This moment in the College Football Playoffs is historic

On By Littum

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A black head coach will play for a national championship for the first time in college football’s Bowl Subdivision history. Some of you will read that sentence and roll your eyes because you do. But there’s no denying this fact: this is an important moment in sports history. In fact, it is one of the most important.

Either Notre Dame‘s Marcus Freeman or Penn State‘s James Franklin will write this story. 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, Tony Dungy and Lovie Smith had.

Why would this moment in FBS history possibly equal or even surpass it? That’s because of how the NFL and college football have gone about trying to diversify its coaching ranks. For all its faults in this area (and there are many), the NFL has at least tried to correct the problem with the Rooney Rule. The rule is far from perfect. But it has always been a recognition of the problem.

College football, conversely, has been woefully inadequate in trying to diversify its head coaching ranks. The college game has been historically hostile to black coaches in many ways (especially in the south). The NFL is a little better. (Emphasis on a little.) 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 of college football.

All in all, this means that 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 is true that it was only a matter of time before it happened in the colleges. It’s just remarkable that it took this long. The year is 2025. We should have had flying cars and black head coaches in the championship game a long time ago.

Why should this moment be recognized and celebrated? Let the first black 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 might have been an African-American coach on a staff.

“Notice I said, ‘It 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 it 41 years ago. Other black coaches would follow in Thompson’s footsteps and win championships.

“I could have been the first black person to have the opportunity to compete for this award, that you have discriminated against thousands of my ancestors to deny them this opportunity.” Thompson once said. “So I felt obligated to define it, and I got some flak for saying that…”

(I also say all this with great humility. My business, the journalism business, has not been historically great at diversify its own workforce. We don’t have a Rooney rule. We definitely need one.)

This moment with Franklin and Freeman (no relation) is critical because it can create a future permission structure for ADs. We shouldn’t need those permission structures. But we do. Franklin recalls how the Dungy and Smith Super Bowl, for example, likely opened doors for coaches like him to later walk through.

“I remember thinking as a coach how important that was in the profession and how important it was for young coaches coming up in the profession to see those guys in that role,” Franklin said. “I also remember at the time there were a lot of conversations about whether this will impact the profession. Will this impact have earned opportunities for guys?”

Freeman noted during a recent press conference 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 that’s great because even the guys in our program understand, ‘Don’t put a ceiling on what you can be and what you can do .'”

This is a huge moment. One of the greatest we’ve ever seen in college football. It’s about time.