"Slant?"
Posted on 01/16/2025 11:58:25 AM PST by E. Pluribus Unum
While meritocracy may be embodied on the field, it frequently isn’t on the sideline. Marcus Freeman is an exception.
When Notre Dame takes the field for its college football championship game against Ohio State in Atlanta on Monday, its 39-year-old coach will make history. Marcus Freeman will become the first Black head coach in a national championship game at the Football Bowl Subdivision level.
For Freeman, it’s a career-defining moment. When he was promoted at 35 to be Notre Dame’s head coach after the 2021 season, questions arose about whether he was ready for the job. He had been defensive coordinator in South Bend for just one year. When the Fighting Irish were stunned at home by Marshall in his second game at the helm, those concerns intensified.
Now, Freeman has his team on the cusp of the storied program’s first national title since 1988. His accomplishment, however, is happening during a challenging time for Black coaches in college football.
During the 2024 season, only 9 of the 70 Power Four programs had Black head coaches. That’s just 12.9 percent. If you look at all 134 FBS programs, that figure drops to 12.7 percent. During this year’s hiring cycle, 27 FBS programs had a head-coaching vacancy. Only three of those went to a Black coach.
The racial inequity is stark when you consider this fact: Black athletes make up 47 percent of the participants in the FBS, the highest level of college sports. Freeman’s run to the championship game is the latest reminder of how far behind college football is among American sports — including its NCAA peers — when it comes to racial diversity in leadership positions. This season, 25.9 percent of major-conference head coaches in Division I men’s college basketball are Black, more than double...
(Excerpt) Read more at washingtonpost.com ...
Agreed Sanders is not much of a coach. But he excels at selling himself and his program and in the current NIL atmosphere, he’s ideal.
His mother is a Korean. Maybe Marcus can be a twofer and rhey roll him out Asian Pacific Islanders month.
If you can get a preference then claim being only black, but if you mention he half Asian then maybe he should be denied opportunit
As a Buckeye fan, we know Marcus and wish him well, but he is slowly moving into Herbstreet territory....
Wrong slant for the revolution, for which the issue is never the issue.
We students treated Ara Parseghian as a God, chanting from stands, “Ara, stop the rain. Ara, stop the rain”.
Here’s my favorite clip from the Rudy movie. The coach’s short speech here is a legend in football film-making.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P4tPpqfdt9Y
Why did it take so long? Because being a good coach isn’t about skin color.
Well done, Tommy!
He isn't woke. Stupid question. Stupid network.
Thanks for the education on Herbstreet. Notre Dame is my alma mater, but Athens, Georgia was my home for 6 years.
Here’s maybe the finest (31 sec.) advertisement against DEI ever made:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aMPu99_Xvjw
Freeman is half black and half Asian.
And the NBA! Definitely racism at work!
Exactly.
You have to understand that Asians are white-adjacent (lib for ‘non-whiny’), so that the Asian part of him succeeded is somewhere between irrelevant and regrettable. < /lib mode >
Who cares? Only racists.
Leave it to WaPo to diminish the achievements of this great young coach.
For me, my favorite part of the movie was a glimpse of the Grotto.
I care about Marcus Freeman because he is an excellent football coach and a better human being.
God may not care about the scores of football games, but His mother does.
Go Irish, Beat Ohio State!!!
Thanks for reminding me, Cletus. The Grotto is indeed a special place on the Notre Dame campus.
https://www.google.com/search?q=notre+dame+grotto&udm=2
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