Gill's hire another brick out of wall in front of black coaches
LAWRENCE, Kan. -- Kansas just hired a coach with a career losing record. It's not just below .500 -- 20-30 is subterranean.
Try to remember a sitting Division I-A coach who made the jump up to a BCS conference job with a .400 winning percentage. Gene Chizik (5-19 at Iowa State before going to Auburn) hardly counts. He was going from one power conference to another. Plus, he had a previous relationship with Auburn -- and he is white.
Yeah, that's where this is headed because, sadly, it's still news when an African-American coach is hired at the highest level of college football.
Now remember that for Turner Gill, his record at the University of Buffalo is as bad as the upside is good.
"I can assure you in our [coaching] circles we thought he was going to the Buffalo Bills," said Chuck Long, Gill's new offensive coordinator. "All of us to a man said, 'Is that a college football program?'"
Taking on anonymity and snow isn't the best way for a white coach to jump-start his career. Gill took a giant leap of faith and risked career suicide four years ago by going to Buffalo. It was faith that he would have a career at all after taking over a program with no history, no facilities and an uncertain future.
Long's comments reflect the reaction of the coaching community at large. Why, indeed, would Nebraska's former superstar quarterback, a guy who coached national champions, choose to get on the head coaching track at such a godforsaken outpost?
"It's a high-risk, high-reward type job," Long said. "The Buffalo job ... may have been the highest risk job at that time. It's extreme. It's either one way or the other."
Instead of trying to explain the record, try to translate it -- 20-30 at Buffalo might mean 30-20 at Kansas, a mid-level Big 12 program with new football facilities and an Orange Bowl in its immediate past.
Gill was hired despite that record. That one thing is a huge victory. There was a time when white presidents and athletic directors would have stopped at that line on the resume before even considering an African-American coach.
Charlie Strong came right out and said it last year during preparations for the BCS title game: The fact that he had a white wife prevented him from getting some jobs. Florida's superb defensive coordinator became Louisville's head coach last week. There was a dramatic pause on the podium as tears filled the 49-year-olds eyes.
"Because you never thought it was going to happen," Strong said.
There were no similar histrionics at Kansas. Sure, it looked odd that one of the greatest Huskers of all-time put on a KU hat and said, "Rock Chalk, Jayhawk," but that was it.
This was a hiring that emerged from friendship and respect. It didn't hurt Gill's chances that Tom Osborne was one of his biggest backers. But that Dr. Tom relationship didn't help when Gill was interviewing at New Mexico State and Missouri earlier in his career.
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| Turner Gill's 20-30 record at Buffalo is a big accomplishment. (Getty Images) |
A year ago, Charles Barkley ripped Auburn, his former school, for picking Chizik over Gill. Race, he said, was the No. 1 factor. But the previous year Osborne passed over Gill for Bo Pelini. It hurts Osborne to this day to say that, basically, Gill wasn't ready.
This time it was just ... time.
"I can see you at Kansas doing a good job," Gill quoted his coach and mentor as saying. "He thought this would be a great fit for me."
Kansas AD Lew Perkins had targeted Gill from the start. Perkins and his wife, Gwen, had met Turner and Gail Gill three or four years ago at the Fiesta Frolic, the annual extravaganza hosted by the Fiesta Bowl. Lew and Gwen Perkins came back to the hotel room one night with independent stories about the fun people they had met that day. Turns out the coach from Fort Worth and Gwen's new shopping buddy from Kearney, Neb., were married to each other.
That Turner Gill is black and Gail Gill is white didn't register then and didn't matter on Monday.
"I don't think I'm here to represent a race," Gill said curtly. "I'm here to represent all people. I'd like to eliminate the color of your skin."
And that was it. On to the next subject. As a Nebraska assistant he had interviewed before for those New Mexico State and Missouri jobs. In each case, Gill realized that maybe he had to pay his dues before becoming a head coach. In each case, he thought he had been treated fairly.
Now for some wonderful, unforeseen, unpredicted reasons, the racial barriers that existed at the highest level of college football are slowly being knocked down. Gill is the sixth African-American head coach to be hired since Thanksgiving. Five of those have been in Division I-A.
It just sort of happened in a flash. College football's institutional racism has been going on for decades, so let's not give too much credit to administrative enlightenment. The ratio is still appalling. Before Thanksgiving, Miami's Randy Shannon was the only black coach in a BCS conference. Now there are four.
"Maybe we're seeing the fruits of our labor," said Floyd Keith, executive director of the Black Coaches Association. "Maybe people are getting it, finally."
Over the years, Keith has been prodding, then vocal, then frustrated, threatening legal action. His annual BCA hiring report card was meant to embarrass and enlighten. Maybe the NFL's Rooney Rule helped change minds. Maybe having Tony Dungy as an advocate working the phones and airwaves helped.
Maybe it just happened on its own: The hiring process reached a critical mass. For years, they told us that minority coaches had to get in the pipeline. They had to become coordinators, work their way up through the system so they could be seen.
Donnie Duncan's presence in the room Monday was a reminder of how far we've come. Duncan, now working as KU consultant, is the former Oklahoma AD who hired John Blake in 1996. Blake, an African American, is largely regarded as the Sooners' worst coach of all time, going 12-22 in three seasons.
Black coaches needed jobs but they also needed room to fail. White re-treads were/are hired year after year. Blake and Tyrone Willingham (Notre Dame) held two of the most prestigious jobs in college football. There was a fear that their lack of success would slow the movement.
If he goes 20-30 at Kansas, Gill will be in trouble. If he goes 30-20, maybe he's at Nebraska in four years. The point is, he got the chance.
Strong was a defensive coordinator who took over a program that was in the Orange Bowl three years ago. Virginia's new coach, Mike London, won a national championship at I-AA Richmond.
Let's not underplay what Gill has accomplished. With a program that had won 17 games in nine years as I-A member, Gill won a MAC title in 2008 (8-6 overall).
His team slumped to 5-7 this season, a reminder that in Buffalo he was working with crayons. At a Big 12 program that won 12 games two years ago, he has Windows 7 at his disposal.
"You can't look at the record," Long said. "There are situations where you have to throw the record out. People don't realize what it took from Day 1 to get over that winning hump. I can guarantee you that he spent a lot of his time with non-X's and O's matters."
As bad as Mark Mangino may have been to his players, he did leave Kansas with a foundation. Games are selling out. Gill's new office is better than Mack Brown's at Texas. While no one is comparing the two programs beyond that, at least Kansas is trying to be something more than a basketball school.
The pressure begins immediately. Gill was hired to take Kansas to the next level. Perkins was impressed with Gill's ability to recruit his native Texas. If he can recruit 11 Texans to Buffalo, getting them to Kansas should be a snap.
"It's much warmer here," Perkins said on a day when temperatures hovered in the 20s.
And he was right.
The pressure on Gill now is no different than it is on Chizik. Kansas' new coach gets that Perkins is trying to make Kansas football matter the same way it did at Connecticut when Randy Edsall was hired. Gill gets that he couldn't take his Buffalo staff and plop them down in the cutthroat Big 12. That's why he hired Long and respected defensive coordinator Carl Torbush. Both have been head coaches and should be perfect sounding boards for their boss.
Gill got also that he had to win the press conference by laying down his six goals for his administration:
"Recruit, beat Missouri, recruit, win the North [Division], recruit, win the Big 12."
Yeah, he gets it. Kansas was lucky -- and wise -- to get him.
