going to be a Black head coach playing for a national championship for the first time in college football Bowl Subdivision history. Some of you will read that sentence and roll your eyes because, well, you do you. But there is no denying this fact: this is a vital moment in sports history. In fact, it’s one of the most important.
Either Notre Dame’s Marcus Freeman or Penn State’s James Franklin will make this history. In many ways it equals another unique moment. That was when the Super Bowl featured its first Black head coach. Actually, coaches … plural. Super Bowl XLI in 2007 had Tony Dungy and Lovie Smith.
Why would this moment in FBS history possibly equal or even surpass that one? It’s because of how the NFL and college football have approached attempting to diversify its coaching ranks. The NFL, for all of its flaws in this area (and there are many), has at least tried to rectify the issue using the Rooney Rule. The rule is far from perfect. But it has always been an acknowledgment of the problem.
College football, conversely, has been woefully inadequate in trying to diversify its head coaching ranks. The college game, in many ways, has been historically hostile to Black coaches (especially in the South). The NFL is slightly better. (Emphasis on slightly.) But it’s better.
The NCAA doesn’t have the strength or political will to ever create the college equivalent of the Rooney Rule so it’s the racial Wild West in college football.
Meaning, overall, if you look at the history of the sport, it has been more difficult for a Black head coach to reach this point than it has been in the NFL. Or especially college basketball.
It’s true that it was only a matter of time before this happened in colleges. It’s just remarkable it took this long. The year is 2025. We were supposed to have flying cars and Black head coaches in the championship game long ago.
Why should this moment be acknowledged and celebrated? Let the first Black head football coach in Notre Dame history, Tyrone Willingham, explain.
‘Because it’s never happened before,’ Willingham told Andscape. ‘It’s a first, and we should celebrate all firsts as long as they’re positive. It’s an accomplishment for us as African Americans, especially if you know anything about history. When I started coaching, there may have been one African American coach on a staff.
‘Notice I said, ‘May have been.”
The interesting part of this story is that college basketball passed this marker decades ago. It was 1984 when John Thompson won a national championship with Georgetown. That was 41 years ago. Other Black coaches would follow in Thompson’s footsteps and win championships.
‘I might have been the first Black person who was provided with an opportunity to compete for this prize, that you have discriminated against thousands of my ancestors to deny them this opportunity,’ Thompson once said. ‘So, I felt obligated to define that, and I got a little criticism for saying it…’
(I also state all of this with great humility. My business, the journalism business, has not been historically great at diversifying its own workforce. We don’t have a Rooney Rule. We definitely need one.)
This moment with Franklin and Freeman (no relation) is vital because it can create a future permission structure for ADs. We shouldn’t need those permission structures. But we do. Franklin remembers how the Dungy and Smith Super Bowl, for example, likely opened doors for coaches like him to later walk through.
‘I remember thinking that as a coach, how significant that was in the profession and how significant that was for young coaches coming up in the profession to see those guys in that role,’ Franklin said. ‘I also remember at that time that there was a lot of conversations about will this impact the profession. Will this impact have earned opportunities for guys?’
Freeman, during a recent news conference, noted that while his father is Black, his mother is South Korean. That makes Freeman the first head coach of Asian descent in the CFP.
‘I’m going to work tirelessly to be the best version of me,’ he said, ‘and it’s great, because even the guys in our program can understand, ‘Don’t put a ceiling on what you can be and what you can do.”
This is a huge moment. One of the biggest we’ve ever seen in college football. It’s about time.
