College Sports Lag in Hiring Diverse Staff, Report Says

College athletic programs lag behind professional teams in diverse hiring practices, and in some sports, are getting worse, according to a new “report card” released Wednesday by the Institute for Diversity and Ethics in Sport at the University of Central Florida. TIDES awarded college sports a “B” grade overall – same as last year -- noting that while colleges improved slightly on gender hiring practices (colleges scored 81.3 points on the report card scale, up from 80.7 last year), they also did slightly worse with racial hiring practices (scoring 81 points, down from 82.2). The report points specifically to Division I men’s basketball head coaches, 18.8 percent of whom are black, down 0.2 percent from last year and 6.6 percent from 2005-6. It also notes that the commissioners of all major Football Bowl Series conferences are white males, and 89 percent of athletics directors in all three divisions are white. Only 8.3 percent of Division I athletics directors are women, the report says.