BLACK COACHES FEELING POWERLESS.

Byline: Tim Dahlberg Associated Press

When athletic director Bob Bockrath looked for someone to replace Gene Stallings as Alabama's football coach, fans and alumni both urged him to keep the search inside the Crimson Tide program.

The choice basically came down to defensive coordinator Mike Dubose, a former 'Bama defensive lineman, and offensive coordinator Woody McCorvey.

Dubose is white; McCorvey African-American. Dubose got the job, leaving the SEC as one of the few conferences that never has had a African-American head football coach.

Bockrath said Dubose's long ties to the Alabama program were the main factor, and that race was never a consideration in the hiring.

Advocates for African-American coaches say that is always the answer when African-Americans are passed over for head jobs.

``I think people are reluctant to put blacks in power positions like football coaches,'' said Rudy Washington, head of the African-American Coaches Association. ``I'm convinced football is one of the most racist sports today that blacks are participating in.''

The debate over whether African-American coaches are being unfairly passed over for head jobs has flared up once again this year. Twenty 20 positions, or nearly a fifth of the Division I-A coaching jobs, opened through retirements or firings.

The first nine coaches hired to fill the vacancies were white. Then Tony Samuel was hired to take over a New Mexico State team coming off a 1-10 season.

In his first head coaching job, Sammuel takes over what may be the worst program in the country in an isolated area where recruits are hard to find.

``African-American coaches want opportunities but they also want the opportunities to be at schools that have established programs,'' said Stanley Johnson, director of professional development for the NCAA. ``They never seem to get the calls for those.''

In a sport where African-Americans make up a much larger percentage of players than in the general population, the number of head coaches on the Division I-A level remains less than 10 percent.

With the hiring of Samuel, African-Americans now head football programs at eight of the 110 universities that play Division I-A ball. A quarter of those are in Oklahoma, where Bob Simmons is head coach at Oklahoma State and John Blake is at Oklahoma.

``It's pretty evident that blacks aren't being hired, for whatever reason,'' said Washington, the athletic director at Compton Junior College in California. ``Guys are not getting interviews and, when they do get interviews, a lot of times it's as a token African-American candidate.''

Though African-Americans long coached programs in the historically African-American Mideastern and Southwestern athletic conferences, it wasn't until Wichita State hired Willie Jeffries in 1979 that a African-American coached at the top level.

A dozen others have been hired since then, though the ranks of African-American head coaches dwindled to zero four years ago, prompting calls from activists for boycotts by recruits.

``We went down this road four years ago when there were no African-American head football coaches. There was talk at that time about boycotting that was very significant,'' Johnson said. ``Then we went to seven and it seemed everyone got kind of complacent.''

Another 18 African-American coaches head programs in Division I-AA, but only two of those are outside the Mideastern and Southwestern conferences. Critics such as Washington say African-American coaches aren't getting chances at any level.

``It's not an opinion, it's a fact,'' Washington said. ``Obviously we're not getting jobs. There's something going on here.''

Just what that something might be may range from alumni pressure to fears of alienating major contributors by hiring a African-American head coach, Washington believes.

The issue has the attention of the NCAA, which may look into it at its next president's commission meeting. But NCAA spokeswoman Kathryn Reith said the organization can do little except encourage schools to consider African-American coaches.

``These are individual hires done by individual organizations,'' Reith said. They have to make their own decisions based on what is good for their institutions.''

Though African-American coaches are more visible in college basketball, it wasn't until Georgetown's John Thompson raised a public outcry that their numbers grew to any extent.

Even now, African-American basketball coaches head programs at only 16 percent of Division I schools, with 49 of 306 teams being coached by African-Americans.

The subject of African-American coaches is fraught with such political volatility that few athletic directors or university presidents will speak to the issue.

Prospective African-American coaches are also fearful to talk, afraid they will lose any opportunity they have to become a head coach if they are branded as militants.

That leaves Washington to convey what he said is the anger and frustration from the hundreds of African-American assistant coaches across the country.

``The guys who want jobs will not speak so freely,'' Washington said. ``I can talk about it since I'm no longer in the NCAA structure. I talk to these coaches every day. They have a very, very high frustration level.''

One who would address the issue was Minnesota men's athletic director Mark Dienhart. He said he was simply looking for a coach who could win for a program that lost 24 of its last 27 Big Ten games under Jim Wacker.

Dienhart said two of the 12 prospects he considered were African-American, before he ultimately went with Glen Mason, who turned around the program at Kansas before having a dismal year this past season. Mason is white.

``I was looking for the person who had the best chance to win,'' Dienhart said.

Minnesota already has a African-American basketball coach in Clem Haskins. And McKinley Boston, Dienhart's predecessor as athletic director and his current boss as a university vice president, is African-American.

``As you go through the process, you're not looking to hire a person of color,'' Boston said. ``You are looking to have the best coach possible. If we thought that person would be one of color, we would have hired him.''

That's not good enough for Washington, who believes that many qualified African-Americans are never given a chance to prove they can win.

``We've got guys coming out of the collegian ranks and coaching pro ball and nobody's looking at these guys,'' Washington said. ``Why aren't these guys getting phone calls? If a guy gets to the table and can't sell himself, so be it. But don't bring in inferior guys not qualified and then say we interviewed a African-American but he wasn't good enough.''

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Photo

Photo: Georgetown's John Thompson is an African-American coaching activist among the college ranks.

Daily News File Photo