Report: Advancement for Black Football Coaches Tied Heavily to Diverse Contacts: In the world of college football coaching, it’s not just “who you know” and how well you know them that factor in career advancement opportunities but what’s their race, according to a new study by North Carolina State University researchers.White college football coaches who have a number of “strong social ties” and a mostly White network tend to succeed in securing new jobs. Black coaches generate no such benefit from same-race networks, according to a study on assistant football coaches’ social networks published in Sociological Spectrum.
The findings in “Not So Fast, My Friend: Social Capital and the Race Disparity in Promotions Among College Football Coaches” help explain the relationship between networking and the low number of African-Americans in head coaching positions.
