The Daily Northwestern — May 28, 2019

Page 1

The Daily Northwestern DAILYNORTHWESTERN.COM 12 SPORTS/Lacrosse

Find us online @thedailynu

3 CAMPUS/Administration

4 OPINION/From the Newsroom

In rebuke of incoming Medill professor, NU says it ‘unequivocally rejects’ BDS

Why The Daily created the role of D&I editor

High 64 Low 46

R ES H A PI N G

TH E

R

A N K S

Northwestern falls to Maryland in semifinals

Tuesday, May 28, 2019

By ANDREW GOLDEN

daily senior staffer @andrewcgolden

Editor’s note: When this article refers to Division I schools and their statistics, Historically Black Colleges and Universities are excluded from the numbers. When former Northwestern assistant coach Pat Baldwin started playing basketball at six years old, his future career plans were different than most. While many kids dream of making it to the NBA, Baldwin aspired to be a professional coach. Most young players grew up imitating Michael Jordan or Magic Johnson; Baldwin looked up to the all-time great coaches. He got his first experience coaching children as a high school student. “I put the towel over my shoulder like John Thompson would back when I was watching the Georgetown days,” Baldwin said of the experience. “At that point, I was

Serving the University and Evanston since 1881

emulating coaches.” After playing college basketball at Northwestern from 1990-1994, it took Baldwin seven years to get a coaching job. Unsure of the best way to break into the field, Baldwin worked in corporate America and played overseas instead. Baldwin eventually got his first opportunity to coach professionally in 2001 as an assistant coach at Lincoln University in Missouri. He made four more stops as an assistant coach — including in Evanston for four years — before earning his first head coaching job in 2017 at Milwaukee. The road to becoming a Division I coach can be a challenging one, especially for coaches of color. Baldwin is one of 82 Division I head men’s basketball coaches of color in the NCAA, while the number of white head men’s basketball coaches is over three times higher at 249. That disparity widens in women’s basketball, and in football, it’s even more stark: Just 24 of the 232 Division I head football coaches are people of color.

How the NCAA’s institutional barriers shut out black coaches

Despite a slight increase in representation over the past 10 years, college athletics as a whole still has a long way to go to provide equitable opportunities for coaches of color, specifically black ones. Even though black coaches have slowly been presented with more head coaching roles, those opportunities pale in comparison to what is afforded to white coaches across the country. While Northwestern hired two black head coaches in 1981, there have only been three more at the University since 1985. Across 19 varsity sports, baseball coach Spencer Allen — who’s one of three black Division I head baseball coaches — is the only one the University has hired since the beginning of the 21st century.

Setting the standard

Almost 35 before the Wildcats’ only current black coach was hired, Northwestern hired their first black head coach. They were one of the first to provide a black coach with an opportunity to lead a team. In December 1980, the

University hired Stanford’s Doug Single as the school’s new athletic director. As Single moved east, he brought a member of Stanford’s football staff with him, hiring thenoffensive coordinator Dennis Green to fill the Wildcats’ head coaching vacancy. When he took over, Green became the second black head coach in Division I history, providing the country one of its first glimpses at how a top coaching role could be filled by a black candidate. At Northwestern, he gave black student athletes — many of whom hadn’t had a head coach of color at the college level — a leader who looked like them. “Typically, to have one black coach on the staff was the norm,” said former Wildcats offensive tackle Chris Hinton. “All of a sudden, Dennis Green comes in and I would think there was probably at least three black coaches.” As Green started to change the look of the football program, » See IN FOCUS, page 6

INSIDE: Around Town 2 | On Campus 3 | Opinion 4 | Classifieds & Puzzles 6 | Sports 12


Turn static files into dynamic content formats.

Create a flipbook
Issuu converts static files into: digital portfolios, online yearbooks, online catalogs, digital photo albums and more. Sign up and create your flipbook.